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Germanpod101 and Russianpod101 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Monstertone Newbie United States Joined 5051 days ago 2 posts - 5 votes | Message 9 of 24 11 March 2011 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I went to GermanPod101.com to check it out. I haven't done anything with it yet, but can say I want to marry the girl who does the intro video!
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| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6549 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 10 of 24 13 March 2011 at 12:26am | IP Logged | |||||
Apples and oranges, right? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6948 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 11 of 24 13 March 2011 at 3:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't have any experience yet with GermanPod101 or RussianPod101, but I'll post my
experience with other courses here in case anyone is interested. JapanesePod101 was a major learning resource for me for about a year. I appreciated that they teach Japanese as it's actually spoken, as opposed to Japanese as some native speaking old ladies wish it were spoken (students of Japanese know what I'm talking about). There's no other Japanese course I've come across that will teach some slang like 超やばい at the beginner level. And I think this is probably true of all the --- Pod101 courses, but it was really helpful to benefit from the perspective of a native English speaker who has reached a high level in the language. In contrast to the the Michel Thomas courses, the English speakers here are just as effective teachers as the native speakers. I quit JapanesePod101 after about a year because I outgrew the Upper Intermediate course, and the Advanced course was just a blog with a transcript. I felt that I could find similar resources online without having to pay as much money as I was. Also, as time went on the parent company (Innovative Language Learning or something like that) seemed to tighten its grip on the program, requiring more pushy marketing tactics and cheesy intros. (Also, the former producer is a friend of mine, but I can say without bias that the production value of the podcast has gone down noticably since he left a few years ago.) Eventually, I got sick of editing out 3 marketing/intro blurbs for each 15-minute episode. Before losing my enthusiasm for the Japanese podcast, I also had a brief experience with SpanishPod101. Unfortunately, the banter was so terrible that it was actually painful to listen to, and I didn't make it past the 7-day trial period. You could actually hear the Peruvian host struggling to read the lines that someone else had obviously written for her. And being the Newbie course I guess it was inevitable to a certain point, but I felt that this cheesy English banter took up too much of each episode in proportion to the information that was actually offered. Finally, I should add that I didn't appreciate the parent company's (or is it just JapanesePod101's?) marketing tactics. During the 7-day trial, you'll get an email every day that's designed to look like a personal email from the host, saying things like "Wait, Brianna, I don't get it... you seem to be enjoying the course, so why haven't you signed up yet?" and "Alright, it seems like you still are having trouble deciding, even after trying out all these amazing features, so I'll give you this discount code to get 30% off, but only if you use it TODAY! This is just between you and me, as a thank you for trying out the course!" Then, even after signing up, you get emails almost every day with important-sounding titles like "The most important Japanese phrase you'll ever need to know!" (I was recieving these every day for over a year, even long after quitting the course, until I realized you could disable them - my bad :) But the fact that they would send such spammy emails so often is just disrespectful.) This is in addition to all the marketing within the podcast episodes themselves. Even if I hadn't outgrown the courses offered, I'm sure these things would have driven me to quit what was otherwise a great learning tool. Does anyone have similar experiences with the other ---Pod101 courses? If this is not the case for SprachProfi's German course, I'd love to give it a try! 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6549 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 12 of 24 13 March 2011 at 4:56am | IP Logged | |||||
Isn't that just Peter Galante's company's name? I always thought he was just becoming more of a capitalist, stepping back and letting the company run itself. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6469 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 14 of 24 13 March 2011 at 10:16am | IP Logged | |||||
No, I actually don't know the girl who did the video. I believe she was an intern with the Tokyo office. I'm the voice in the Newbie, Absolute Beginner, Beginner, Intermediate and Upper Intermediate lessons, and a few of the audioblogs. The later audioblogs are recorded by Sarah, a German collaborator of mine. All other lessons are designed and recorded by a different team, Tokyo-based, so I can't say much about them. By the way, I know of at least two people who are using GermanPod101 as they would Assimil. They don't pay much attention to the podcasts, just download the dialog-only files and listen to these while reviewing the text & translation (including a more literal translation where necessary) from the lesson notes. The Word Usage notes work the same as in Assimil, so the biggest remaining difference is that you get grammar piecemeal with every lesson rather than a huge chunk of grammar every 7th lesson. I guess you could ignore the grammar sections of 6 lessons and then read it all on the 7th day ;-) Running a passive and an active phase is not a problem. I'm a big fan of Assimil (look up my Swahili experiment!) and I always wish they'd produce more lessons and cover more situations. 100 dialogs is already a lot better than Teach Yourself's 18-40, but they're still managing to miss situations that I'd like to study, for example how to discuss movies with friends, how to read apartment ads or some basic words for contracts. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6549 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 15 of 24 13 March 2011 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
Your description didn't match the description for Assimil too well.
You really can't do this with a podcast. They are not organized for it. They claim it's because they think it's best if the students just randomly choose what they want to study, when they want to study it. In fact, I've read podcast creators adamantly support this theory, and claiming they will never suggest a study order of any kind because it would violate that philosophy. Although I disagree with them, I do admire their passion. Anyway, if you choose 100 lessons that will do for a learner what Assimil does for a learner, studied in the same way. I will be very impressed. If you give me 350 lessons and tell me there is more vocabulary and grammar in them than Assimil, then I will politely say "that's nice" and continue to use them mainly as listening practice. No offense, but if the course designers won't even try to make the course efficient, try to tie things together, or hire real voice actors, they can't expect to get too much in the way of subscriptions. But I could be wrong. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6469 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 16 of 24 13 March 2011 at 11:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
What are you basing this on? Maybe you are thinking of disorganized podcasts, such as the ones created by our competitors? At GermanPod101, all lessons within one series are based on one another, i.e. in the first absolute beginner lesson zero knowledge of vocabulary or grammar is assumed, lesson two only assumes the items taught in lesson one, lesson three only assumes the items taught in lessons one and two, and so on. I keep detailed lists of which grammar and which vocabulary items have been introduced so far in order not to aggravate learners by failing to explain anything new, also I keep track of how often each vocabulary item has been reviewed since, to ensure that it is seen often enough to be memorable, and in different contexts. You can find additional usage examples for each new vocabulary item in the written lesson notes. If you're a false beginner, it is still possible to cherry-pick interesting topics from among Germanpod101 lessons. However, if you're a true beginner, you can't just skip a few lessons and expect to still understand things. So each series contains 25 lessons that are linked in everything. Then, company policy dictates that we have to start numbering afresh, but I still continue to refer to the same sheets of known vocabulary and known grammar, this is why I recommended the sequence Absolute Beginner Series 1 -> Upper Beginner Series 1 -> Intermediate Series 4, or Intermediate Series 2 -> Intermediate Series 3 -> Upper Intermediate Series 1, after which Advanced Audioblog Series 3 should be manageable. If intermediate students find GermanPod101 and decide to randomly start with any of the Intermediate level series without going through the previous programs, I can't predict what vocabulary or what grammar they know, so they may still find a few words that remain unexplained, or some that are explained even though they already know them; it's unavoidable. There shouldn't be too many issues though because I've reviewed dozens of textbooks for students of German and I've developed a feel for what is typically taught at which level, both in terms of vocabulary and grammar. And then the thing is, if you start with one series and stick with it, and then study its successor from start to finish, and so on, you will have little if any overlap, and very clear progression from absolute beginner to upper intermediate and beyond. I admit that this is not very typical of podcasts - you can find many language-learning podcasts on iTunes that consist of just one person mumbling about a different topic each week - but then, podcasts don't typically come with booklets and exercises either. GermanPod101 is called a podcast because the base fare is 10-15 minutes of interesting audio released on the same days every week, but that's about all it has in common with the genre. Edited by Sprachprofi on 13 March 2011 at 11:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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