instasaint Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 5247 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Speaks: Hindi*, English
| Message 1 of 15 12 August 2010 at 5:10am | IP Logged |
Having spent lot of time reading these forums, I've concluded that FSI, Assamil, Pimsleur, Michel Thomas are best language programs there are.
I am not sure if I've discipline to follow learn-on-your-own method. For me, best would be if there was a program where a teacher used one of these methods to teach the language.
Do you know of any such programs/schools where they use MT/Assamil/FSI/Pimsleur methods?
I noticed on MT's website that they offer private and group classes but, oh my god, they are so expensive. This guy (MT) charges $30,000 for roughly 5 full days of classes! If you take classes from one of his certified instructors, the fee drops to roughly $8000 for 10 full days of classes but that's still beyond my reach!
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hobbitofny Senior Member United States Joined 6261 days ago 280 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian
| Message 2 of 15 12 August 2010 at 7:22am | IP Logged |
You can not have MT do the teaching. He died a few years ago. They have not change the web site.
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instasaint Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 5247 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Speaks: Hindi*, English
| Message 3 of 15 12 August 2010 at 7:31am | IP Logged |
hobbitofny wrote:
You can not have MT do the teaching. He died a few years ago. They have not change the web site. |
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Thanks for letting me know. So, is that company also pretty much defunct? Or do they still teach languages?
Anyway, the question stands: does anyone know of any class based programs (either one on one or group) modeled after Pimsleur/FSI/DLI/MT?
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Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7131 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French
| Message 4 of 15 12 August 2010 at 8:57am | IP Logged |
There used to be one or two language schools that used Platiquemos (FSI Spanish) as the basis of the course materials. Whether they're still going or not, I'm afraid I don't know.
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fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7174 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto
| Message 5 of 15 12 August 2010 at 11:05am | IP Logged |
I was first introduced to Assimil at an evening class I took to learn French. The textbook was French Without Toil. I loved the book and eventually bought the records to go with it from the school. I picked up the German Without Toil records cheap at a second hand music store and went back to the language school for the German book.
I don't know that I would say the programs are the best. Some languages have excellent material.
What you can do is take private tuition and ask the instructor to teach you from the book you provide. I did that successfully with Russian For Everybody. I took the reader with me and asked if we could spend some time on the material I was studying at home each week. It worked well. That option is certainly cheaper than the MT courses you mention.
Edited by fanatic on 12 August 2010 at 11:05am
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johntm93 Senior Member United States Joined 5355 days ago 587 posts - 746 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish
| Message 6 of 15 12 August 2010 at 8:58pm | IP Logged |
Michel's company isn't defunct, they still come out with courses that have people other than MT teach. I assume they'd still do classes, just with MT's proteges instead of MT (as he can't teach, he passed away).
Don Casteel (Platiquemos inventor) also died a few years ago, which is sad because he seemed like a really cool guy. I'm not sure if his company is defunct or not, but I know some members here have had trouble ordering from the site since his passing.
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instasaint Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 5247 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Speaks: Hindi*, English
| Message 7 of 15 12 August 2010 at 9:51pm | IP Logged |
fanatic wrote:
What you can do is take private tuition and ask the instructor to teach you from the book you provide. I did that successfully with Russian For Everybody. I took the reader with me and asked if we could spend some time on the material I was studying at home each week. It worked well. That option is certainly cheaper than the MT courses you mention. |
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This makes sense. But it'd be really cool to find some tutor/teacher that already use FSI/DLI methodology to teach. This way, the person would have experience and would know exactly how to teach in that manner. If I don't find teacher or school that already use FSI, I would do what you suggested -- I would take private lessons and ask my instructor to follow FSI/DLI/MT method.
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aru-aru Triglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 6485 days ago 244 posts - 331 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, Russian
| Message 8 of 15 13 August 2010 at 12:44am | IP Logged |
The methods you mentioned all have their advantages, that is sure. But do not ignore the fact that a language can have some textbook not published by any of these 4 companies that might be superior to the books published by those 4.
Say, for Chinese I would not recommend Assimil book as the main text. The way MT records explain tones is... well... let's just say I don't like it. Other good stuff out there, though.
Be open to this, is my point. Don't say no to other textbooks before really checking them out.
Rather than searching for a school that uses particular method, try out the language schools nearby, check what texts they use, ask around which teachers are liked by fellow learners. If you go for a teacher, in my experience, a good teacher can do wonders with most textbooks, while a bad one will not do a good textbook justice.
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