Can’t tell about everything else but one thing is sure. At the moment no wirklich has appeared and it is not known if it ever will. 
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If it doesn’t come, then I take it back and agree with Hendrik. However, “wirklich” is such a common word that I’d be amazed if it isn’t introduced.
If “wirklich” is due to come later in the course, then I genuinely would think twice about "changing “really” to “very much”. I think “very much” brings its own problems as it’s not much used in the informal spoken language (although it’s certainly the kind of thing I have written at times, I can only imagine saying, “I very much wanted to speak with you.” at the ambassador’s reception ha ha).
Having said that, I must admit it’s also true that learners will figure that out too, so perhaps Hendrik has a point.
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It’s always interesting to see where meanings overlap and where they differ. But even if some English speakers use “really” in both senses, that should be irrelevant here in this course, as the aim is to learn German. So if you want the German target sentence to contain “sehr”, the English sentence should contain “very much”‘. Learning that “really”’ also equals “sehr” is dangerous (and possibly wrong).
My point is that you can always translate “very much” as “sehr” and “really” as “wirklich”, and if the course didn’t even introduce “really” as “wirklich”, then the word should be avoided in English and replaced with “very much” instead.
I liked this book very much → Ich mochte das Buch sehr.
I really liked this book. → Ich mochte das Buch wirklich.
I really liked this book very much. → Ich mochte das Buch wirklich sehr.
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If you also did Latin, you can think of it as me vs mihi…
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Thanks, @RichardBuck - I can’t define myself an expert in Latin, but I do understand its grammar better than German grammar!
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I also have a question. “Schon” was presented as the translation of “already”.
Now I get this, where there’s no “already” in the English but a “schon” appears in the German, and the “nicht” becomes the last word in the sentence.
Is this the way it’s supposed to be? 
(no need to explain all the whys, just wanted to make sure it is correct!)
and also, soon after this, “not last month” becoming “letzen monat nicht” rather than “nicht letzen monat”
Not in my opinion, no. For starters, the whole concept of the question of “not learning” a language appears to be a bit weird, but I can see it in a conversation about someone who did learn German in the past, but then stopped (for whatever reason).
Taking the negation out would lead to a much more natural sentence: “How long have you been learning German?” → “Wie lange lernst du schon Deutsch?”
But introducing the negation, I’d say “Wie lange lernst du schon nicht Deutsch?”
The thing with “not last month” is conceivable as a fragmented answer, so I’d wait for a sentence with a bit more context before flagging this up. So in a conversation like
“Did you read any good books last month? – No, not last month” you could actually translate the answer with “Nein, letzten Monat nicht.” – But then again, in this case you could just as well say “Nein, nicht letzten Monat.”
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I’m not sure if the material in the “breaks” is meant to repeat, but I’ve heard the bit about the brain operation twice…
Maybe you’re right, mate. I can only speak to my own experience.
I want to repeat that we don’t often use “very much” in this kind of construction in the ordinary spoken language. It’s much more formal than that. “Really” is exactly the natural way that we would express these ideas in spoken English. That’s not a criticism of your suggestion that we should use “very much” in the course (Michel Thomas, a teacher I greatly admired, also used it for exactly the kind of reason you are bringing up) and I am sincere in saying you might be right; it’s just to point out that using the most natural English translation (“really”) also has its merits.
I was also thinking about my own experience learning German and I think there might be a further aspect worth considering. I personally was never tempted to use “sehr” in this way you worry about, even as a total beginner. For English speakers at least, it’s not very natural to take a word that is clearly an intensifier and make it into a word that means something like “truly” or “genuinely”. To my mind, the opposite mistake is far more of a danger. It is temptingly natural to an English speaker to go in the opposite direction and take a word that means “really” in a literal sense and use it as an intensifier. So natural, in fact, that in spite of putting a lot of effort into studying German and reaching a point where I could have conversations, listen to audiobooks and use the case system, I genuinely didn’t realise that you couldn’t do this in German until I read your post above.
I don’t know if I ever made this mistake, but I might have and I’d say that if we are worried about that direction, then translating “really” as “sehr” a few times might have been helpful for me when I was learning.
It is not German’s problem if colloquial English conflates “very” and “really”… German has two distinct words, and a course teaching German should teach how those words are used correctly. You simply can’t translate the single word interjection Really?! as Sehr?! – you have to say Wirklich!? … ja, wirklich.
Of course you can’t. I agree. Did they actually do that? I didn’t see that part if they did. I only saw the bit where they translated “sehr” as “really” in the sentence about really wanting to talk to someone, where it’s the most natural English translation.
You might be right that the best approach is to avoid the ambiguity of the English word “really” by using “very much” to make the meaning of the German clear. All I was saying was that, to my mind, the sentence already seems extremely clear. I personally think the sentence strongly supports the correct meaning of “really” and it’s not as likely to lead to confusion as you think (in fact, it’s hard for me to imagine an English speaker understanding that English sentence with “really” as meaning anything other than a high degree of wanting). I’m not insisting that I’m right about this, just giving my opinion about how I naturally understand the English sentence and how I think most English speakers will understand it.
I also think the reverse error is much more of a danger for English speakers and that prompting learners to translate “really” as “sehr” might actully be very useful for that reason. Again, just opinion.
I don’t think a lot is at stake here and if you insist that the app should use “very much” then fair enough. You are the one that is doing all the work here and I’m grateful to you for it.
I think I’m stuck here too! Lots of du sprichts patterns but nothing new for a while (apart from new “break” content). It’s starting to get a bit boring. What’s the best thing to do? Logout? Or Skip? Or is it a section thats too long that I’ve got to get through? 
Yes I thought there was a problem with the app when I seemed be stuck with a million du sprichst!
I can assure you it will end, at some point.
I think I skipped a couple of times, anyway, and it probably helped moving forward a bit (although it’s also quite difficult to pronounce, so I decided it wouldn’t do too much harm just a few more of those).
By the way, dd you update the app yesterday? I’ve heard the new version should have fixed some repetitions issues …so maybe worth doing it!
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Thanks Gisella! I’ll keep at it! I’m on version v1.0.6 - is that the latest?
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Yes, I wanted to check for the new version this morning, and then I saw that my phone already updated that app automatically last night, and it shows the same version number v1.0.6, so that appears to be the latest release.
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It’s not German’s problem, but equally it’s not really a conflation - simply that English uses the word ‘really’ in two different ways, which can at least sometimes be distinguished by clues such as word order.
He really was driving fast = wirklich, it was a fact (although the insistence on the fact may be held to imply something about how fast he was driving, that’s not actually stated or unambiguously implied)
He was driving really fast = sehr schnell, absolutely unambiguously.
My apologies if this was already abundantly clear to you, and we’re talking at cross-purposes; and, of course, it’s worth noting that English has pulled this trick before, given that very is (distantly, via Latin) related to wahr.
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Fab thanks! Is it possible to use this app offline btw (i.e. without data or wi-fi)?
Hoping no too add more confusion with a comparison with Italian (but not with the Italian course, since I haven’t listened much of it yet)
Italian uses the translations of “really” in two different ways.
“davvero” and “veramente” can be used in both examples with a slightly different meaning.
He really was driving fast = Veramente, guidava veloce (but not “Molto guidava veloce”).
He was driving really fast = Guidava veramente veloce (or “Guidava molto veloce”)
However, like in @Hendrik’s example of “Really?” by itself, you cannot say “molto” instead of “veramente”.
Therefore it might cause the same confusion if “molto” were introduced as the official translation of “really”
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Not at the moment, as far as I know. In fact some of the problems mentioned in the more tech-oriented thread happen when the connection is not very good.
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Great! I’m on the latest version, I’ve logged out and in, and I’ve hammered the skip button but still no new words/phrases… So now I wonder, I there still a threshold on the Beta version if you don’t have a subscription? And if when you reach the threshold does the app keep going though the phrases you’ve already had ad infinitum but just adding new ‘break’ content?