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Collins Paul Noble Language series | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6152 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 51 21 September 2010 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I discovered these brand new all audio course while browsing in my local bookshop. The one that was on the shelf was Collins French with Paul Noble. I have to say the contents were "interesting". It consists of 12 audio CD's, and when I looked at the associated book, it reminded me a LOT of the Michel Thomas series. I've no idea what's on the audio, so they may not be that close. Interestingly, it has four glowing reviews on Amazon, even though it's just published (16th September 2010). The other thing that really stood out was the price. It seems very cheap for a 12 CD course.
I'd love to hear feedback if anyone has used or purchased it ? Edited by DaraghM on 21 September 2010 at 3:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 2 of 51 21 September 2010 at 3:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm curious as well. Did you flick through the book in a bricks-and-mortar bookshop, or is there somewhere where you can get an online preview. The promo video linked from the Amazon page also makes it sound very much like MT, and Noble's description of his language learning experience talks a lot about buying bookshelf courses and finding them inadequate, but there's a big gap -- he doesn't mention how he eventually did start learning a language properly. By the time he got round to it, MT was on the shelves.
I'm kind of annoyed he's only doing French, Spanish and Italian, as I'd love to see what he does, but I've already got quite far with those three.... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6152 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 3 of 51 21 September 2010 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I flicked through the book in a bricks-and-mortar bookshop. I only looked at it very quickly, but it seemed very similar. I've just discovered he runs a language institute, and mentions the following on his discussion of teaching.
From Paul Noble - Teaching "A small minority of authors and teachers did exist, however, who had produced books, audio-tapes and CDs that at least hinted at better ways to teach. And some of these provided moments of insight, if sometimes only fleetingly, into the languages those teachers taught. The best amongst these, and those of which I was the greatest fan at the time, were the courses by Alphonse Chérel, Jacques Roston, Charles Duff, Margarita Madrigal, Michel Thomas and Paul Pimsleur." He goes on, " .. Michel Thomas’s courses suffered from a peculiar accent and the inclusion of unusual, or unrealistic sentence patterns " It seems he's very familiar with the Michel Thomas series. I'm now really curious about these courses. They claim to teach a vocabulary of 6,000 words. I assume he's just including all the usual cognates and transformations. Edited by DaraghM on 21 September 2010 at 5:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7104 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 4 of 51 21 September 2010 at 5:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Three of the four reviews are a little suspicious - first-time reviewers. Mr P.A. Smith of hampshire does, however, seem genuine.
In addition, "Andy" (not me BTW) who reviewed the Spanish course has managed to not only use the course but also complete a "recent trip to Spain" where it "made a real difference". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5566 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 5 of 51 21 September 2010 at 6:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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So what he is saying is that he used Linguaphone (Jacques Roston) Assimil (Alphonse Chérel), Madrigal's Magic Key, Michel Thomas, Pimsleur and the now relatively unkown Charles Duff courses but found them all to 'suffer from serious weaknesses', to be only 'fleetingly insightful', and he only got the 'first steps' in language learning from them. This from a person who is apparently a genius (he says he became a member of MENSA at 14 with an IQ of 178 - so he is certainly good at maths puzzles) but didn't know what a verb was when he was at school and then couldn't comprehend it when it was explained to him by his teacher. He says he finished his secondary schooling at 13 - surely understanding the not-so-difficult concept of a verb (i.e. a 'doing' word, a word you put 'to' in front of, a word that forms the predicate with the object) is something one learns before secondary school?
Perhaps the Capretz method would have worked where the others failed? Instead he turned to psuedoscientist Georgi Lozanov - the founder of 'suggestology', 'alpha wave learning' and the inspiration behind the accelerated learning courses they used to advertise in glossy magazines. In addition, as Andy says, three of those reviews are clear fakes of the sort people like SmartFrench, Rocket Languages or Rosetta Stone publish. Is Mr Noble the Paul McKenna of language learning? Still, despite my sarcasm, I don't want to put the cart before the horse and as there is a copy of the French course in my local bookstore, i'll buy the French one, give him some money and have a closer look. If I don't like I'll take it back or dump it in my loft with the rest of my used languages courses. Maybe Mr Noble will come here and explain his method in greater detail? Edited by Elexi on 22 September 2010 at 8:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| t123 Diglot Senior Member South Africa https://github.com/t Joined 5612 days ago 139 posts - 226 votes Speaks: English*, Afrikaans | Message 6 of 51 21 September 2010 at 8:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Before you hand over £32, according to the Amazon link:
Not sure where you get that from though. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7104 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 7 of 51 21 September 2010 at 8:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes. I have one of Georgi's German courses in my Dad's loft somewhere. Edit: I'm trying to recall the name of the course that used his theories - baroque music is about all I can remember. Edited by Andy E on 21 September 2010 at 8:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7016 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 51 21 September 2010 at 9:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
I've seen this advertised before and wondered how good it was. They claim to be able to teach you the basics (very simple conversational abilities?) of French, German, Spanish, Italian and Chinese (not at the same time though!) in a two-day course. If anyone has some spare cash and is in London anytime soon, perhaps they could attend the course and report back. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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