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The good and bad of Teach Yourself

 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes Post Reply
37 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4
datsunking1
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5585 days ago

1014 posts - 1533 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French

 
 Message 33 of 37
16 May 2011 at 8:23pm | IP Logged 
I have Esperanto, Russian, and Portuguese all from 1950's and 1960's era. They are excellent, the Esperanto one is unbelievable, I went off of a recommendation from users on this forum actually :) The only downfall is that they DO throw a lot at you. (And there isn't any audio) but once you master the basic sounds of the language I think they're amazing. I can't speak for the new editions though :/
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tractor
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5453 days ago

1349 posts - 2292 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan
Studies: French, German, Latin

 
 Message 34 of 37
16 May 2011 at 9:12pm | IP Logged 
I have a few of those old Teach Yourself books too (German, French, Italian and Catalan). The Catalan one is not that
old (first published in 1975), but follows the same formula. There are no puzzles and no childish games. They treat
you as an educated adult. They are traditional grammar-translation based courses, and since they are grammar
heavy, I wouldn't recommend them to everybody. Besides, there's no audio and the language is rather formal and
dated (at least in the German one). However, I think they are excellent supplements to more "modern" methods,
such as Assimil.

Edited by tractor on 16 May 2011 at 9:12pm

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aru-aru
Triglot
Senior Member
Latvia
Joined 6457 days ago

244 posts - 331 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, Russian

 
 Message 35 of 37
17 May 2011 at 8:12am | IP Logged 
exscribere wrote:

Thanks! I can already read Devanagari, but trying to justify the cost of Complete was a hard thing, without knowing the contents. Now it's time to see if I can get one of these from Infibeam or Flipkart over here, with the audio CD's... Thanks again!


That "Complete Hindi" is exactly the same book as the older edition, "Teach Yourself Hindi". Get that one from e-bay or used somewhere else. I've seen several of the "old" TY books (Nepali, German, etc) side by side with the "new" TY Complete ____ books, they've been the same so far. Of course, the price tag for the "new" one can be more than two times higher.

"Teach Yourself Hindi" is sold for around RS 400 (without CD), and the "new" Complete Hindi book was, I think, like 1700+ (also no CD). Try finding the "old" edition!

Edited by aru-aru on 17 May 2011 at 8:14am

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Elexi
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5565 days ago

938 posts - 1840 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French, German, Latin

 
 Message 36 of 37
17 May 2011 at 10:10am | IP Logged 
I have worked through the old 50s (actually originally 1920s) yellow/blue cover TY French and the German 'for fun' and my view is that whilst they were good exercises they are pretty cursorary in their explanation, have out dated vocabulary, and at times quite frankly idiosyncratic grammatical structures. All this means they are probably best left as revision.   

There are lots of more modern courses that give you that level of revision without the oddities and antiquarianism found in those old books - older does not of necessity mean better.
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vykis92
Groupie
LithuaniaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5315 days ago

68 posts - 71 votes 
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 37 of 37
20 May 2011 at 5:20pm | IP Logged 
Hmmm.. I wonder if there is any differences in content from different TY editions, like for example TY Japanese from 2003 has 381pages, but TY Japanese from 2004 has only 340pages. Does later edition has less content too?


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