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"Vocabulearn" series | ||
Tags: Linguaphone | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7205 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 1 of 38 21 March 2005 at 8:39pm | IP Logged |
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Vocabulearn is by Penton Overseas, the company that
makes "Learn Language in you Car". Vocabulearn is a 3 level CD/tape course totally devoted to vocabulary. No grammar, dialogs, etc. The CD set has 12 CDs. Each is 40-45 minutes. 9 hours of vocab drills. The CDs are split into categories: Nouns Adjectives, adverbs, prepositions Expressions Verbs So 4 categories times 3 levels gives you 12 CDs. It's supposed to teach you about 2000 words per level, or 4500 words for all three levels. Some words in the expressions category are used in other categories, which is why it's 4500 words, rather than 6000. The words in level 1 are supposed to be more common than those in level 2 and level 3. There are two different formats. One is Spanish word, then English. The other format is English word, then Spanish. The idea is that you learn to translate in both directions. However, the Spanish->English words are never given to use as English->Spanish. That's how they get 4500 words on the CDs, by not repeating to much. (I say Spanish, but they offer other languages too). Like Learn Language in your Car, Vocabulearn is a good value. They (penton overseas) actually have a "24" program, which is three programs combined: 1) Learn Language in your Car (3 levels) 2) Vocabulearn (3 levels) 3) ImmersionPlus (dialogs). I bought them seperately because I didn't know about "24" at first. By the way, it's called 24 because there are 24 CDs. The 24 program isn't really an integrated set. It's just a cheaper way to buy everything. All of these programs are meant to be "in your car-able". It would be difficult to become fluent with the 24 program alone. That doesn't mean it's worthless though. Criticisms of Vocabulearn: The words are delivered in random order. Penton Overseas (PO) says that's a feature. I think it's a bug. Normally we learn by associating things with other things we know. I.E. you learn the months together, the numbers together, body parts together, etc. In vocabulearn, this isn't the case. Months, body parts, days of the week are spread all over the tape. They are only repeated once. My suggesting for PO would be to have the CD have 100s of tracks, each with one word. That way, if one wanted random order, you could just select the randomizer on your CD player. (doesn't work for tape though). And I'd organize the stuff into categories and use simple sentences to put the words in use. One more criticism. I've heard that you need more nouns than verbs, and more verbs than adjectives or prepositions. Since they devote as much audio to verbs as nouns, which seems unbalanced. Having said that, I still think Vocabulearn is handy for commuting. You can't use flash cards in the car. Partly it may depend on your learning style. If you are an auditory learner, Vocabulearn is the best. If you are visual, and can use flash cards, that's a good way to go to. I use Audacity, a free audio editing program to take the mastered words out of the recordings. Edited by luke on 23 March 2005 at 8:58pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| heartburn Senior Member United States Joined 7207 days ago 355 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 38 21 March 2005 at 9:22pm | IP Logged |
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I thought of that too; making a track for each term. Unfortunately, the specs for audio CDs only allow for 99 tracks. I'm sure this is an artificial limitation created so that CD player manufacturers would not need to include more than two 7-segment LEDs in their products. It is a limitation nonetheless.
Last year, Champs-Elysées put out an audio flashcard CD. They tried to skirt that limitation by putting a few terms on each track. So, 5 terms per track would give you a CD with 495 terms. I guess that's a close approximation of your suggestion. They've just introduced a companion CD to the Puerta del Sol audio-magazine. It will include audio flashcards of the more difficult vocabulary that appears in each issue. I haven't seen it yet. The first CD is due out with the magazine in a couple of weeks. I'll let you know what it looks like. Home Page of Champs-Elysées, Inc. Edited by heartburn on 21 March 2005 at 11:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| manna Groupie Kyrgyzstan Joined 7258 days ago 94 posts - 112 votes | Message 3 of 38 22 March 2005 at 8:27am | IP Logged |
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With the cost of CDs they could just release two versions... one random (which I found to be utterly confusing) and one with more thought behind it...
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7205 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 4 of 38 23 March 2005 at 6:29pm | IP Logged |
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By the way, here is how I use them. Vocabulearn is
what Barry Farber called "flat single repetition". CD: hot dog me: perro caliente me: hot dog CD: perro caliente me: hot dog me: perro caliente If the CD does the target language first, I do a similar swapping of the order: CD: hablar me: to speak me: hablar CD: to speak me: hablar me: to speak I try to think about the words when I do them. For instance, for "hot dog", I'd think about the smell, crunch and taste of a hot dog with ketchup. For "sheet", I imagine the sound of a sheet of snapping a bed sheet to make it spread over the bed. This may be obvious to some, but it's something that really sunk in when I listened to Graham Fuller's "secrets of learning a foreign language", which was a free bonus when I got "learn spanish in your car" by the same vendor (Penton Overseas). You'd have to look at the package to see if it's included. I got lucky, and was frankly surprised when I ordered LSIYC from Amazon and got the bonus CDs and booklet. When things are going well, I may improvise a little: CD: to study me: estudiar me: to study CD: estudiar me: Estudio en la mañana temprano. I also do humor/rhymes, which isn't too hard for a language like Spanish. CD: obviamente me: obviously, obviamente CD: obviously me: Obviamente soy inteligente. One more note on learning verbs this way. It's not always obvious to me when a verb is stem changing, and the recording isn't going to alert you that "dormir" is stem changing. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| pentatonic Senior Member United States Joined 7247 days ago 221 posts - 245 votes | Message 5 of 38 23 March 2005 at 8:04pm | IP Logged |
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I purchased the German 24 set yesterday from Amazon.com. I commute a lot and so I'm hoping for some more good practice. Also I want to convert the disks to MP3s and cut the vocabulary pairs out and enter them in SuperMemo. I'm curious to see how well learning vocabulary by sound only works. Audio flashcards!
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| heartburn Senior Member United States Joined 7207 days ago 355 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 38 23 March 2005 at 8:20pm | IP Logged |
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Pentatonic, I started slicing up the Spanish set. I don't use them with SuperMemo, but I sometimes shuffle them on my iPod instead.
Cutting them up is a nasty chore. Penton Overseas has decided to present the vocabulary over a music bed of Mozart. That makes it extra difficult to visually spot the normal changes in the waveform when you're editing. It also makes the shuffled vocabulary sound really weird because the musical background gets shuffled along with the vocabulary. But here's something that might help. I noticed that the prompt and the response were on different channels of the stereo recording. And I think the background music is mono. This made it easier to suppress the music somewhat. You'll want to do something like a karaoke filter. Edited by heartburn on 23 March 2005 at 8:26pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| pentatonic Senior Member United States Joined 7247 days ago 221 posts - 245 votes | Message 7 of 38 23 March 2005 at 8:50pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the tip Heartburn. I read that Vocabulearn had a "Muscially Enhanced" version and almost asked here about it but it appeared to me to be a separate package. Using voice removal techniques to get rid of the music is an excellent idea and I will definitely try it if my version has the music.
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| Malcolm Triglot Retired Moderator Senior Member Korea, South Joined 7315 days ago 500 posts - 515 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 8 of 38 23 March 2005 at 8:58pm | IP Logged |
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I have Vocabulearn Spanish and Japanese. I'm my opinion, these programs are only useful after significant editing. This is especially true for Japanese, which has HUGE gaps between each word. Here's what to do:
First, edit out the gaps between each word (0.5 seconds should be fine). This takes a while, but it will really speed up the learning process. Next, divide each CD into several tracks according to the pages. One track should include the words from one full page (40-50 words). Set the track to repeat until you've memorized all the words, then move on to the next track. You can have the booklet open in front of you turned to the corresponding page of the track in case some of the words aren't clear. After editing, you're left with an intense program for the rapid acquisition of vocabulary - a Vocabulearn-on-steroids if you will. Important: This only works with the old version of Vocabulearn. The new version has background music that makes it impossible to edit. Edit: Sorry guys, I didn't realize that you had already covered this. Edited by Malcolm on 23 March 2005 at 9:00pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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