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Why don’t you write a perfect course? | ||
Tags: Alexander Arguelles | Textbooks | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| Satoshi Diglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5813 days ago 215 posts - 224 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: German, Japanese | Message 57 of 78 17 May 2009 at 7:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, from a entirely personal point of view, I completely dislike that kind of thing. I have no hope of ever leaving Brazil therefore I really have no use learning how to ask directions and what not.
But I understand it's a lost cause. Most people WANT to be able to buy a cofee and ask directions... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5702 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 58 of 78 17 May 2009 at 7:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I guess it would depend on if you're a serious learner or not. One with patience would realize that with a good course he is going to learn everything he needs to know in due time.
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| blindside70 Newbie United States polymathisthegoal.co Joined 5751 days ago 24 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Polish, German, French | Message 59 of 78 17 May 2009 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | ||
Did they chain you to the ground over there or what? No hope is scary... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| danieldesu Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5666 days ago 15 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 60 of 78 18 May 2009 at 8:21am | IP Logged | ||
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First of all, I also support the idea of robustness: I should be understanding native material when I am done (to a reasonable extent). Also, tons of audio! Two CDs is about 140 minutes. That is completely unacceptable. In the day of MP3s, DVDs, and 1TB hard drives, we should be getting 100 hours, and if there is no English, that makes it even more efficient.
However, to achieve necessary vocab levels of 4000-5000 words or so, you cannot cheat like many textbooks do. A one word translation is not sufficient. Consider the following examples. Which one gives you more meaning and associations with which to remember a word?: ちかてつ 地下鉄 subway or ちかてつ 地下鉄 subway: Kanji: 地: ground or earth (notice the 土 primitive which carries the meaning of soil) 下, meaning below, and 鉄, showing the primitive for metal 金, and meaning iron. In this case, 鉄 is an abbreviation of 鉄道（てつどう）: literally "iron road", or railroad, so the whole word translated literally would mean "railroad below the ground." Adding で can mean "on the subway" or "by subway" depending on context. For example, "地下鉄で携帯は禁止になった": "Cellphones have become banned on the subway" and "地下鉄で会社に行きます": "To go to work by subway." However, to "ride the subway," the particle に is used (as is always the case with the verb "to ride": "乗る"). For example: "パリの地下鉄に乗るなら": "In the case that you are riding Paris' subway" So, in my example (which obviously takes up more space- but this shouldn't be a problem with a more dense format), we don't just get a word, we get a breakdown, some extra knowledge about it, example sentences/phrases (and thus collocations), practice with additional words, and kanji practice. Other useful stuff that might be useful would be info about how common a word is, and what situations a person might actually use the word. My other complaint about current textbooks is that the stuff is too dry. We want to learn, so why not throw in cool and random knowledge about the language as you go? This not only makes it easier to swallow, but also enhances our ability to retain the stuff we read. Why not talk about how word X sounds almost the same in Cantonese as it does in Japanese, and how before adopting the Chinese word, Japanese had a native word Y which now is used mostly in spoken language, whereas X is seen in formal documents? Why not mention famous quotes that used this word or that word? Finally, I personally don't think we should start right off with dialogues. This is not the natural pattern of acquisition (if there is such a thing). I think going into sentences too soon leads to unnaturally simplistic sentences, and the tendency for people to talk like textbooks. Why do I learn how to say, "This is a cat" before I learn how to say "black cat"? Also, I believe filler words and "natural sounding language" should be given just as much attention and be addressed just as early on as "proper language." Just make it so that the most simple natural sounding phrases come first, as opposed to current language courses, where they teach simple grammar patterns first, and give us complicated expressions using only these patterns (which is unnatural). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Thomas_DC Triglot Groupie Denmark Joined 5764 days ago 58 posts - 65 votes Speaks: Danish*, English, French Studies: German, Arabic (Written) | Message 61 of 78 24 May 2009 at 8:36am | IP Logged | ||
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Just a minor thing, but symmetry in the bilingual texts would be helpful. With assimil, I spend a few seconds finding the sentence with the corresponding number, and especially while shadowing, these seconds mean a great deal. - If the two bilingual pages could be symmetric in layout, it would be much easier to find the corresponding sentence. I know it is a luxury problem though, and I am not sure that others agree with me.
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| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5702 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 62 of 78 24 May 2009 at 8:45am | IP Logged | ||
Thomas, if you're talking about how the older Assimils don't line up like the newer ones (instead they're compressed to make room for drawings and grammar notes which are also nice), then yes, I definitely agree with you; it is a big problem. Jerrod Rout Edited by Rout on 24 May 2009 at 8:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| delta910 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5865 days ago 267 posts - 313 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, German | Message 63 of 78 31 May 2009 at 6:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I would just like more dialogs(bilingual texts) in each lesson with supporting audio to go with those dialogs(native speakers of course). Also, I would like to have a lot of vocabulary to be taught throughout the entire course. I really don't like it that some courses only hit some 500-1500ish words. Maybe the course could have some 2000-3000 words. For the grammar, keep it short,sweet, and to the point(many courses like to make the grammar notes obscure). I skim over the grammar to get a general idea of how the language works. I basically listen and read and learn the grammar that way, but I do like to look over grammar notes if I am really confused on what is going on. For drills, I'm not a fan of drills but if I had to do some, do translation drills. The main focus should be on loads of input.
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| mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 6069 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map | Message 64 of 78 05 July 2009 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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This sounds great professor, hopefully you'll be able to go through with it. I'll be a valued customer. ;-)
Noting a comment made by a user a few pages back - availability technologically is important to me as a customer. For instance, I don't purchase films anymore because of the impractical delivery on DVDs which is a hassle to view on my computer, and the copying of the files from the DVD to my computer is an even bigger hassle. The time taken for this and ending up with a DVD quality file is much longer than the time spent going to a torrent site, downloading the movie and ending up with a HD quality file. Similiarily, I haven't purchased a music CD in half a decade, but I recently became an honest (and very happy) consumer following the launch of Spotify, which made my listening experience easier than when downloading the files illegally. My point is, in a market where people are able to acquire your course material illegally and for free no matter what measures you take to prevent it, I hope you take a reflected approach to it by providing the honest consumer a better product than what they can acquire online for free. For instance, memory sticks are practically free these days. Include all the audio on your course on a memory stick in MP3 format. This way, the contents can easily be transferred to iPods, MP3 players and burnt on CDs at the consumer's discretion. You could also add CDs with the course as traditionally done, but with the simple addition of a memory stick with the same content you're also appealing to the younger group of language learners like myself. Other things you can do to encourage people to purchase your product is for instance to give a username and password to a lernu-ish website with games and activities in the language they are learning. Everything else I would've said seems to be said in the other posts in regards to the courses, so I'll just add that I agree with the previous posts and cut it here. Henrik Hildre Edited by mrhenrik on 05 July 2009 at 3:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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