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Regarding Czech - the Colloquial series | ||
Tags: Colloquial (program) | Czech | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| shreypete Pentaglot Groupie Czech RepublicRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6149 days ago 90 posts - 93 votes  Speaks: English*, Hindi, Telugu, CzechB1, SpanishB2 Studies: GermanB2, FrenchA2, Dutch, Swedish | Message 1 of 15 01 January 2009 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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So I'm currently using Colloquial Czech (the Complete course for Beginners) by James Naughton along with
Czech Step by Step by Lida Hola. I really like the book a lot because it has a wealth of material in terms of vocabulary and grammar which are very applicable on a day to day basis. The problem is that even after having done a topic 2-3 times, I'm not able to retain the vocabulary and some of the grammatical aspects. I don't know if this is normal. This problem has made me a bit ambiguous about the Colloquial series because it has so much material but I don't think it's organized well enough (no flow-charts and stuff). It uses a very traditional approach. Have any of you guys used this book before? If so, how did you make the best of it?? I've spent more than a year now (precisely 1 1/2 years) in Prague but my czech hasn't been so effective. I mean I can understand a lot of the stuff and can get by on a day to day basis, but the problem is that when I'm communicating, it doesn't come out so easily...I always have to think in English before I say it out in czech and many times, the word I'm looking for is in my mind but I just can't remember it at that instant. This is just so discouraging as I haven't had such a big problem with the other languages I've learned. Is there any way to improve this problem? Do you think signing up for an intensive long-term course will help? (although they're too expensive :( :( 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 15 04 January 2009 at 1:45am | IP Logged | ||
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The biggest problem with the "Colloquial..." series is that the number of exercises in each course is too low for anyone more than a casual learner. I used "Colloquial Czech" a few years ago and completed it after 3 months of part-time study in the evening. I listened to the dialogues, followed the instructions and did the exercises. After I had completed it I still deemed my knowledge to be at too low of a level, so I then picked up a more substantial Czech course afterwards and ploughed through that one. The only benefit of having completed "Colloquial Czech" was that I had some familiarity with most of the basic topics in my second Czech course. However, I felt that I was relearning a lot of things on the second try wit that new course. I find that "Colloquial Czech" and "Colloquial Slovak" are among the better examples from this series, but they're far from the best overall when compared to other language courses that I've used for those languages. My impression of others in the series is worse (e.g. Colloquial Estonian, Colloquial Slovene, Colloquial Finnish, Colloquial Croatian, etc.)
Your hesitancy in speaking Czech even after 18 months in Prague still baffles me as you've given the impression here of trying hard. From my experiences in Prague, outside the center is where you'll need to know Czech - forget about the center as it's crawling with foreigners. Are you holding back on going all-out for Czech exposure? How are Czech classes going? (if you have signed up for them). Do you listen or watch a lot of Czech media at home? (e.g. have a Czech radio station running regularly while you're eating breakfast) How often do you hang out with Czech friends whose English is not that good? Are you self-conscious to the point where you're more interested in speaking 100% correctly in Czech and thus even something that you think would be 90% correct makes you want to think first in English then translate into Czech? Could there be interference from your knowledge of Hindustani and Spanish? 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shreypete Pentaglot Groupie Czech RepublicRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6149 days ago 90 posts - 93 votes Speaks: English*, Hindi, Telugu, CzechB1, SpanishB2 Studies: GermanB2, FrenchA2, Dutch, Swedish | Message 3 of 15 04 January 2009 at 2:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Hey there Chung, one of the problems is that I live in the city center and so it's 10x harder not to speak in
english or even Spanish for that matter of fact. I don't have any czech friends (well may be two or three but they've left the country on student exchange studies). The biggest problem is my studies. I don't get much time to study the language but I'm making a conscious effort to learn the language whenever I can (usually everyday for at least half-an-hour). The classes offered by our University are very slow paced and I'm well ahead of them (they're currently in Ch.10 in Czech Step by Step--which has 20 chapters and I've finished all of them; from next semester on, we will be having separate medical czech classes along with the basic czech classes). I did speak to my czech profs. and expressed my personal interest but all they said was that this is a medical school and we don't really expect the english parallel students to be fluent in the language...just enough to get by (which I can already do). It's just ridiculous. I'm thinking of perhaps joining an intensive one year course offered by the Charles University Language Institute (and I've heard very good things about it; in fact the few foreigners that I met who spoke flawless Czech took the very same course and are living here at the moment). I'm also quite a perfectionist which I consider to be a major hurdle when talking with languages (or anything else for that matte). I'm too scared of embarrassing myself in front of the locals and I'm even more scared to apply what I've recently learned (perhaps if there were more practice exercises in the book, I would be more confident ;) But like I said, I am making a sincere effort and making use of the few resources I do have...may be as I get more time from 4th year on, I'll spend a lot more time with the language. Would you recommend any other czech learning resources? any other books? (other than Naughton). I do watch a lot of youtube videos (comedies, news, movie clips, movies) and try to use the language whenever I can (in shops; when speaking to my landlady; and stuff like that). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| farrioth Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6091 days ago 171 posts - 173 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Esperanto, Sanskrit, Japanese | Message 4 of 15 04 January 2009 at 3:15am | IP Logged | ||
Alas, I can't help you with Czech, as I have never studied the language, but I am interested to know how you would expect to find flow charts used in a language textbook; I've never encountered this personally. It seems a rather unique tool. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shreypete Pentaglot Groupie Czech RepublicRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6149 days ago 90 posts - 93 votes Speaks: English*, Hindi, Telugu, CzechB1, SpanishB2 Studies: GermanB2, FrenchA2, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 15 04 January 2009 at 3:27am | IP Logged | ||
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When I meant flow-charts, I was referring to their use in a grammatical context (in explaining the case and
declension system and the set of endings for these cases). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 6 of 15 04 January 2009 at 12:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you would genuinely want more self-instructional stuff, a substantial course could be the one that's offered for sale by Ohio State University Foreign Language Publications. It's based on the old Czech course "A Practical Czech Course for English-Speakers" by Milan Sova. The university sells a reprint of that textbook along with its in-house workbooks, tapes and instructor manuals each of which is geared to beginning, intermediate and advanced students. The second Czech course that I did after finishing Colloquial Czech was that old textbook - at that time I couldn't afford to buy the auxiliary material from the university. Thus the drawback is that the whole set can be quite expensive (several hundred American dollars)
(Then again if money is not that much of an object you could instead consider those intensive Czech classes at Karlova Univerzita which seem quite effective based on your observation of former students of those classes.) Another choice could be to use either "Survival Czech" or "Tschechisch im Alltag". They're published by LEDA, and each comes with three tapes/CDs. They're both at the same level of Colloquial Czech but have more examples and exercises. When I was shopping for courses in Czech Republic "Tschechisch im Alltag" was cheaper ($40 US) than Survival Czech ($55 US) for some reason. I bought the former because I had studied German for a few years when I was younger and could make sense of the grammatical explanations (its charts for declension and conjugation are also helpful). If your German is at least at an intermediate level, I'd settle for "Tschechisch im Alltag". Apart from that, try to get your butt out of the center of Prague and keep making more Czech friends. One possibility could be in joining a travelling/hosting association such as Couchsurfing or Hospitality Club. Even though you're studying more than anything else, most members of these organizations are university students, keen travellers, multilingual and curious about cultures other than their own. The members in Prague definitely consist mainly of native Czechs and you may be able to join their parties, pub nights or gatherings. While local members can speak other languages (e.g. English), they're native speakers of the local language. Thus in this case many of these gatherings will have native speakers of Czech. Give it some thought. In addition, don't be so self-conscious that you're limiting your opportunities to use Czech actively. I don't mean that in an offensive way but passive exposure only gets you so far. It's doubtful that you could reach 100% grammatical correctness consistently with passive learning alone unless you were autistic. Besides, at your stage as a learner, you're expected to make mistakes. If things were the other way around, I highly doubt that you'd expect someone learning English to be flawless. You'd probably be happy if that learner were 80% or 90% correct grammatically. The rest you could either overlook or gently point out such that he/she could get his/her English "over the hump". 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| farrioth Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6091 days ago 171 posts - 173 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Esperanto, Sanskrit, Japanese | Message 7 of 15 04 January 2009 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm still not clear on how a flowchart would be used here. Could you give me an example? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shreypete Pentaglot Groupie Czech RepublicRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6149 days ago 90 posts - 93 votes Speaks: English*, Hindi, Telugu, CzechB1, SpanishB2 Studies: GermanB2, FrenchA2, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 15 04 January 2009 at 8:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Take a look at the folowing links:
http://www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/aspect.html http://www.russianresources.info/content/refsheet_verbs1cons tspart3.aspx I guess a more appropriate term would be charts or tables or grammar trees (very similar to flow charts used for differentiating verb aspect, the different types of cases and each set of endings for that case etc). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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