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How can you trust a language course? | ||
Tags: Textbooks | Language Program | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Akao aka FailArtist Senior Member United States Joined 5336 days ago 315 posts - 347 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Toki Pona | Message 1 of 15 06 May 2011 at 6:54am | IP Logged | ||
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How can you know if the material in a course/book on a language is authentic or accurate?
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| Alexander86 Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom alanguagediary.blogs Joined 4981 days ago 224 posts - 323 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, Catalan Studies: Swedish | Message 2 of 15 06 May 2011 at 8:36am | IP Logged | ||
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By the reviews it is given? By what the lovely people on this forum say?
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 15 06 May 2011 at 8:57am | IP Logged | ||
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I once quoted a number of examples from a Russian Grammar, and much later I got a PM from a native Russian speaker who wrote that most of those examples either where wrong or at least suspicious or unusual. The morale is: you can't trust anything. You can't even trust reviews, because some companies or authors may have strawmen to write positive reviews, which then are quoted without further test. When I use supposedly genuine texts from the internet the author could be a second language learner. The positive side is that you don't have to be afraid to learn some errors - sooner or later somebody will tell you about your errors, or you will get to a stage where you can see how you really should express yourself. Edited by Iversen on 06 May 2011 at 11:02am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5567 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 5 of 15 06 May 2011 at 9:15am | IP Logged | ||
You mean "you don't have to be afraid". ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 15 06 May 2011 at 11:04am | IP Logged | ||
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I most certainly do
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 7 of 15 06 May 2011 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | ||
Strongly agreed. And even educated native speakers can make some howlingly odd errors. They're fallible, and they can also cling to odd theories of how some part of a language ought to work. It's a rarity to see a text for beginners which is entirely natural, even when it's aimed at people who speak closely related languages already. That said, most textbooks (and most novels) are accurate enough to learn from. I'd be rather more cautious about learning from grammars; they often seem to have more odd distortions of a language. They're a great reference, but a questionable source of sentences, unfortunately. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Declan1991 Tetraglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6439 days ago 233 posts - 359 votes Speaks: English*, German, Irish, French | Message 8 of 15 06 May 2011 at 2:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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And remember that textbooks will be written with one specific dialect and register in mind. Even if you look at English, a language that all dialects are extremely understandable for all speakers, a textbook with American English in mind will sound absolutely ridiculous to someone from Ireland like myself.
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