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The new Living Language courses? | ||
Tags: Living Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 1 of 17 17 June 2013 at 5:42am | IP Logged | ||
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I have started to work on the wiki and I created beginning of the Living Language article. If anyone would like to give their review or opinion on any of the Ultimate courses, they would be welcome. Either put them to the wiki or, if you don't want to bother learning how to wiki, please send them to me and I'll put them to their proper places. (The same applies to individual TY, Colloquial, Assimil, FSI and other courses)
However, I found out (some time ago but I focused on it now) that the Ultimate courses are still being sold and perhaps reprinted but the company is now focusing on their new, multimedial courses. They come in three levels: Essential, Complete and Platinum. All the info on the official website turns around the multimedia, the apps, the up to date language being part of your life and all that jazz. What they don't mention at all is the actual level of the courses, approximate number of words, etc. There is as well no sample and the books look quite thin (however, they are probably not the main part of the package). I have found only one review which seemed to be independent and it sounded really positive but still vague and didn't speak too much about the results. The rest of the reviews I found are about the Ultimate courses or they mix the two product lines up. There seems to have been a previous generation of the new multimedia thing as well. Bottomline: It's chaos! Has anyone here tried those new products? Your insight would be more than welcome. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 2 of 17 17 June 2013 at 11:47am | IP Logged | ||
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I was curious and so I tried to look closer at the courses. I have glanced through http://www.livinglanguage.com/languagelab/distribution/641 which is an overview of all three levels of German with flashcards and games and I downloaded the free demo of the App.
It's horrible! The "Advanced" level is probably A1. The advanced topics are Shopping, At the Restaurant and Proffessional Lives. Each lesson seems to include about 30 words and about the same number of phrases. Yes, there is audio for everything, that is probably the only good thing. The App includes the flashcards, conversations with audio, some grammar explanations (which look really boring to me and I usually love grammar) and games-exercises. Most of them are based on translation of words or phrases in sume shiny environment (bubbles, searching for pairs etc). Some are multiple choice exercises (again nice looking: a knight hits a dragon once for each correct answer of yourse). But! Example: Der Bruder of my Mutter is my ____. What the hell? And all the sentences are like that. Than it is just a detail that there are the same photos for every language, at least in the beginning lessons. In the super expensive version, you get everything together: books, cds, apps and etutoring. Etutoring sounded like it could be nice but: " Living Language eTutoring is intended to be used only in conjunction with those self-study courses with which it is sold. It is not open-ended, private, or semi-private online instruction. Living Language may suspend or cancel the account of anyone who uses or attempts to use this service in any way outside of its intended purpose or otherwise violates the terms and conditions below." say the terms and conditions. So, what I think after seeing all this. For 50 or 180 dollars, you can get to A1 level, perhaps. Perhaps. The "advanced" complementary exercises on their website don't look much different from the "beginner" ones. Well, now it's more than clear why they are so vague about the level you will get to using their new products. It is said to see a company that used to produce quite good courses end up this way. Of course, if anyone has more experience with this and it differs from my impressions, please disagree with me. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Gala Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4552 days ago 229 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 3 of 17 17 June 2013 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Your evaluation jibes with what I remember of some of the Amazon reviews. I remember in
particular a review for the new French that said that one of the very last topics covered (therefore "advanced") was reflexive pronouns! A shame indeed. The Ultimate courses were good, and the Ultimate Advanced courses were excellent (at least the Spanish was.) The Spanish Beyond the Basics was also quite good, and, based on looking through the corresponding introductory course (Complete Spanish: The Basics or something like that) at the library, it seemed worthwhile. As for the printing status of the Ultimate courses, an Amazon search shows new copies of the books only, and only for Beginner-Intermediate, being sold by Amazon itself. Copies (mainly used) of the whole set with CD's, and of any portion of the Advanced sets are only being sold by "3rd party sellers." So I believe these latter are out of print. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 4 of 17 17 June 2013 at 9:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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I later found one of the amazon reviews through an old thread for the wikia.
Really, does noone these days recognize the shame for the bad work when they feel it? Third party sellers if you are lucky or download. Again, I expect someone point out and start shouting "Cavesa defends breaking copyleft! Shame on her!" But when they don't want to sell, I don't have how to buy legally. And actually, I wish pirating could make them go bancrupt, perhaps those people would relearn the value of honest job. :-D Oh, so many dreams and so bad sense of humour. I shoupd perhaps go to sleep tonight for a change. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4861 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 5 of 17 19 June 2013 at 1:07am | IP Logged | ||
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Is the 1998/2003 revised already a new version or yet the old one? I was able to see the French Ultimate Advanced and well... the dialogues were nice, but the grammar quite easy and I can't really call it advance. It's like A2 I can say.
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| Gala Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4552 days ago 229 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 6 of 17 19 June 2013 at 1:51am | IP Logged | ||
I wouldn't agree with that, at least not for the Spanish. It's true that they don't introduce that much in the way of grammar concepts that would be completely unfamiliar to someone with an A2 level, but how many people at A2 would have mastered their usage in fairly complex sentences (which the course does use)? I had learned pretty much all of the Spanish grammar in at least a skeletal fashion by the time I was at about A2, but I certainly wasn't *done* with it at that point. All of the advanced courses I have seem review some of the more basic grammar points, while adding more complex nuances to their usage. The vocabulary and the idiomatic studies certainly go beyond that level, and the audio for the dialogues is just barely slower than native speed. Anyone that can listen & repeat within the short pauses provided without the text in front of them is certainly beyond a high beginner level. I'd say it's at least B1, B2 if thoroughly mastered. Edited by Gala on 19 June 2013 at 1:53am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5263 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 7 of 17 19 June 2013 at 10:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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There is a video review largely dealing with the Living Language series:
My favourite language course The bottom line is - as far as I recall; I watched the video only once months ago - that the Living Language series (once an excellent resource) is currently being dumbed down to an incredible degree. Just the first book of an old two-volume course would probably take you much further than the whole of the much bigger-looking "Complete" successor. It is interesting that Prof. Arguelles also made a video review of the series a couple of years ago in which he praised the older books as one of the few remaining substantial language textbooks still on the market and indeed made some suggestions for further improvement - in the faint hope that the company might listen to his advice. Apparently they didn't but instead cut out 2/3 of the content and worked the remains into a sort of multi-part multimedia package. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5834 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 8 of 17 20 June 2013 at 12:49am | IP Logged | ||
I strongly disagree. Either you're confusing the advanced course with the beginners'-intermediate course or you need to look at the CEFR criteria. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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