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How to trust reviews | ||
Tags: Fake Reviews | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 1 of 10 12 January 2010 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is a question I've often puzzled over.
Why should I trust anyone else's opinion on a course and equally why should they trust mine? What type of reviews do we get and what are the problems? First up: Expert reviews, written by language professionals. Pro: an expert is likely to spot linguistic errors inconsistencies and flaws. Con: an expert cannot know whether the material is actually comprehensible to a learner. Experts have a habitual way of doing things, and someone else's way might be critically looked upon as "wrong" simply for being different. Take Prof Arguelles talking about Teach Yourself as an example. He says the old ones are better than the new ones because there is more material in them. But what he cannot say is whether a beginner would understand it better -- he wouldn't necessarily notice a confusing explanation of genitive as he already has prior knowledge of the concept. At the other extreme we have: Amateur beginners Pro: Lack of prior knowledge means that if something is confusing, they'll get confused. Con: They don't know what real progress is, so if the course convinces the learners that they're learning, it'll get a good reviews even if they're not actually learning. They also don't know if they've learned the language correctly. And in between we have most of us here: Amateurs with some experience, which mixes the problems of both extremes. We can miss gaping holes in one course because it was one of the features/concepts we learnt in a different course or a different language. At the extreme of this is the statement "I learned more in 1 week with X than in 1 year with Y" -- is Y really teaching or just filling the gaps? We're not necessarily good enough to know whether we've learnt the language right or not, and like experts, we have expectations of what a course should be and we risk closing our minds to a new way of doing things and basically forcing it to fail. So what do we do? How do we evaluate other people's recommendations and how do we make sure that our recommendations are accurate and honest? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6785 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 2 of 10 12 January 2010 at 8:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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By taking into consideration who wrote the review. Usually that is stated. If a beginner wrote it, you'll know that they may not be a good judge of the scope of the program relative to what needs to be learned, or the accuracy of the information. Whereas a veteran will probably not know whether the material is comprehensible or intuitive for a beginner.
Anyone who writes anything writes from his own vantage point, there's no getting around that. Edited by numerodix on 12 January 2010 at 8:40pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lemus Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6383 days ago 232 posts - 266 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese, Russian, German | Message 3 of 10 12 January 2010 at 10:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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There's still a good amount you can get objectivly from a review. A beginner and an expert should both be able to tell you how much audio there is, or what the length of the course is, or how much native material is there. Subjectivity is inevitable in reviews, but once you see enough I think you can see pretty easily what the general consensus is.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 10 14 January 2010 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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| pfwillard Pro Member United States Joined 5701 days ago 169 posts - 205 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 10 15 January 2010 at 4:54am | IP Logged | ||
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1. Even it if the review is useless, at least we know that the material exists. For many languages, materials must be seized as soon as they come on the market because they won't be available after the first printing has gone to the pulp mill. 2. A good review warns us about any grotesque errors or irritating features/flaws.A review without caveats will seem fishy to me. I look for statements like: Poor audio quality on the recordings...Vocabulary is heavy on cognates...Eccentric phonetic transcriptions that will be confusing later if other materials are used... 3. The reviewer should say something about the learning theory of the method. 4. I don't really care about the status of the reviewer if the review is otherwise complete. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ChrisVincent Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie Mauritius quicklearn.t35.com Joined 5437 days ago 23 posts - 33 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: German | Message 6 of 10 15 January 2010 at 5:59am | IP Logged | ||
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I think that there are 3 factors that have to be taken into consideration:
1. Expertise 2. Personal Learning Experience 3. Honesty A Language Professional will have expertise but not necessarily the ability to understand the impact of the course/ book on a beginner. An Amateur who has used the course/ book will only be able to give a subjective account of what he has experienced. If he has grasped a few concepts and been able to use it successfully, he may think that the course/ book is better than it really is, or if he has failed to use it properly, he may think that it is worse than it really is. Then comes the question of honesty from both professionals and amateurs - are they writing what they really think? Or are they deliberately giving good or bad reviews. This is especially true if the author is a friend, if they have been paid to do it, or if he is a competitor. I think that there is only one way to know the truth - read all the expert reviews and take into account a sufficient amount of the amateur users' reviews. Then make a mental summary of that. Most of the times, the truth will be close to that. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5449 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 7 of 10 15 January 2010 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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One thing I look for is whether a reviewer says for whom the product is intended and how they should use it. If a review says the program is good for beginners and advanced students alike or that it is the only course you need, I immediately discount it as a sales pitch. Contrariwise, if a review explicitly indicates that a book or program is not for a certain type of student but is better suited for a different type of student, I'm more likely to trust the reviewer - it limits the chances it's a sales pitch (unless the company is a credible outfit that only wants to sell to those it designed the program for) and it increases the odds that the reviewer has thought through how the program goes together, not just whether it worked for him/her.
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| psy88 Senior Member United States Joined 5593 days ago 469 posts - 882 votes Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French | Message 8 of 10 16 January 2010 at 1:08am | IP Logged | ||
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I discount those that are written by someone who claims to have tried each and every one of the competitors' product and found them all to be totally worthless but just can't say enough good thins about one particular product for which he provides a link.
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