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No-Time series - A. E. Van Vogt | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6153 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 19 25 November 2011 at 4:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Just came across this series of all audio courses on Cafe Lango. They seem to cover a large number of languages. Has anyone tried them ? What are they like ? Edited by DaraghM on 25 November 2011 at 5:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 2 of 19 26 November 2011 at 1:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I noticed that it says "remastered sound on MP3" in the description, implying that it's an old course. And given that most of their material is from FSI courses, that's not much of a surprise.
The name A E Van Vogt was new to me, and the internet only throws up one suggestion: Alfred Elton van Vogt, whose Wikipedia page says that he wrote more than 46 books, but most of them were sci-fi, and the 4 non-fiction ones aren't even about language. He was born in Canada to a Low German-speaking family, though, so probably did develop quite a facility for languages. Still, to see one course in 15 different languages with the same guy's name on them all is dubious. I suspect they'll suffer from many of the usual symptoms of "template teaching".... 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 3 of 19 26 November 2011 at 10:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think I learn everything in pretty much the same ways, which would make me a "template learner", but extremely successful as such nevertheless. Obviously, the more dissimilar any two given things you have learned are, the less detailed the 'template' for them must be, but even so. I think I teach different things the same way too, but I'm usually aware of the differences and of what can be a stretch. What are the (I gather bad) usual symptoms of "template teaching"? Edited by mrwarper on 26 November 2011 at 10:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4911 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 4 of 19 27 November 2011 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
I can't answer for Cainntear, but I also don't like what I'd call "cookie cutter" approaches to language. The biggest example of this is Rosetta Stone (although I've heard the newest version has improved in this area), in which they use the same photographs regardless of the cultural context of the language. This applies to vocabulary as well, and so you learn, for example, the Hindi word for kangaroo and strawberry. Another example is the series of visual dictionaries published by DK. Because all the languages have it, the Hindi version has a page on architecture which is chock full of useless words such as: frieze, spire, pediment, neoclassical, choir. The page also has a set of words with no Hindi equivalent: rococo, baroque, renaissance, gothic, art nouveau, and art deco. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 5 of 19 27 November 2011 at 5:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
Here's a concrete example from a Gaelic learning resource. The "adjectives" lesson used greetings to demonstrate adject placement. Good morning Good evening Good night Good luck Now this works fine in many languages, but in Gaelic you get Madainn mhath Feasgar math Oidhche mhath Gur e math a thèid leat You don't need to understand Gaelic to see how the "things to learn" template given to the author wasn't quite appropriate.... Jeffers is right about Rosetta Stone being a classic example of template problems, and there was some pretty stark criticism from University of Berkeley on an earlier version of the Russian course not providing enough examples to pick up the number system (which is quite complicated in Russian). One of the problems that comes out in the template/cookie-cutter courses is that gender coverage can be quite random. Because they tend to start out with a list of important words and try to use them across languages, they rarely map the course out to check that they've given a representative spread of all genders in all situations. What happens if your Russian course doesn't have any examples of a neuter noun in plural? You don't learn it. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 6 of 19 27 November 2011 at 6:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Ah, ok. Never been a RS guy, I'd never know. I'm also completely against the 'pick up the rules from the examples' approach and inductivism applied to language learning, it just wastes so much time.
You know, "cookie-cutting" and "template teaching" sound horrific when you 'say it like that', and your examples are certainly terrible, but fortunately that is the kind of blundering I think I'd never fall into. Actually I was curious about possibly less evident (and thus harder to avoid) pitfalls. Instructive, nonetheless. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 19 27 November 2011 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The other thing that you find with templates is the old "run... run... run... gallop" problem.
Lots of courses fall into this trap -- there's a section on verbs of motion, and it's mostly "run, walk, jump", but they make the mistake of putting a horse in, and the translator has to decide between using correct horse-related vocabulary ("trot, gallop, jump") or using the incorrect form in order to keep to the point of the lesson. But thankfully, the template problem only occurs in preproduced materials -- most teachers are sensible enough to avoid the problem in the classroom. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6153 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 8 of 19 02 December 2011 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Occasionally my curiosity outweighs my financial sensibility. This happened last night and so I bought a downloadable copy of No Time Hungarian from Learn Out Loud. The course consists of 6 hours of audio with no written material. The audio is comprised of 6 MP3 files of one hour each. This probably worked well as a tape, but it's not great on an MP3 player. The other main problem with the audio is the quality. It's seems to be a poor transfer from tape. The audio quality is similar to the audio on FSI or Modern Russian 1.
The audio begins with a copyright notice from 1979 by a mysterious entity called the "200 language club". This exciting sounding club turns out out to be a name used by the science fiction writer, A.E Van Vogt for the language learning series. I'm not sure if the voice on the tapes is Van Vogt himself or another non native Hungarian speaker. My suspicion is that it is him. However, there's a level of fluency with the spoken Hungarian that it might also be a native. Once the course begins we get a description of Hungarian, it's connection to other Finno-Ugric languages, and some information on Hungarian speaking areas of Europe. At this point the course then enters hyper speed language learning mode. We're told a number of Hungarian words that derive from German, Latin and even Greek. The words are explicitly spelt out and the Hungarian accents described. The audio isn't afraid to use grammatical terms, and for a first time language learner this might be extremely off putting. The course feels like it's a fast paced all audio grammar. I skipped ahead a couple of tapes and listened to sections on constructing the conditional tense, Hungarian post positions and other specific grammar topics. This is certainly not a template style course. I'm not sure if the course asks the listener to compose sentences using the rules provided. I think it might, but I'll need to listen through an entire tape. According to the course description, you should cover a 2 hour segment by studying the course at 40 minutes every day for entire month. This course description isn't included on the tapes, but may have been present on the cover. There's no advice whatsoever on using the course on the tapes. In summary, I actually like the approach. It feels like a course written for aspiring polyglots. If this was during my early attempts at language learning, I probably wouldn't have used it. At this stage, I like the crammed grammar aspects and rapid discussion of vocabulary. I may also purchase another course for one of the less well travelled languages. My only major criticism is the audio quality which makes the words hard to distinguish. Update: Having listened to a bit more of the course the speaker is definitely not a native Hungarian, and is probably Van Vogt himself. He also speaks incredibly quickly, which coupled with the audio quality, makes it very hard to hear some words. The course does test the material learnt. Similar to Pimsleur and Michel Thomas you are required to produce a Hungarian translation from an English prompt. Edited by DaraghM on 02 December 2011 at 2:47pm 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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