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Teach Yourself - a doubt | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| sprachefin Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5595 days ago 300 posts - 317 votes  Speaks: German*, English, Spanish Studies: French, Turkish, Mandarin, Bulgarian, Persian, Dutch | Message 33 of 59 28 April 2009 at 4:53am | IP Logged | ||
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I find it very useful to use something alongside with it. I am using Teach Yourself Turkish along with Elementary
Turkish, and I am in the process of planning dictation practices which are similar to Pimsleur. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| habadzi Super Polyglot Senior Member Greece Joined 5423 days ago 70 posts - 106 votes Speaks: Greek*, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Hindi, French, German, Italian, Ancient Greek, Modern Hebrew, Arabic (classical), Indonesian, Bengali, Albanian, Nepali | Message 34 of 59 22 August 2009 at 1:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have used several teach yourself books, and members who say that there are multiple generations of are right. Earlier generations of the Teach Yourself Series were serious books. But the company must have figured out that people will buy them regardless, so they skimp on material. For example, the Romanian TYS has about half the vocabulary missing from the glossary, and one of the authors told me that 'you can't put everything'. Oh? then write up front that the learner needs a dictionary.
The worst one I have used thus far is the 2008 version of Swahili. The author does not provide translations of the dialogues, gives approximate explanations for expressions of 3-4 words, and somehow expects people to learn. And of course half the vocabulary is missing from the glossary. The worst part is that some "collaborators" have padded the book ratings of amazon.com, providing descriptions that have nothing to do with reality. (and of course others note that.) I had to read first a lengthy FSI method from 1968 to make sense of that book. So, buyer beware of the TYS. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5860 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 35 of 59 22 August 2009 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | ||
No, not regardless. TY are mass-market books. They make their money from the thousands of people who buy courses and never finish them. Their first priority, therefore, is to make the sale. Old style stuff wouldn't sell as well. The pedagogic value of the course is secondary to looking good. (Same goes for Colloquial.) It's not really the writer' fault -- quite often you'll find that the writer has also previous published som very good books on the language in a very different style, but when they do TY they're forced to do it in "house style", which is a style they're not likely to be familiar with. This is usually used as a selling point by TY ("Mr Xyz has published 5 books and has taught for umpteen years") when really it should be anything but..... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lingua Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5425 days ago 186 posts - 319 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 36 of 59 22 August 2009 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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In my opinion the second generation of TY was the best. The first generation of TY books were traditional grammar-translation method books. In the 80's TY started to publish updated versions. These new courses had about 25 lessons. Each lesson featured several dialogues, all recorded on cassette, and each dialogue was followed by questions to be answered. Following the dialogues was a grammar section where grammar was systematically explained. This was then followed by exercises for practicing the vocabulary and grammar. At the end of each lesson there was a listening comprehension section and a reading passage. A typical example, and in my opinion the best, of this second generation TY was Teach Yourself Italian ( published 1985, by Lydia Vellacio and Maurice Elston). Just a few years after this, a third generation of TY started appearing. One major change was that TY doubled the amount of audio (two cassettes/cd's rather than one), but the audio now included irritating, and in my opinion worthless, oral "practice" with lots of English spoken, and some of the dialogues from each lesson were no longer included on the audio. The number and length of dialogues was also reduced. Presentation of grammar became more haphazard, and worthless types of exercises were introduced.
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| habadzi Super Polyglot Senior Member Greece Joined 5423 days ago 70 posts - 106 votes Speaks: Greek*, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Hindi, French, German, Italian, Ancient Greek, Modern Hebrew, Arabic (classical), Indonesian, Bengali, Albanian, Nepali | Message 37 of 59 22 August 2009 at 3:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Indeed, the Teach Yourself company, as Cainntear wrote, seems to have figured out that people will buy and not use, so content is not important (is Colloquial by the same publisher?) There seems to be a page limit, and as mentioned,two CDs may be included but they are half empty.
I did find the Teach Yourself Indonesian very good and along the lines of the 'second' generation. I bought that in 2005. Russian also was ok (which I bought in 2004) Anyway, I am studying the Swahili one right now and find it unusable without earlier background. There is no translation of anything anywhere, so one is never sure what they understood. OK, the books are fairly cheap and have SOME audio. If people are learning the common languages, there is lots of other material, and they can get to this book after reading others. But for the more rare languages, the choice is limited, and it's frustrating when the one apparently existing resource turns up useless.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5860 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 38 of 59 22 August 2009 at 4:52pm | IP Logged | ||
Nope. TY is Hodder Educational, Colloquial is Routledge. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6552 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 39 of 59 16 February 2010 at 10:49am | IP Logged | ||
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I bought my first AND last Teach yourself grammar in London on New Years day. I had preferred a reference grammar that in a sober way covered the details of the Irish language, but I got a mediocre grammar textbook. Each chapter ends with a lot of totally irrelevant drills of the change-one-word type. Maybe to balance this out the tables for the declension of substantives are relegated to an appendix. There are some useful tables (such as the one with merged forms of prepositions + pronouns), but information that could have been systematized and put in a table is mentioned in a conversational passage somewhere, and not necessarily where it belongs. The verbal forms are put in a strange order, with the past tense before the present. I can accept that the imperative is mentioned first because it is used at the base form in Irish, but you have to read through half the book before you have collected the material to make your own collection of all six tenses. I'm sure the book contains most of stuff that I would expect of a book of its size (excluding the pages lost on drills), but in such a weird and confused structure that it is better used for mopping-up operations when you already have learnt the basics somewhere else than for actually getting an overview in the first place.
And speaking about the textbooks in the series: I luckily bought a fair number of those from the first generations. Then I took a long long pause from language studies in general. When I restarted those studies in 2006 I could try out the newer books at the library and noticed the drastically falling quality so I haven't bought them. As others have stated there is less content in a new edition that is double the size of one of the old books - and with the advent of the internet it is so much easier to get alternative study materials that you don't need to waste money on a modern bloated Teach Yourself book. Edited by Iversen on 16 February 2010 at 12:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6000 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 40 of 59 16 February 2010 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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I purchased Teach Yourself French Grammar about a year ago, but discovered a small typo and a very serious translation error. I abandoned the book shortly after that. I've used various Teach Yourself products over the years, and agree that the more recent stuff is of poorer quality. My most recent purchase was TY Improve Your Spanish, and there's a ridiculous amount of unnecessary English audio on the CD's. It really feels like they added it to create a 2 CD package.
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