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The Colloquial series? | ||
Tags: Colloquial (program) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Nephilim Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 7143 days ago 363 posts - 368 votes  Speaks: English*, Polish | Message 1 of 19 14 June 2005 at 5:17am | IP Logged |
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I have read alot on this site about Assimil,FSI, Pimsluer, Michel Thomas, Teach Yourself etc. but have yet to come across any information about the colloquial series.
Is this because members of the forum haven't heard of this series or is it because they are not very highly rated. I would be interested to hear what you all think. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Martien Heptaglot Senior Member Netherlands martienvanwanrooij.n Joined 7103 days ago 134 posts - 148 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, French Studies: Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Swedish, Arabic (Written) | Message 2 of 19 14 June 2005 at 8:52am | IP Logged |
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Well I am sort of a "collectioner" of language courses and I must say that the Colloquial series is of a reasonable quality but I prefer the Hodder & Stoughton's Teach Yourself series. The latter is a better mix of the grammar you really need and practical conversational material. On the other hand in the Colloquial series there are some languages that are not available in TYS e.g. Basque. Lithuanian, Estonian, Slovak, Mongolian and Somali.TYS published a volume about Latvian but that was in the older series (about 30 years ago) so I think I could recommend the volume from the Colloquial series.
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| Nephilim Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 7143 days ago 363 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English*, Polish | Message 3 of 19 14 June 2005 at 6:25pm | IP Logged |
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Martien,
Have you worked through any of the Colloquial series at all? I have 3 or 4 of them but I find them hard going. I like to get an overview of stuff. One thing I find particularly annoying is when you get the first and third person of a verb in lesson 2 , you have to wait till lesson 6 for the 2 person. Also, there seems to be too much English on the tapes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Martien Heptaglot Senior Member Netherlands martienvanwanrooij.n Joined 7103 days ago 134 posts - 148 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, French Studies: Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Swedish, Arabic (Written) | Message 4 of 19 14 June 2005 at 7:14pm | IP Logged |
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Yes Nephilim that is one of the drawbacks of the Colloquial series. I like to be able to build simple sentences after working through one or two lessons and that is not always possible with the colloquials. For example in the volume about Somali it takes seven or eight lessons before you find any info about negating verbs and other statements.
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| Qbe Tetraglot Senior Member United States joewright.org/var Joined 7133 days ago 289 posts - 335 votes Speaks: English*, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Japanese, German, Mandarin, Aramaic | Message 5 of 19 14 June 2005 at 7:21pm | IP Logged |
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For the past several years I've been toying with the idea of buying Colloquial Slovak (since I'm 1/4 Slovak myself). Has anyone here used it?
Many years ago I bought a book called "Colloquial Turkish" by Yusuf Mardin. I worked through the first few lessons and remember really enjoying it. However, I held back until I could hear a native speaker (my uncle) and by the time I had the opportunity to hear it spoken and correct myself, I had developed other interests. Ok, a girlfriend. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Nephilim Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 7143 days ago 363 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English*, Polish | Message 6 of 19 14 June 2005 at 7:22pm | IP Logged |
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Exactly, I find them to be too slow. I can usually do about 5 lessons worth of material in a week or so and then spend a few weeks consolidating the stuff. The only good thing is that they are fairly inexpensive and you can get hold of some pretty exotic lanaguages -also these days they come with both CD and tapes which is good.
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| Martien Heptaglot Senior Member Netherlands martienvanwanrooij.n Joined 7103 days ago 134 posts - 148 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, French Studies: Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Swedish, Arabic (Written) | Message 7 of 19 15 June 2005 at 5:29am | IP Logged |
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Qbe, I have got both the older version of "Colloquial Turkish" by Mardin and the newer one by Bayraktaroglu. I think the first one was much better, as there are useful conversations from the beginning and in many lessons there are words referring to a certain theme (cooking, parts of the body) Unfortunately the vocabulary can sound a little bit old fashioned, since I started to learn Turkish about 30 years ago there were often discussions about replacing words of Arabic or Persian origin with real Turkish words. (BTW the Turkish I am most familiar with is the language of older immigrants in Holland who haven't been able to learn Dutch). As for the "Colloquial Slovak" volume, I didn't study the book, I just bought it because of my interest in foreign languages. Didactically it is a little bit more interesting then other manuals from the same series, it has got useful and practical conversations from the very beginning , it has a structure similar to the Hodder's Teach Yourself series that were published in the late nineties (with a black cover), which are my absolute favorites.
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| Nephilim Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 7143 days ago 363 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English*, Polish | Message 8 of 19 15 June 2005 at 6:21am | IP Logged |
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Martien,
Why are the Teach yourself books your favourites? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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