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Teach Yourself - a doubt | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| kidshomestunner Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6245 days ago 239 posts - 285 votes  Speaks: Japanese | Message 49 of 59 12 August 2010 at 1:49am | IP Logged | |||||
Because everyone else does. Caveat emptor. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| LatinoBoy84 Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5415 days ago 443 posts - 603 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Latvian | Message 50 of 59 12 August 2010 at 4:57am | IP Logged | |||||
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A few of even the contemporary volumes are true gems, and great introduction into a
language; especially when supplemented with other methods. Where as many of the "major" languages seem mediocre at best. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5623 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 51 of 59 12 August 2010 at 7:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
Funnily enough that kind of makes sense to me given that TY is a UK range. Most people in the UK who start learning a language never get very far, they just thought it mght be vaguely useful/ look good on their CV/ something to do of an evening/ whatever. But I can't imagine many people pick up, say, Teach Yourself Basque without actually intending to lEARN the language. Therefore if you want to sell them a textbook it would have to actually teach the language to some sort of standard. In this regard it is intersting that older books in most ranges make this same assumption- that the buyer actually intends to learn the language to some reasonable standard. I wouldn't know whether that is because we in the UK are no longer willing to persist at something that turns out to take a good deal of work, or whether publishers are just more cynical (realistic?) about the best way to make money. My guess is both. That's what I love about FSI, their method bores me stupid but you know tht if you do all their drills you will reach intermediate level (curiously just what TY promise, but they're having a laugh with that!), because that is exactly what they designed the course to do! Seriously, how many other Spanish courses out there teach you how to use both vos and vosotros/vosotras, as well as tu and Vd (which everyone teaches)?! The only other one that springs to mind is the Living Language Ultimate Advanced Course, but even here you have an "advanced course" (images of attaining almost error free fluency) which brings you to intermediate level (the level their beginners course was supposed to take you to). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| nuriayasmin Senior Member Germany Joined 5083 days ago 155 posts - 210 votes | Message 53 of 59 17 August 2010 at 8:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Has anyone ever used "Teach yourself Czech"? I'm thinking about buying it as a complementary ressource to the course I'm currently using. Amazon.de offers two versions and I'm actually a bit confused.
There's a TY Complete course from 2005 which costs 39 Euro and a TY with CD's from 2004 which costs 23 Euros. For the first offer the description says: "New features in this edition include: - an English-Czech vocabulary, - a glossary of grammatical terms, - new artwork, - a taking it further section directing you to further sources of real Czech." So are the books and the cd's the same for both versions? I wouldn't need a glossary on grammatical terms because my current Czech course includes a grammar section which is sufficient for the beginner's level. But if the bigger package includes an English-Czech vocabulary does this mean that the cheaper package includes no vocabulary or just no vocabulary list in alphabetical order but Czech-English translations of vocabulary at the end of each chapter. That would be sufficient for me but I wouldn't want to look up every new word in a dictionary. It would be nice if someone could help. Thanks in advance. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5363 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 54 of 59 17 August 2010 at 9:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, I'm using a Teach Yourself Finnish book from 1956 by an Arthur Whitney, and I would say it is comprehensive and impossible for beginners of the language. I counted 296 words in the Lesson 3 vocabulary list. Edited by GREGORG4000 on 17 August 2010 at 9:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| shapd Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5989 days ago 126 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Modern Hebrew, French, Russian | Message 55 of 59 18 August 2010 at 2:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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"Well, I'm using a Teach Yourself Finnish book from 1956 by an Arthur Whitney, and I would say it is comprehensive and impossible for beginners of the language. I counted 296 words in the Lesson 3 vocabulary list."
I have to agree. I have seen the same book and it is unusable unless you have a photographic memory. I have never been as keen on the old TYS books as some members. They are good as reference grammars and mini dictionaries but not to actually learn the language. There was usually a totally inadequate amount of text to practice on, often only half a dozen disconnected sentences. They would allow you to learn about the language but not to use it productively. The new ones are very superficial but at least teach you useful vocabulary and connected dialogues which will hopefully allow you to say something useful. To the person who enquired about TYS Arabic, avoid the old series (author Tritton, I think). It only deals with Classical Arabic. The second series is also terrible, giving inadequate material for practice in the first section and then suddenly switching to intermediate standard texts with a large amount of new vocabulary. The proof reading can be awful however, something that is also true for some of the Colloquial series. The worst I have ever come across was Colloquial Estonian, which introduced grammar and vocabulary in dialogues before discussing it in the text or even giving a translation, required vocabulary in the exercises which had not been given in the lesson, and did not give enough information in the glossary about the declension of words to allow you to use them. So the quality is very variable in both series and you should flick through the book before deciding to buy. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5851 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 56 of 59 19 August 2010 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
I suspect there's a lot of author expectation in there. Both TY and Colloquial tend to hire people with experience in writing text-books. Most of their authors have university texts out, and I suspect a lot of them look down their noses at TY and just see it as a way to earn a bit of cash. In contrast, someone specialising in a lesser popular language is going to look on Colloquial or TY as their "big chance". Their books are hardly seen in bookshops, and are generally very expensive. Alan R King, one of the authors of Colloquial Basque, used to have a very dry academic book that he wrote as his university course text. When he wrote the Colloquial book, he switched to using that as his course text. Because it's mass printed, it's much cheaper than his old book. It's cheaper to get Colloquial with CDs than his book (which has no sound recording available). So he clearly approached writing the Colloquial book more seriously than many others do. The Welsh course I'm currently studying uses the TY Welsh Grammar book. So there's a big difference in usage to take into account. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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