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About classroom meant courses | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 1 of 2 25 October 2013 at 4:33pm | IP Logged |
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These courses are quite rarely mentioned here, unlike the most famous self-study
sources like TY or Assimil. But I think it isn't wise to narrow down your choices just because a course is primarily meant to be used in classes. As I have used quite a lot of them both in self-study and in classes, I dare to give my view in hope someone may find it useful and try to find something useful in this underestimated bookshelf :-) CONS: -vast majority of them has too much pictures and too little real content for the price -often separate audio which is not always cheap (I recommend not to buy such courses, not unless you can borrow the cd in a library) -they often expect you to get supplements. in the classes, it leads to the students being flooded by chaos of copies from various workbooks handed out by the teachers. in self study, it often means buying at least a systematic grammar book -a lot of the exercises are meant for groups -some lack the key to exercises (again, I recommend not taking these. very few of those are self-study friendly, not giving out the key or the audio are just signs of a bad approach in my opinion) -a lot of focus on school topics and multi-culti-eco propaganda instead of useful language. A clear pressure on the textbooks to prefer globalized, racially and culturally mixed photos and articles over the content trully typical of the country and culture whose language you study. To some extent, it is understandable. But more often it comes in overdoses and it is annoying. -monolingual ones are more difficult to use for true beginners -often divided into more volumes. it is no exception that there are more than one volume per level -usually divided among a textbook and workbook. just as the point above, it is probably a strategy to get a higher price in the end. PROS: -there are such courses for more languages and the selection tends to be much wider. -the good courses among them can give you a core structure leading up to B2 or even C1 while most self-study aimed courses end at B1 at best -they can prepare you better for exam tasks and topics, should you wish to pass an international exam -some of them have the audio, the key to exercises, good explanations and tons of exercises. they are not that different from self-study courses, sometimes better -a lot of the exercises people complain about can be modified for self-study: 1.speaking and group assigments: speak to yourself, write, record yourself, whatever you find useful. just try to speak as much as you can. you can even take the exercises as a base for a skype session or anything. 2.open writen assignments (or some speaking exercises): write and get them corrected by natives on italki or lingq etc. -monolingual course is a huge asset for an intermediate or advanced learner -especially the monolingual courses are usually much more numerous than bilingual courses in any other base language than English. And they are equally usable for everyone no matter their native language. -unlike when it comes to self-study courses, the authors and publishers expect you to get through the whole book, not to give up after one or two units Both kinds of courses have a lot in common. There are good and bad examples of both. The bad ones tend to be bad even for the classes. Both should provide you with audio and key to exercises in order to be trully useful. Both need to be well structured and planned. Both should aim to give you some basics and structure but neither will get you from zero to fluency by itself. A few tips from my experience: -look for a good course, a course that will suit your needs. Don't limit yourself to the self-study shelf only in your bookstore. After all, there is likely to be just as high % of bad self-study course as the % of bad class-meant ones. -check a few things and compare what you found with what do you want and expect: 1.does the structure of the course seem logical to you, does it seem to suit your needs? 2.are there the grammar explanations? 3.are there the vocabulary lists? 4.is there a cd, how long is the audio, is there everything or just picked bits ? 5.is there a key to exercises? 6.does the author prefer spoonfeeding or larger chunks of material? 7.how many volumes are there, what is the final level? If it is not too high, is there a follow up series? 8.do the exercises look well thought out and worthwhile? 9.do you like the graphics? (not only photos but as well the organisation of the page etc. the things that are often important for the learners' comfort)? 10.does anyone you trust have a good experience with it? 11.what are the weaknesses that you'll need to supplement? and anything else you are interested in for a growing list of courses, including the classroom meant (both bi and monolingual), try the wikia. Please, add your experience either in the thread or there. (for example, I'd be very interested in high level Spanish courses, one is called Abanico or something like that. and Italian classroom meant courses. And the English ones as I am teaching one person and hope to get a few more students soon.) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 4050 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 2 of 2 29 October 2013 at 5:57pm | IP Logged |
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@Cavesa :
I congratulate you on your initiative in creating this topic for discussion. I found your presentation of the PROS and CONS both balanced and thorough. My own experience with these types of courses was through the MCGRAW-HILL FOKUS DEUTSCH programme and the LANGENSCHEIDT BERLINER PLATZ programme. In both instances, I purchased the entire packages: course books, exercise books, additional CDs, and the DVDs. While my experience reflects your own, I would add the following: IF you are working on a self-study programme and IF you already have a fairly thorough basic course (FSI Basic, Linguaphone, Living Language Ultimate, Assimil, and there a countless others), plus a reasonably good Grammar and bilingual Dictionary, THEN I would recommend that you purchase ONLY the DVDs from the above programmes. Transcripts are available for free on their publishers' respective websites. I found that the above programmes, in themselves, did not provide material that is substantially different from that offered by a sound self-study course. They are frightfully expensive and the additional costs would be better put towards Graded Readers with CDs and Audio-Magazines ... meiner Meinung nach! In passing, I found that the Langenscheidt Berliner Platz programme was well structured, whereas the McGraw-Hill Fokus Deutsch programme established a new low in organisation of the different course components. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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