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| gaa1gaa1 Newbie China Joined 5612 days ago 30 posts - 39 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 1 of 9 15 July 2009 at 10:25am | IP Logged |
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"Teach Yourself" VS "Colloquial"
In fact, I'm not only interested in which series is considered as a better one between "Teach Yourself languages" and "Colloquial languages", but also longing to know the results of drawing each language a comparison between TYL and CL, I mean that, maybe Colloqial A is a little better than TY, whereas Colloqial B or C is relatively worse than TY B or C, for examples, if I'd like to learn Turkish by myself, and perhaps I wouldn't pay attention to any other learning materials at the beginning, except TYL or CL, then which series should I choose as my coursebook? Besides Turkish, what about Persian, Arabic(Gulf), Russian, or Italian? Thanks a lot! Edited by gaa1gaa1 on 15 July 2009 at 10:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6009 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 2 of 9 15 July 2009 at 11:17am | IP Logged |
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I don't like either, but my gut feeling favours TY. I'd started writing reasons, but a flick through a couple of books makes me think I'd imagined them. They are very very similar, and yes, quality varies between languages. My first experience of Colloquial was their Danish book, and I never made it past the first chapter....
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| rlf1810 Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6338 days ago 122 posts - 173 votes Speaks: English*, German, Slovak | Message 3 of 9 15 July 2009 at 2:29pm | IP Logged |
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Hello,
Personally, I would always choose TY over COL. In my experience thus far the TY series in general (though not always) is more thorough than the Colloquial series. One exact comparison I can make is for Serbian. The TY course blows the COL course out of the water. I'm sure this isn't an isolated case. If you haven't already you check out Prof. Arguelles Foreign Languages Series Review . -Robert 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Katie Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6716 days ago 495 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, Hungarian Studies: French, German | Message 4 of 9 15 July 2009 at 11:50pm | IP Logged |
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I agree with Robert, the same is so for Hungarian. However, I wouldn't recommend either book for very beginners. I started with them and they are too much, too soon. I know that sounds strange, but after the first 3 or 4 units, it jumps and can become quite confusing!
I have actually never FINISHED either of the books [meaning from cover to cover]. I use both of them still - but I use sections of them at a time. For example, if I was looking at the 'indefinite conjugation of verbs', I would look them up in TY, COL, FSI, my grammar book... I'd read them all because some of them (and it changes) provide a better explanation than others. If you're in a position to, I'd recommend getting both, but depending on your language, perhaps not starting with solely one of those programs. Edited by Katie on 15 July 2009 at 11:51pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5907 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 5 of 9 16 July 2009 at 12:05am | IP Logged |
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I'd start with Assimil for any language (except Arabic, apparently that course is a total washout). Used it for Hungarian and loved it, using it for Italian and loving it, and have heard good things about pretty much every course they've made (...except Arabic). If they have a course for the language I want to learn it wouldn't even cross my mind to look elsewhere before giving Assimil a good go first.
Liz 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 6 of 9 16 July 2009 at 8:07am | IP Logged |
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If we're considering only languages that are taught by a course in both TY and Colloquial, I'd generally lean more toward TY over Colloquial but there are cases where I prefer the version in Colloquial.
Based on my use/study, here're my picks in TY vs. Colloquial for various languages: Croatian: TY Czech: Colloquial Estonian: TY ** Finnish: TY ** Hungarian: Colloquial (i.e. the older edition by Jerry Payne.) Lithuanian: TY Polish: Neither (Colloquial Polish and TY Polish are equally middling) Romanian: Colloquial (N.B. the 2nd ed. is better than the 3rd ed.) Serbian: TY ** Slovenian: Neither (Colloquial Slovene and TY Slovene are equally TERRIBLE) Ukrainian: Neither (Colloquial Ukrainian and TY Ukrainian are equally middling) ** The only languages for which I would recommend the course from Teach Yourself without reservation over the version in Colloquial are Estonian, Finnish and Serbian. - Colloquial Estonian is a piece of $#!t. Don't even bother borrowing it from the library let alone waste money on it. TY Estonian all the way. - Colloquial Finnish has several dialogues which are very colloquial. However it uses an idiosyncratic way of presenting grammar and is better suited for students of linguistics. This isn't surprising when we find out that the author is a professor of Uralic linguistics (i.e. linguistics of the language family to which Finnish belongs) rather than someone who specializes in teaching Finnish. This situation is comparable to having an ESL teacher whose specialty is Germanic linguistics rather than teaching ESL. Unlike Colloquial Finnish, TY Finnish doesn't have this pretentious air and its author is much more humble. TY Finnish's author is just interested in teaching Finnish rather than letting the course become an extension of a lecture on esoteric topics in Finnish grammar that interest a graduate student in Uralic linguistics. - Colloquial Serbian is ruined by the authors not providing complete answer keys and the glossaries don't list all of the new words/expressions that appear in dialogues. It's hard to teach yourself a language when the answer keys and glossaries are incomplete. TY Serbian does provide full answer keys and glossaries and also covers more material than Colloquial Serbian. Edited by Chung on 16 July 2009 at 8:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ashley_Victrola Senior Member United States Joined 5704 days ago 416 posts - 429 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Romanian | Message 7 of 9 18 July 2009 at 6:56am | IP Logged |
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For Romanian, I use them both. I like being able to see grammar concepts used in other sentences written by different people and having it explained two different ways and sometimes one will pick up the slack where the other leaves off. I can't think of either one as being much better. They both have their place as a beginner language text. I GUESS I might pick TY because it's easier to find and it comes with lang. CD's.
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| Guido Super Polyglot Senior Member ArgentinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6526 days ago 286 posts - 582 votes Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, German, Italian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Catalan, Dutch, Swedish, Danish Studies: Russian, Indonesian, Romanian, Polish, Icelandic | Message 8 of 9 20 July 2009 at 8:02am | IP Logged |
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gaa1gaa1, please, do not buy/use "Teach Yourself Persian", it's the worst book
ever. Goodbye Guido. Edited by Guido on 20 July 2009 at 8:02am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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