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Critical Needs Languages For US Diplomats | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Languages & Work |  | |
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4713 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 17 of 25 08 February 2012 at 5:05am | IP Logged |
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Just a side note to this, I found just about every Assimil course I could think of on
WorldCat thru Interlibrary Loan today. So, if anyone out there has access to that and wants to try out Assimil before buying, check if you can get this stuff! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| langluv Newbie United States twitter.com/ladyling Joined 5886 days ago 24 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Modern Hebrew, French | Message 18 of 25 10 February 2012 at 2:16pm | IP Logged |
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Living Language has:
The Ultimate Series for Russian, Chinese Mandarin, MS Arabic (but introduces Egyptian and other dialects within the Arabic course) The Spoken World Series for Hindi, Farsi and Korean. Living Language courses are really good. I've learned a lot from the courses I've had. I studied with the Ultimate Spanish and Ultimate French courses (and I've had the Swahili Spoken World, although I didn't formally study the course, but it seems just as good or better than the Ultimate Series). A review of Living Language from Prof Arguelles right here Living Language Spoken World Books/CDs and reviews from Amazon right here Edited by langluv on 16 February 2012 at 9:16am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| noriyuki_nomura Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5342 days ago 304 posts - 465 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Japanese, FrenchC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, SpanishB2, DutchB1 Studies: TurkishA1, Korean | Message 19 of 25 10 February 2012 at 8:06pm | IP Logged |
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As a matter of fact, I am also quite a big fan of Living Language products, especially their Spoken World series which I found to be really useful and practical. Take their Spoken World: Korean for example, the recorded dialogues are interesting, followed by a list of vocabulary (that you will encounter in real life) used in the dialogue, and sample sentences that illustrate the use of grammar. The recorded dialogue in the CD is spoken at natural speed, albeit not too fast nor too slow.
Though I thought it's not really necessary that they include the "to go" CDs, which are really spoken slower... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6951 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 20 of 25 11 February 2012 at 3:30am | IP Logged |
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For Persian, there is also a course created by YouTube user farsiyadbegirim called "Spider
Farsi" which focuses on the colloquial spoken language. It's pretty expensive, so I downloaded a torrent to try it out, and it's excellent so far, so I'm going to buy it. Judging by my short trial, it seems like fans of Pimsleur or Michel Thomas would like it (the creator is also a polyglot and really passionate about sharing his language). When I get around to the language I'll post a review for this course, including my assessment of how far long the CEFR scale the complete course will take you. Edited by Lucky Charms on 11 February 2012 at 3:34am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| LatinoBoy84 Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5577 days ago 443 posts - 603 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Latvian | Message 21 of 25 25 February 2012 at 2:18pm | IP Logged |
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I'm surprised no has mentioned GLOSS. For Turkish there is also the excellent three
volume Critical Language Series DVD-Roms from Arizona University, "Elementary Turkish" (textbook), Hugo's, TRT's Podcast series "Nous apprenons le turc", DLI Headstart, Linguaphone PDQ (do after pimsleur), and Mango Languages. Quite possible to get a really strong base for jumping into Turkish only resources. Assimil, TYS, Colloquial, FSI and Arizona are probably my favorites. With the best way of starting Pimsleur, PDQ, Mango, DLI. After you learn Turkish you could pick up the book "Elementary Azerbaijani" and have Azeri at a HUGE discount (think Spanish to Portuguese, but possibly closer). Russian is even better for resources! Assimil, full Linguaphone, the Princeton course, 3 volumes of Pimsleur, MT, DLI, FSI FAST (which DOES have audio), the two wonderful Ultimate Living Language books, Mango, TYS, Colloquial (2 volumes!), the Excellent Modern Russian 1&2, a plethora of College Textbooks new and old, and Lexicon Bridge's Advanced Russian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4713 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 22 of 25 02 March 2012 at 8:27am | IP Logged |
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Hot off the presses, Russian with Ease for English speakers! I assume this is the French
version from 2008 translated? http://www.assimil.com/descriptionProduitDetail.do? paramIdProduit=3219¶mIdMethode=3219 I think this is a significant boon for one desiring to learn Russian to the S2/B1 level! As I recall, it seems plausible to get to B1 almost exclusively with Assimil with Ease, no? kanewai, care to chime in? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4713 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 23 of 25 03 March 2012 at 7:41am | IP Logged |
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Actually, I just realized the box itself says B2, haha. So even if you slightly under-
perform, you should be good :P 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4713 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 24 of 25 21 June 2012 at 7:12pm | IP Logged |
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http://careers.state.gov/officer/selection-process-printable #forlang
Very big changes to the system. Now the only languages that give more points for a lower level of fluency are Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi, Dari, Farsi, Pashto, Urdu, and Korean. For those you need to be B1 in speaking to get a .17 bonus, a B1 in speaking and an A1//2 in reading to get a .25 bonus, or a C1 in speaking and a ,B1 in reading to get a .38 bonus. All other languages they take (check the pdf on the link) max out at a .17 bonus and require you to be at a C1 speaking level. Same standard regardless of difficulty, so this applies whether the language is Italian, Russian, Albanian, etc... For myself, this is frustrating as Russian was on the big bonus list when I began studying it. I'm not sure if I'd be better off beginning a language that would be objectively easier to get to C1 speaking in, like Italian, or if I should keep trucking on Russian. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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