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Collins Paul Noble Language series | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6944 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 9 of 51 21 September 2010 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Since Charles Duff got mentioned ... His courses date back to mid-1950's and to my knowledge have never been updated. The Spanish and the Russian ones are still in print. Besides Spanish, I also own his French, Italian, and German courses, and I would regard his Spanish course as the best of the four. I actually learned Spanish from Duff's course, so I used to mention it at least as frequently as other people mention Assimil and Michel Thomas. :) It's a peculiar blend of grammar-based and intuitive assimilation learning, the latter coming from reading passages with interlinear translations and the lists of situational phrases and vocabulary. I can see that it was quite innovative in its day, and I find his method quite effective, but perhaps too fast-paced and requiring a lot of independence from the learner to be widely popular. I personally like the speed at which he moves. Edited by frenkeld on 21 September 2010 at 10:53pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7145 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 10 of 51 21 September 2010 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don't want to hijack the thread, but do want to note for Frenkeld, and perhaps others who may be interested, the following entry on Charles Duff from the languagehat blog a couple of years ago:
http://www.languagehat.com/archives/002661.php 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ubik Senior Member United States ubykh.wordpress.com/ Joined 5317 days ago 147 posts - 176 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin, Arabic (Egyptian), German, Spanish | Message 11 of 51 21 September 2010 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I am curious if anyone has found the source of the free introductory DVD...
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| 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 12 of 51 21 September 2010 at 11:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Interesting. A man whose product is effectively pitched in direct competition to Michel Thomas (same name-driven sale, same type of marketing blurb, same number of CDs) is directly criticising his main rival. Not always the smartest move. Anyway, I stopped at a bookshop on the way home to have a look. Very similar material indeed, just a slightly different order. I'm still wavering on the issue of "unrealistic sentence patterns" in MT anyway. No, I'm not denying that his sentence patterns were odd at times, but it seems to me he made a trade-off to get diverse grammar in as soon as possible, and as the individual sentences weren't supposed to be memorised, I think I can forgive him for this. Noble's course seems to hold off a lot longer than Thomas's on introducing the auxiliary verbs for example. Noble seems to have placed a heavier focus on concrete lexical vocabulary on the whole, whereas Thomas stuck to function words as much as possible, leading to low lexical density utterances, which theoretically should lead to a much better internal model of natural language, even if (paradoxically) it is achieved through the use of unnatural utterances.
It's free... with the course. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5566 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 13 of 51 21 September 2010 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think, looking at WH Smiths website, that the DVD comes with the book/cd set - so its only 'free' in the sense that Collins might withdraw it from later editions.
As to the 6000 words - I suspect it is the old cognate trick (this scam was mentioned in a joke printed in TY:A First French in 1955!) - one of the advertising blurbs reads: 'Paul pointed out that I already knew thousands of Spanish words due to their similarity to the English ones… this boosted my confidence before I’d even started'. We also have 'Paul finds a clever way of making you visualise the word you’re about to learn by using parts of words you already know in English.'. So we have have word association as well. All sounds very Michel Thomas at the moment. Apparently, however, 'A native-speaking expert helps Paul to deliver the course and to perfect your pronunciation' so one of the complaints made against MT may be overcome with this addition. I may appear sceptical and dismissive - but this is mainly of the advertising puff and Mr Noble's claim that every other language course on the market is near to useless, even for a man of his prodigious IQ - if his course is like MT with some of the kinks ironed out (as it appears to be), it looks to be a worthwhile course for beginners. Edited by Elexi on 22 September 2010 at 8:49am 2 persons have 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 14 of 51 21 September 2010 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The problem is, much as everyone whinges about the students, it does force a realistic pace, and nobody's challenged the validity of the patent yet. Is the Noble course realistic, or have they fallen into the trap of creating a theoretically idealised ordering that doesn't work for anyone? I would love to find out for myself, but I can't until he brings out a course in a language that I have zero (or near zero) knowledge in.
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| Romanist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5283 days ago 261 posts - 366 votes Studies: Italian | Message 15 of 51 22 September 2010 at 12:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Paul Noble...
That name seems to ring a bell. Isn't he one of the guys who used to post quite often on the (now defunct) MT Fan Forum..? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Welltravelled Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5863 days ago 46 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 16 of 51 22 September 2010 at 12:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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This is the first discussion I've found really interesting on the forum for a while. I often feel that all we normally end up discussing is whether FSI is better than Assimil or vice versa so it's nice to have something new to read for a change.
I agree with pretty much all of what you guys say. Interestingly though, I'm probably one of the few people on the forum who's actually been on a course at this language school - and it was only £90 when I went! Lol! I expect it's gonna be more costly now... I enjoyed the course and have tried to recommend (the language school at least) to more or less anyone who is struggling, as I found the course personally to be very beneficial. I also bought both the French and Spanish courses last week, if only to see what they were like. I must say that I actually find the course much more like Pimsleur than Michel Thomas. It does more "functional" (is this the right word??) things than in Michel Thomas, like booking a hotel room or ordering a meal or buying a ticket etc. It's got a lot more of this sort of thing than there is in Michel Thomas. So it's sort of like a thematic course mixed with a sentence building course. Quite unusual, I suppose. There also aren't any students on it, which makes it feel very Pimsleur like. But yeah, I think much of it's been done before but I would say that both the French and (from what I've had chance to listen to it) the Spanish would be very good beginners courses, in particular in terms of the explanations that are given by Noble. Ultimately, it's a bit like a British version of Pimsleur - but with cognates. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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