When retrieving a member from stringList1, you get an instance of java.lang.Object. In order to work with the original type of the member element, you must first downcast it to String.
import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.List; public class MainClass { public static void main(String[] args) { List stringList1 = new ArrayList (); stringList1.add ("Java 5"); stringList1.add ("with generics"); String s1 = (String) stringList1.get (0); } }