|
 |
Streetwise French vs Living Language UFA | ||
Tags: Living Language | French | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| jhaberstro Senior Member United States Joined 4392 days ago 112 posts - 154 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 1 of 10 09 April 2013 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Hello all,
I'm finishing up Assimil New French with Ease, and though I have all ready started reading and watching a lot more native material, I'd also like to continue with another foreign language teaching program. I'm debating between the Streetwise French and Living Languages' Ultime French Advance course. Has anyone used one or other (or both) and can attest to each's usefulness? Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gala Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4549 days ago 229 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 2 of 10 09 April 2013 at 5:05pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I haven't used either for French, but I have for Spanish. Or rather, I completed the
Ultimate Spanish Advanced and I started to use the Streetwise before I quit for reasons partially detailed in this thread: (EDIT:removed non-working link. It works in emk's quote below, and DID work here when I first posted it [I checked.] Weird.... I can't seem to fix it, either.) I would imagine that there might be similar problems with the French version. LL's Ultimate, on the other hand, is known to be a solid series for all the languages it offers. EDIT: I still have Streetwise Spanish and I don't think it's completely worthless: I probably will go through it someday. But I definitely decided that anything unfamiliar in it should be taken with a grain of salt, and I have plenty of more reliable resources to deal with in the meantime. Edited by Gala on 09 April 2013 at 9:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4714 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 3 of 10 09 April 2013 at 6:42pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Just out of curiosity, what have you reached with Assimil?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5531 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 10 09 April 2013 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | ||
I've never seen Streetwise French, but I've flipped through several books claiming to teach French slang, and they were full of stuff that I've never heard anybody say. Can you imagine an English slang course full of things like "That's really groovy, daddy-o"? Now repeat that slowly in a foreign accent for maximum humor value. I think the best use of slang books is reading them aloud to your native friends as a form of entertainment. Some good native sources for colloquial French: 1. Persepolis is absolutely loaded with conversational French. It was written by a woman who grew up in Iran during the revolution. Here's a sample page, which I've posted before. 2. Vie de merde contains short, funny posts by people who've been having very bad days. I read this obsessively for several months, looking up the unknown words and making a couple hundred Anki cards with VDM stories on the front, and definitions for key words on the back. This did amazing things for my understanding of adult, colloquial French, and I learned lots of little cultural details about speed traps, school exams, and other things that stress out the French. The big advantage of using popular, native materials for learning colloquial language is that it's hard to go wrong. Even if you choose something a bit idiosyncratic—like Monty Python in English—it's not as if there aren't millions of natives quoting it. Edited by emk on 10 April 2013 at 2:00pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jhaberstro Senior Member United States Joined 4392 days ago 112 posts - 154 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 5 of 10 10 April 2013 at 4:45pm | IP Logged | ||
|
You all have convinced me that it is probably best to stay away from Streetwise French. Thank you! I will try out LL
UFA and report in some months time to say whether I like it or not! :-) @fabriciocarraro - I haven't been strictly using Assimil (that is to say, I've been using a lot of other learning material as well), so I can't say that the level I've reached is completely due to it. It is also hard to gauge one's own level, but if I had to I would approximate that I'm a low-mid B1. What I feel like is the biggest obstacle at this stage is vocabulary (I simply just need to know more words!). I thought that oral comprehension would be the most difficult, but I've realized that if the know most of the words being spoken, then my oral comprehension is quite good -- it's just rare that I will know the majority of the words being spoken :P. It was great the other day when I have was reading lemonde and I came across the word empêcher, which means "to prevent", and then later that same day I heard it while listening to RFI's Journal en français facile. Not only will that word forever stick in my mind, but it also greatly boosted my comprehension of that particular segment of RFI, which felt great! @emk I think you're completely right that most likely it's hard to bottle-up slang into a teaching course because slang changes so often! Even more, in English the slang that one generation uses is often time different than the slang another generation uses, and I would assume that it is the same in French. Thank you for posting about Vie de merde. I remember visiting it upon your recommendation in a old post quite awhile ago, but at the time I couldn't figure out what the site was about. It is great to finally know! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5165 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 6 of 10 10 April 2013 at 6:54pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Well, my 2c.
I used both and Streetwise French was more helpful. You don't need to set yourself to speak like this. You just get used to natural speed, relaxed talking. There are so many idioms, so many expressions at SWF that I don't think a native speaker could look at them all and say "I don't speak like this". I'm sure you'll hear nearly all of what is in the book quite often. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Gala Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4549 days ago 229 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 7 of 10 10 April 2013 at 8:40pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Well, my issue with Streetwise Spanish was not that it used dated slang (as is clear from
the link to that thread;)which it didn't, but that it taught a particular meaning for a certain slang word that is actually a minority meaning for it in one tiny region of the Americas, and claimed that this alternate meaning applied to a huge swath of the Americas! It was especially troubling as the meaning they gave for it is positive, when the much more common meaning is highly derogatory and offensive. This makes it hard for me to trust any of the information in the book, which in this case was unreliable to the point that trusting it could cause you to unwittingly outrage and offend, with who knows what result. But Streetwise French is by different authors, who may very well have researched their definitions much better. Or not, I can't say. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5165 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 8 of 10 10 April 2013 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Streetwise French covers a much narrower region, that is, it's tipically Parisian French with some remarks on Quebecois and maybe Belgian (not sure about the latter). Thus, the chance of coming up with something unappropriate in most of the French-speaking world is smaller than in the case of Spanish.
1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
