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Teach Yourself Series vs. Colloquials | ||
Tags: Colloquial (program) | Teach Yourself | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Frisco Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6854 days ago 380 posts - 398 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Italian, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 9 of 22 05 June 2006 at 3:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
True. That's why I do most of my shopping on Amazon.com. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| brumblebee Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6773 days ago 206 posts - 212 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese | Message 10 of 22 05 June 2006 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't know how to order things on Amazon.com, and I don't have a credit card, so I don't know how I would pay for them. That's why I shop at Borders! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| brumblebee Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6773 days ago 206 posts - 212 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese | Message 11 of 22 05 June 2006 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Has anyone tried TY Italian or Colloquial Italian?
What about TY Swedish and Colloquial Swedish? And TY Afrikaans and Co. Afrikaans? -brumblebee I just would like to hear opinions on specific products. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6700 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 12 of 22 27 July 2006 at 4:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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This thread isn't too old to revive, I don't think.
I've done a few of the TYS books, including German, Russian, Indonesian, and French. I also have a copy of the Japanese book. I think they're good for the price. They cover the basics and start introducing more advanced structures, but it seems like "covering the basics" is their goal. I've recently started the Colloquial Indonesian and Japanese books, and I find that they cover much more material than the TYS books, but do it at a faster pace. They also do it more thoroughly. For instance, the TYS Japanese book only teaches you a handful of kanji and use romanji only throughout the text. The Colloquial book starts with a mix of kana and romanji, and is all kana + kanji after unit 5, I believe. The Indonesian book also explains more grammatical structures that the TYS books, and does so more clearly. The audio is also quite different. The TYS audio is just the dialogues and one or two drills from each lesson. Colloquial offers four or five interactive drills for each lesson, going over different patterns and grammar. The one bad thing is that the audio material isn't always featured in the book. Personally, I think the two courses both have value. TYS seems more like a friendly introductory course designed to get you into the flow of coversation, and Colloquial is the next step up and introduces the perils of grammar. If you have the money, I would buy both of the sets, and do them serially. They tend to cover similar sets of information in different ways, and it's always nice to have a variety of vocabulary sources. Plus, added together, they're still cheaper than Assimil. I'm thinking about getting Colloquial Russian after I finish my current batch of texts, so I may be able to compare that with the TYS. The nice thing about that is that Colloquial Russian has two volumes, while TYS only has one. I'm also tempted by Ultimate Russian, as well, however. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7013 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 22 27 July 2006 at 7:02am | IP Logged | ||||||||
It depends on where you buy Assimil from, since Amazon.fr has them fairly cheap (about £40). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Will Senior Member United States Joined 6936 days ago 165 posts - 165 votes | Message 14 of 22 27 July 2006 at 9:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Amazon.com allows payment via check or Postal money order for items, with some exceptions that are noted on the linked to page. That would imply that you can open an Amazon customer account without having to provide a credit card number. I do not see anything on an Amazon page telling of a minimum age requirement for purchasing from them. Placing Your First Order Checks and Postal Money Orders Of course, purchasing from Borders you get the item in your hands quicker! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| zack Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 7207 days ago 122 posts - 127 votes Speaks: German*, English, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 15 of 22 27 July 2006 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I really like "TY Italian Grammar" by A.Proudfoot. It is very well organized, very clear with good examples and a pleasure to just read through repeatedly to assimilate the structures introduced. That said, I haven't looked at other short Italian grammars, so I cannot compare. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Lugubert Heptaglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6865 days ago 186 posts - 235 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Danish, Norwegian, EnglishC2, German, Dutch, French Studies: Mandarin, Hindi | Message 16 of 22 28 July 2006 at 3:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Best so far: Colloquial Chinese, in spite of some slightly outmoded settings, and that I thought the tapes too soon speak too fast for a beginner. It should be used with the character text book, in one simplified and one traditional version, available (sometimes...) separately.
Second best: TY Hindi. Worst: Colloquial Vietnamese, but according to 'net reviews, the TY is no better. In between for example Coll. Hindi, Punjabi. Not too profound on grammar, but quite useful and I greatly preferred them to the old TY Punjabi and Urdu, the latter identical with the still older Hindustani. TY Bulgarian works well. I just had a look at a new TY Urdu, which looks just great, for example featuring the script all the way. It seems that the TY is quite busy renewing the set, in- and outside. Edited by Lugubert on 28 July 2006 at 3:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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