Juggernaut Newbie United States Joined 6406 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 1 of 6 10 May 2007 at 10:10pm | IP Logged |
I have the Spanish allTalk course from Linguaphone... has anyone here ever tried it out? Is it any good? It says on their website that the allTalk course covers around ~2000 words, which seems like a lot more than Pimsleur. I'm working my way through the entire Michel Thomas series so I'm wondering if this program will be of any use to me.
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dmg Diglot Senior Member Canada dgryski.blogspot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7009 days ago 555 posts - 605 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Dutch, Esperanto
| Message 2 of 6 10 May 2007 at 11:04pm | IP Logged |
I was not a beginner when I listened to the French allTalk course, and that's probably why I didn't like it. I found the main character's _terrible_ French accent super annoying. I also would have liked to be able to _just_ listen to the story bits, but they were scattered across the CDs and mingled in with other lesson bits that it was difficult to separate them.
To sum up: I didn't like it, but I wasn't the target audience and I wasn't using it as directed. Not much of a helpful review, I know, but I thought I'd share my opinion anyway.
That said, I do think it's an interesting approach to language instruction: the gradual easing in to the foreign language at a "natural" pace.
Mission Europe (in the "Links" section) has a similar format. I suppose French in Action in also similar, but instead of English, you just have friendly Prof. Capretz patiently explaining things with lots of pictures and examples. If immersion is the best method of language learning, then products like these (which attempt to mimic how immersion "feels") _should_ work fine.
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nickbos Newbie United Kingdom Joined 7163 days ago 29 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Italian
| Message 3 of 6 11 May 2007 at 6:31am | IP Logged |
I used the Italian course and found it very useful - as
a complete beginner. You certainly learn enough to get
by on a daily basis. It does need to be supplemented
with some written material though - I used the HUGO 3
months series which was useful in filling in the grammar
gaps. The free BBC stuff online is also a useful
supplement.
Disks 8 & 16 contain the entire story in a single block
in the language being learned. So those who are not
complete beginners can listen to these to see where they
need to start.
It gets my vote - much less academic than the traditional
linguaphone courses, which now seem a bit dated.
Trust this helps.
Nick Bos
UK
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Mistermark21 Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4610 days ago 23 posts - 26 votes Studies: Swedish* Studies: French, German, Spanish, Polish
| Message 4 of 6 26 April 2012 at 12:55am | IP Logged |
Im doing the German one now, im not a beginner but picking up some excellent vocab. So it gets my vote!
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Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5563 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin
| Message 5 of 6 26 April 2012 at 9:04am | IP Logged |
In my view you would be better off getting the 1970s Linguaphone courses and studying those over a long
term. The old courses were excellent language courses matched only by Assimil's Without Toil series in
terms of depth. The All Talk series, whilst having its moments, is just too shallow in what it covers and has
far too much English commentary.
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DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6149 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian
| Message 6 of 6 26 April 2012 at 10:09am | IP Logged |
I also did the 16 Hours French All Talk a number of years ago. It may teach 2,000 words but the course isn't designed for multiple repeat listenings. There's so much English on the recordings it takes a few minutes to adjust back into the French. Assuming the OP is looking for a majority audio course for Spanish, I'd recommend the Platiquemos course. It's based on the FSI course, but the late Don Casteel, added English audio. You'll still need to do some home study, but a lot less than most other courses. You'll need to listen a lot though.
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