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Courses you want revised or updated ? | ||
Tags: Corrections | Language Program | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6156 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 9 07 October 2011 at 11:49am | IP Logged | ||
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What language courses would you like to see revised and updated. Personally, I'd love to see new versions of the following.
1. Cortina Method Series. I really like the method, but most of the courses use antiquated language and spelling. E.g. German, Greek, Italian. 2. Linguaphone Complete Series. I really like their Russian course, but I'd love to see a version that captured modern Russia. 3. Modern Russian 1. Like the Linguaphone course, this course is also from the 1970s. When I drilled the dialogues I find myself saying товарищ (comrade), which is more than a bit outdated, and likely to get me slapped. I'd also love to see higher quality and crisp audio for this course. What other courses would you like to see updated and revised ? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| July Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 5278 days ago 113 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishB2 Studies: French | Message 2 of 9 07 October 2011 at 1:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Assimil Using Spanish (European Spanish, 1996). Really useful course, but some of the
vocabulary is explained badly. And while the French version may be fantastic, the English translation is just awful and sometimes it's difficult to work out what they're getting at, or believe that anyone would ever need or want to say such a thing. If they would revise that, it would be fantastic. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7161 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 3 of 9 07 October 2011 at 6:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Davvin 1-4: So far the series exists for speakers of Finnish, Norwegian or Swedish so a revision for English-speakers would be most welcome even if I can't imagine that many people in the Anglosphere are clamouring to learn Northern Saami :-P Like "Finnish for Foreigners" and "Intermediate Polish" below, "Davvin" shows its age with the latest edition dating from 1984 (!). However an update here to reflect life in the 21st century would probably be more relevant for the course's notes about some aspect of Saamic culture or the sociolinguistic situation rather than the language itself.
Finnish for Foreigners 1 & 2: Comprehensive and well-designed course but could use some updating to reflect the social, political and technological changes that have happened since the release of the latest edition (1987 (!)). Dialogues that refer to calling landlines or from public phones seem really out of place in Finland these days considering the domination of cellphones and the Finnish government's decision of a few years ago to remove all public phones except those in airports or large railroad stations - and even then these public phones use Skype). Intermediate Polish: Also comprehensive and well-designed but not only could it use some updating to reflect life in post-communist Poland or Poland in the EU, but an answer key to make it even more usable for someone who can't manage to find a native speaker of Polish to check exercises/homework would be very beneficial) Teach Yourself Slovene: Atrociously inadequate and really needs an overhaul to make it effective. There is hope in that "Colloquial Slovene" which was first created by the same author (Andrea Albretti) is due to be released in a new edition by Marta Pirnat-Greenberg this fall. There are several other courses that I know of / have used which could be revised but the presence of substitutes does remove somewhat the need for revisions (e.g. the much higher quality of the comparable "Teach Yourself Estonian" somewhat perversely removes the need to improve "Colloquial Estonian" even though the latter is quite poor in comparison). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7020 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 9 07 October 2011 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | ||
They should: (a) offer the same number of languages that they used to about thirty years ago, (b) keep the format/structure but just update some of the content (e.g. use Euros in the relevant European language courses), (c) increase the amount of audio available, (d) offer follow-on, intermediate courses for all languages, not just French, Spanish and German, (e) recall all the PDQ and similar recent courses then donate them to NASA so they can send them in the next rocket to the Sun, and, finally, (f) declare bankruptcy after all those changes. Edited by patuco on 07 October 2011 at 6:55pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6555 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 5 of 9 07 October 2011 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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Assimil Russian, English version
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| pfn123 Senior Member Australia Joined 5088 days ago 171 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 9 08 October 2011 at 12:01am | IP Logged | ||
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FSI. It would be good to see the FSI courses updated. Especially for the audio to be rerecorded.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mayfair Diglot Senior Member Australia theasiaanalyst.wordp Joined 5424 days ago 48 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Mandarin | Message 7 of 9 08 October 2011 at 12:49am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree that an updated FSI would be nice. The Korean course in particular is terrible. This is such as shame, because it would be a wonderful resource if it had audio that was worth imitating. And if it was all in hangeul. And if it didn't use such stiff Korean.
Wishful thinking, I suppose. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6555 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 8 of 9 08 October 2011 at 5:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Oh, and I'm not sure if this counts, but I'd like all the non-Michel Thomas MT courses revised to cover all the basic
grammar, just like the originals. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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