[solidsnack9000]

An hour a week with a tutor can make a marked difference.

While living in Switzerland, I found that High German was not useful and so I would have to learn Swiss German to be able to order a coffee, understand commands in exercise class, &c. Swiss German is not in practice mutually intelligible with German and is for the most part an oral language, lacking online resources or even a standard orthography. Trying to learn from papers and linguistic studies was not working...so I got a tutor.

The combination of appropriate source material and targeted corrections made a huge difference in my progress and for a long time after returning to the states I was much more comfortable with Swiss German than High German.