prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4856 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish
| Message 313 of 376 16 June 2013 at 1:03pm | IP Logged |
From the less popular ones I would recommend "Hugo - Dutch In 3 Months". The other ones from this series don't seem to be very good though.
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Oleg Stepanov Newbie Russian Federation rusmagic.blogspot.ruRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4158 days ago 7 posts - 8 votes Speaks: Russian* Studies: English
| Message 314 of 376 04 July 2013 at 8:40pm | IP Logged |
I can not believe. I am logged. :-)
My name Oleg Stepanov.
Please, this is my first message and I am apologize if I wrote something not correct...
I use my personal programs and methods for study languages. I mean I am programmer and for me compile new program same like for somebody else press button on some of devises. My friends asked me share some of my tools and just now I made program what will be understandable and usable for all Russians (not only for me). If will be necessary made it for another languages I can do it, but problems arise. I want to do multi language trainer. Just now only Russian to English, Spanish, Francaise, Italiano and Deutsch.
I do not know is it interesting here more explanations why I like my programs instead another. If somebody interesting I can write. But. May be more interesting to test them by somebody else? Or somebody want help me? I have methodic and language problems. For help I can suggest to everyone Russian practice by Skype. :-) If someboy study this strange language. Also I can suggest anti-motivating course "Why not need study Russian". :-)
Apologize if I waste yours time or wrote something not interesting to this thread.
Apologize for my bad English also.
Edited by Oleg Stepanov on 05 July 2013 at 7:15pm
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s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5427 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish
| Message 315 of 376 10 July 2013 at 3:35am | IP Logged |
For those learners of French who are at a decent level. the site Fluent
French Now is an absolutely godl mine. Lots of real conversations with transcripts. And lots of grammatical
explanations.
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Kharis Newbie United States Joined 4183 days ago 8 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Irish
| Message 316 of 376 14 July 2013 at 2:55pm | IP Logged |
So far, I have really enjoyed Assimil Spanish With Ease. I plan on turning to
Assimil for all of the languages on my list for which there is a course available.
Unfortunately, this does not include Irish, so I've had to settle with the Teach Yourself
and Colloquial courses. Both of which have their merits, but there's far too much
English on the CDs. However, they do seem to work well together, so perhaps by working
through both I can get to a decent level of Irish even without Assimil.
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Helid Diglot Newbie Poland Joined 4316 days ago 24 posts - 35 votes Speaks: Polish*, English
| Message 317 of 376 23 July 2013 at 4:38pm | IP Logged |
@Kharis There is Assimil Irish course, but in French base (
http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Assimil ).
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Mountolive Pro Member United States Joined 4456 days ago 10 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map
| Message 318 of 376 27 July 2013 at 12:01pm | IP Logged |
I don't have any experience with most of the courses mentioned in this thread so I'm not in a position to compare them. However, I have spent some time with Assimil Spanish With Ease and I found it pretty useful for improving my pronunciation. I can't say that the content made much of an impression on me, but perhaps that was because I started on it a bit too late and a lot of material was already familiar to me.
I've probably learned the most from some fairly randomly selected books, two in particular. The first is the Oxford Spanish Dictionary & Grammar, which is a medium-size paperback that is a kind of all-in-one reference book and contains a 460-page dictionary, a section of 53 conjugaged Spanish verb forms (all not-completely-regular Spanish verbs in the dictionary are cross-referenced against these forms, which is really useful), and a 350-page Spanish Grammar by John Butt. I use this as my sole dictionary/verb/grammar book 95% of the time, and although it is certainly not exhaustive, it fulfills my needs very well.
The second is an old book, called simply "Spanish Reader," written by M.A. DeVitis and published in 1917. I found this book while browsing in a local used bookstore and bought it on a whim. If it hadn't been so cheap ($1.00) I doubt I would have bought it, because at the time I was looking for a dual language reader, which it is not.
The Spanish Reader is nothing special and there are probably many other equivalent books out there. However, it is a fairly well-designed graded reader which contains several hundred pages of Spanish-only text. I found the content reasonably interesting (lots of stuff about Spanish and Latin American geography, culture, and literature), there are some useful explanatory notes, and at the back it contains an extensive 120-odd page Spanish-to-English dictionary of the vocabulary used in the text. Although the book is a bit dated, much of its material seemed relevant and its level of difficulty was just about perfect for me: hard enough to be challenging and with a lot of new vocabulary and some unfamiliar grammatical and idiomatic constructions, but not so hard as to be impossible or tediously difficult. Working through the Spanish Reader with my Oxford Dictionary & Grammar by my side, I ended up learning quite a bit about grammar and idiomatic usage, and I also increased my vocabulary by a few thousand words in the process.
The lesson I have drawn from my experience with this fairly random book is that the most important feature of Spanish instruction materials as far as my learning is concerned is not how good the material is in some objective sense, but rather whether it can hold my interest and is appropriate for my level. As someone who is learning Spanish purely for fun and is not going about it in a particularly disciplined way, if I can't work through material relatively painlessly and learn something in the process, I probably won't make any progress at all.
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samfrances Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4049 days ago 81 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 319 of 376 22 October 2013 at 1:28pm | IP Logged |
I vote for Michel Thomas, at least for those starting out with a new language. I've used the Spanish courses. He teaches you the basics of the grammar by getting you to construct and speak your own sentences from the very beginning. I've found it effective, and also very enjoyable.
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Indíritheach Senior Member United States Joined 4042 days ago 108 posts - 146 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Irish, French
| Message 320 of 376 31 October 2013 at 8:54pm | IP Logged |
I have really enjoyed both Assimil and FSI for Spanish. I think Assimil will be my first choice for any other languages I may learn in the future.
Since Irish doesn't have an FSI course, and Assimil only publishes an Irish phrase book, I have really enjoyed Learning Irish by Mícheál Ó Siadhail. It's such a comprehensive, well-planned course that I imagine I will be going back to it time and again throughout the course of my studies. And I love the fact that the audio is all Irish! I'd say based on the quality of the texts and the audio, Learning Irish could rival any Assimil "With Ease" course.
Edited by Indíritheach on 31 October 2013 at 8:57pm
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