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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 |  | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6140 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 25 of 78 29 April 2009 at 10:58am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Professor,
Regarding the various shortcomings in commercial products, my views are as follows on the various courses I've used, Teach Yourself Series - Lack of audio. With only 2 CD's per course, this is my biggest gripe with this series. While some of the courses have good quality and clear audio E.g. Spanish, Russian, and Thai. Some others have dialogues that are very hard to decipher. E.g. Teach Yourself Hungarian. - Inconsistent introduction of grammar. This varies among the courses, but grammar is introduced in a piecemeal and somewhat disparate fashion. Colloquial Series - Extremely poor audio. Colloquial Latvian has the worst audio of any course I've ever known. - Lack of audio. Just 2 CD's. - Inconsistent introduction of grammar. A similar problem to the Teach Yourself series. Assimil Courses - Poor translations. Spanish with Ease has some very odd translations, that were only corrected after I rechecked some words in a dictionary. Luke mentions the Using Spanish course has many more. - Bad ordering of grammar concepts. Spanish with Ease introduces the imperfect subjunctive before the very basic stem changing verbs in the present tense. This might make sense in the original French, but doesn't in the English version. - Bizarre dialogues. Hungarian with Ease uses some bizarre situations that are harder to figure out than the language itself. - Impossible exercises. Some of the exercises are impossible without knowing lessons ahead, or the answer from other sources. Living Language Series - Splitting of audio between the dialogues CD's and On the Go CD's. Overall the audio is of very good quality, but they've split the contents of each unit on two separate CD's. It wasn't until I listened to the On the Go CD's did I realise that some of the Russian in bold text was actually located here. - Lack of key grammar points. Living Language Russian doesn't always give the gender of nouns, including some non obvious ones. - Inconsistent exercise difficulty and lack of exercises. FSI Courses - Poor audio quality. As these were recorded in the early sixties the audio quality can be very poor. However, I regard FSI Hungarian as the single best language course I've ever encountered. Michel Thomas Series - Lack of native pronunciation. - Lack of written and reading material. I hope this helps, D.Malone. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7194 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 26 of 78 29 April 2009 at 11:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||
The utility is for those who study while driving. The learner can listen to the teaching language (what the Professor refers to as an L1) if they are having trouble understanding the learning language (L2). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Kugel Senior Member United States Joined 6527 days ago 497 posts - 555 votes Speaks: English* | Message 27 of 78 29 April 2009 at 7:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think it would be great to discuss modern physics using parallel texts, but like you said, it would require a very good language level. In a language program that is designed from the beginner up, a section about modern physics would certainly be at the end. If it were a Japanese course, then a lesson about a pop star Sensei teaching smelly white guys for the empty-hand club, operating like an Imperial Japanese military academy, would probably come beforehand. This little image, by the way, comes from Dr. Dolan's "Pleasant Hell", which is about a history/literature/language nerd who goes through life at UC Berkeley, studying Russian...I believe. Mao's poetry, as bizarre as it is, would be kinda funny, too. As for the exams, I meant passing exams that are administered in the basements of universities in order to determine how many retro credits you can receive. I don't think universities are willing to hand out the exams to the public, as this would reduce the effectiveness of the exam, but maybe Dr. Arguelles would know a thing or two about these exams. Of course, one could bypass these university exams, opting instead for the official exams like the HSK, JLPT, KLPT, ZMP or TestDaf, DELf/DALF, or the TOEFL. I'm not so sure how many on this board would really need to take the TOEFL. Also, living near Chicago, NYC, or any city over a million might be necessary in order to find these particular exams. Some might not even be administered in the states. I suppose what I'm getting at is that a test could accurately determine just how effective the course can be. Going on "vacation" and speaking to the natives is great, but not very impressive, "academically speaking." 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7245 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 28 of 78 29 April 2009 at 7:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thank you all, once again, for all the assistance in articulating the desiderata of the "perfect" course. Presuming that this project gets off the ground, being able to point to this correspondence will probably prove to be of assistance if I ever need to argue for the desirability of a certain feature. For the immediate present, however, what I must do is highlight what is lacking in existing offerings. To that end, so that I can point beyond my own perspective, letters like Mr. Malone's at the top of this 4th page of the thread, which highlight product line by product line, are particularly helpful, and I wonder if I could ask for a few more?
Many thanks, Alexander Arguelles 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| scootermclean Diglot Groupie United States scottmclean.net Joined 6467 days ago 69 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), Basque | Message 29 of 78 29 April 2009 at 8:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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A few observations that come immediately to mind:
In my studies of Arabic, I have been working with the Living Languagecourse you favorably reviewed. The course is a nice addition to my collection of materials, however one of the main detractors I have found in this course is that from the very first lesson all the audio dialogs are spoken at full speed. I find it much easier, as a beginner to listen to, learn from and effectively shadow something that is a bit slower. Also continuity in dialogs/passages from chapter to chapter is also something that is desirable. In using a number of the Linguaphone courses, I personally have found it much more agreeable to follow along a set of characters as opposed to random events/people. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| andee Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7066 days ago 681 posts - 724 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French | Message 30 of 78 30 April 2009 at 2:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Professor,
My opinions on the courses I have sampled. Teach Yourself Series - Limited audio. Doesn't actually cover all of the dialogue introduced in the book. Using TY Polish as an example. - Overall, I find the explanations very vague and little use; this wouldn't be so much of a problem if there was enough in way of dialogue to assimilate the processes gloabally. Or dare I say, if they reverted to earlier imprints from 1960/70's this would be improved. Colloquial Series - I have no audio, so nocomment on that. - Similar to TY courses. Although of the courses I have used - mainly Indonesian - I would rate Colloquial slightly higher that TY in terms of explanation. Still vague in offering understanding. Again, the earlier version are much better in terms of explaining things. Hugo in Three Months Series - As with TY and Colloquial when it comes to explanatory material. - Audio has too much background noise due to artistic scene-setting. Would be good for later in the course when you aren't trying to learn the accent, but first lesson of Japanese for instance has a noisy train station where you can make "is that the bullet train?" or something similar. Not ideal for initial tuning of the ears. Assimil Courses - I have had to use a dictionary a few times when I haven't been able to figure out the translation due to infrequent word being used or unnatural translation. I can only assume the infrequent word was used to highlight similarities between the L1 and L2 - good in theory, but poor in realisation. Should a vocabulary list be included in each lesson that included synonyms, this issue could be alleviated in my opinion. - Good audio overall, but the pauses kill me. I can not use the audio until I have truncated the silence, which is a pain and if done with a plugin takes little time but leaves the audio somewhat unnatural in parts. Linguaphone (older courses; 1970-80 mostly) - Multiple books have pluses and minuses. Positive being the separation of material so you can effectively only see L2 if you desire for revision. Negative being portability. - Aside from some quality issues regarding age, I believe the Linguaphone audio of this era is the best available straight out of the box. - In my opinion, the best material overall straight from the box. FSI Courses - Poor audio quality due to age mostly. - Very dull material trying to bore you into learning. - The drills are very well constructed as they achieve their intention of automacity. An addition of this to a course will immediately lift it a star or two out of ten without even touching the remainder of the material. - I had a personal grip with the font! Age-attributed again however; but the hangul in the Korean course drove me insane and as a result I ended up doing things with audio only. Michel Thomas Series - Lack of native pronunciation. This has changed in newer courses after Michel Thomas passed away. Japanese uses a native to restate everything, but still, the exposure would be something like 10% of utterances in native accent. I would rather the English be non-native and accented than the L2. - Lack of written and reading material. Pimsleur - The FSI of Michel Thomas, ie, material is too dull to persist with. Ganada (Korean for Foreigners Series; available in English, Japanese, or Chinese base I believe) - Audio similar to Assimil, ie, needs editing to truncate pausing. - Dialogues are too short. Just 6 lines if I remember correctly. - Makes use of drills as in FSI. - My opinions.. would be an extremely good series if the audio was improved and the dialogues lengthened to create a more natural atmosphere. I can't think of others at the moment, but I think that covers most of the major players. Regards, Andee Pollard Edited by andee on 30 April 2009 at 2:15am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5701 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 31 of 78 30 April 2009 at 6:04am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I agree most with the things that have been stated here most frequently. Out of the few courses I have have tried, completed, sampled and am currently using these are the grievances:
1. Most language courses, linguaphone, assimil, etc: they never get up to a native speed of speaking or comrehension. The point is that people just do not speak like this. A course should get you to be able to speak and understand closest to a native speaker as your ability allows you. Some FSI and other courses almost start out at a native speed and this can have an equally bad effect. The course should start out slow and precisely articulate words and naturally build one's comprehension and speaking abilities so that by the end of the course you are listening to rapid input that is very natural. Someone suggested listing the vocabulary you learned for that lesson on the audio; you could use this time to break down each word phonetically and then have it at a progressively more natural speed as the lessons continue. This would require several talented voice actors. Also: inability to buy replacement audio and/or reading materials for multi-book courses. 2. Most courses except assimil, pimsluer, etc: no timeline. I prefer a timeline to go by with my courses and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Preferably one a day like Assimil or Pimsleur. This gives the learner a goal and helps with confidence, too, as I've found. You have a goal to meet, and when you meet that goal and build your confidence up, you are then often able to surpass it (2 or 3 lessons a day). I and several other people don't work well with "Do lesson 20 and once you think you know the material well then move on to the next lesson for about a week or a month or however long it takes you." 3. Most courses: Exact word count for vocabulary you've learned. "you'll learn close to 2500 words!" Well which is it? Guess I'll count the glossary plus all the verbs you didn't list in it. 4. FSI, phrasebook style courses, practical "survival" type courses: No humor! No storylines! No native reading material! A handful of courses only contain SOME of these. Why can't someone follow one or two interesting and funny story lines plus incorporate real literature and history or culture lessons every other lesson? After all, I've read up to a few different novels at a time. Guess that would be too much to ask for! 5. Pimsleur, Michel Thomas, Learn in your car type material: Most courses are all too practical "Spanish While You Drive Like Crazy!" or whatever and are of little use to a serious learner or Serious FSI type courses and attache case linguaphone, berlitz style courses: too impractical for people who can't stay at home and study all day or lack the facility to lug around a suitcase. (Just on a side note, I've found some books are just plain hard to shadow with because of their design. It seems like small paperback editions work best.) 6. Living Language and Assimil: weird and sometimes just plain wrong translations. I think that both L1 and L2 should be reviewed and tested by native speakers. 7. Pimsleur, FSI, Michel Thomas, Assimil and many others: No real final tests or assessments of your abilities! You think you have the language in you but how do you really know? Surely there must be some way to incorporate a final test of your skills? Maybe if the course would set you up to read an easy book at the end of the course that you should have no problems with like.. "You have now learned all vocabulary and grammar to allow you to be able to read the included copy of Winnetou. If you're having problems then refer to marked sections of your referance grammar and reread until you can do so with ease." Maybe that would be discouraging to some but it would certainly give me a boost of confidence to know I for sure have internalized the input and am able to test it. Then again I'm not a language course author but you should surely have something to test it. It beats paying the Geothe institute or spending a week in the country to find out that I didn't recall lesson number 14 after I finished the book. 8. All courses? No systematic etymological or comparative analysis of languages discussed (except maybe the pronunciation key). 9. All audio courses, Assimil, etc: No comprehensive reference grammars or charts. 10. Cortina, FSI, most courses: Completely archaic or completely modernized. Sometimes a good mix of both should be involved and then explained. That's about all I can think of off the top of my head. These are pretty much listed from most bothersome to least. Also I'd like to add that, while I have not looked at Buske, I believe you said they incorporated several different types of learning techniques and so each "type" of learner could use them? That would be nice. Not any one course can get you to "fluency" but if it were the perfect course then.. why not? Thanks, J. Rout Edited by Rout on 30 April 2009 at 6:06am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6305 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 32 of 78 30 April 2009 at 9:37am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I agree overall with Mr. Pollard and Mr. Rout's comments on the various courses. I cannot bring myself to use courses like Pimsleur simply because of the amount of English on the recordings. Any course I do use that does have English on it gets edited out. Target-language audio only is I think more preferable to the learning process, so that one can tune directly to the target language without being forced to switch constantly between L1 and L2.
Another point is, I tend to view language courses as an initial stepping-stone to authentic content which is the end goal. To that extent, I am not sure a course needs to be overly thorough and by that I mean teaching any more than 5000 words. This is what I particularly like about Assimil in that it presents you with a chunk of the language with a core vocabulary and helps to gradually develop an intuitive feel for the language and its grammar. Beyond that, it is then up to me to go out and find resources that interest me to learn from. So, the perfect course would amend the shortcomings that the previous posters have pointed out and aim to provide the learner with a solid foundation in the language upon which to build, unlike what programs such as Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur can provide (in my opinion). Here are some more observations on product-lines I am familiar with: Teach Yourself Series - They generally offer a very small portion of vocabulary, at least their later offerings do, somewhere in the region of 900 words. - Audio has too much English on it. Target-language only would be much more preferable. - Many of their courses do not seem to include translations of the dialogues, which can make the learning process difficult or awkward at times. - They do include vocabulary lists, which I find helpful. - Their extra reading passages do not always seem to have accompanying audio, rather only the lesson dialogues. Colloquial Series - This series strikes me as being similar to TY, though perhaps a little more substantive in terms of content, judging by the Icelandic courses from both TY and Colloquial. - The vocabulary count still seems to be quite low, however, and to this end I tend to view both TY and Colloquial as supplements to richer courses such as Assimil and Linguaphone. - Grammar is often not explained in relation to dialogues, causing confusion. They do, however provide translations. Assimil - My personal favourite. They offer a good number of appropriately-sized dialogues for beginners, 1:30-3:00 minutes in length. - Audio is exclusively in the target language, which is a huge plus. - The courses tend to have inexplicable gaps between dialogues requiring in some cases quite substantial editing. - Audio can be too slow. Perhaps for the first seven to fourteen lessons this would be acceptable, particularly for those languages with unusual phonologies. I feel the audio speed should be at a more normal pace, perhaps at the speed of a news presenter. - The content itself tends to be interesting and varied, though there is often little connection between the dialogues in terms of a continuous story or theme. - They tend to include a substantial amount of vocabulary. Linguaphone - Many of the same comments apply here as to Assimil in terms of content and audio. The audio cassettes I have heard for some courses tend however to be of fairly low quality, probably owing to their production date. - Their layout of the lessons (this is based on their Chinese course) is rather appealing to me, in that they present the dialogue followed by a systematic breakdown of the sentences and and explanation of them grammatically. They also provide wordlists, which I find helpful. - Their content can be very heavygoing and thorough (such as their Chinese course) which can either be a turnoff to some, or a big plus to others. Personally, I am very pleased they do not water down the dialogues and texts. - As with Assimil, the audio is all in the native language. - Substantial vocabularies with each course. Christopher Button Edited by ChristopherB on 30 April 2009 at 9:55am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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