JPike1028 Triglot Senior Member United States piketransitions Joined 5395 days ago 297 posts - 337 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Swedish, Portuguese, Czech
| Message 1 of 12 24 June 2010 at 8:29pm | IP Logged |
I am thinking of adding Czech to my current learning list but am at a loss for basic resources. What are some thoughts on the Pimsleur Czech program? I am going to be toying with L-R in my other languages in the coming months and if I find good results with this I am going to use this method as well, but I like to have some simple vocab builders in the very early stages. Any suggestions would be welcome!
I am subscribed as of today to the FluentCzech youtube account, but that was all I could really find in a search so I apologize if this is a redundant thread.
JLP
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Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5667 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin
| Message 2 of 12 24 June 2010 at 8:50pm | IP Logged |
Firstly, thank you for subscribing to my Youtube channel :-)
The Pimsleur Czech course is only 30 lessons long, and does not cover very much. It is expensive for the little that you get, so I would not recommend it.
I see you are studying French, and therefore would recommend the Assimil Czech course to get you started. Most of the other courses don't have much audio - and that is a real problem at the early stages. My youtube channel also recommends the DLI course - which is probably a good follow on from the Assimil course (and has the advantage of being free). You will also benefit from a grammar book, and one of my videos covers that too.
Beyond that, keep in touch with the forums here, and when you have finished with those courses I can point you to some more advanced materials.
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Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 6138 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese
| Message 3 of 12 24 June 2010 at 9:27pm | IP Logged |
FSI Czech Fast is free
and a good enough introductory course.
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Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5667 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin
| Message 4 of 12 24 June 2010 at 9:36pm | IP Logged |
Yes, I agree. The only downside is that it is a very short course, but good for the first few weeks if you don't want to spend any money and want to check if you do enjoy the language.
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shahvlad Newbie Belgium Joined 5307 days ago 19 posts - 38 votes
| Message 5 of 12 24 June 2010 at 9:40pm | IP Logged |
Czech links @ Omniglot.com
Czech resources @ WordRefence.com
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JPike1028 Triglot Senior Member United States piketransitions Joined 5395 days ago 297 posts - 337 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Swedish, Portuguese, Czech
| Message 6 of 12 25 June 2010 at 8:08am | IP Logged |
Thank you for the suggestions. My methods of study include spending one month, on a rotating schedule, utilizing a language. What do you think are the best (audio) resources to absorb the most within one month? I know this is probably an irrational approach to language learning - I continue to speak in the language even if I am not focusing on it that month with people who I have found that speak the language - I just do not focus my actual educational efforts on it outside of the rotating month it falls on.
JLP
Edited by JPike1028 on 25 June 2010 at 8:08am
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Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5667 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin
| Message 7 of 12 25 June 2010 at 2:31pm | IP Logged |
JPike1028 wrote:
Thank you for the suggestions. My methods of study include spending one month, on a rotating schedule, utilizing a language. What do you think are the best (audio) resources to absorb the most within one month? |
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There are no primarily-audio courses for Czech that are good. The language has quite a difficult grammar, so you will benefit from a textbook to help you make sense of it.
If you only have a month, I would still recommend the Assimil course. If you don't want to spend any money, though, then the FSI FAST course can be downloaded for free and is probably a good alternative. Both Assimil and the FSI course strike a good balance between audio and textbook.
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liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6227 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written)
| Message 8 of 12 26 June 2010 at 12:29am | IP Logged |
Splog wrote:
There are no primarily-audio courses for Czech that are good. The language has quite a difficult grammar, so you will benefit from a textbook to help you make sense of it.
If you don't want to spend any money, though, then the FSI FAST course can be downloaded for free and is probably a good alternative. Both Assimil and the FSI course strike a good balance between audio and textbook. |
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There is an FSI Czech Basic Course ( not their FAST course) Which looks incredible. You can download the text for free on ERIC.
FSI Czech Basic Course
It is a much more comprehensive course than FAST but appears to be more user-friendly for the general public than the DLI course. The book is nearly 1000 pages and it supposedly came with 38 cassette tapes. My problem has been that I can't find the tapes anywhere! NTIS does not sell them, sadly...
Have any of you out there seen them??
For a short trip FAST should be pretty good. The DLI course is great if you want to pick up more than a few travel words and are somewhat masochistic. Pimsleur will just annoy you. After 30 units and multiple hours ( and dollars ) invested, I guarantee you will look back and ask yourself,
" Really, that's all I learned?!?!"
Czech is such a beautiful sounding language. It has a flow to it that is lacking in the other staccato Slavic tongues. It is definitely on my "hit list"!
Edited by liddytime on 26 June 2010 at 12:35am
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