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Worman’s Modern Language series | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| fortheo Senior Member United States Joined 5036 days ago 187 posts - 222 votes  Studies: French | Message 1 of 12 28 December 2014 at 7:04am | IP Logged | ||
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I just discovered an older series from what seems to be around the late 1800's.
However, despite the age of the book, it seems like a gold mine for any language lovers out there; especially those of us who like to dive into the language head first. The book from the series that I'm looking at specifically is called, " The First French Book After The Natural method" Here is the cover of this ole beauty 
The first lesson seems to start off with very simple text, and pictures in order for the reader to infer the meaning of the text. The pages also supply footnotes which offer greater elucidation on certain parts of the text. Also, the various inflections of verbs are bolded in order to demand the readers attention to these changes. Here's a couple screen shots from the very first lesson. 
second page 
I think this book is kind of amazing. It's like a graded reader with grammar lessons built into it. I have a few french friends on skype and I might get them to record them selves reading the lessons from the book so that I can do an assimil like L/R approach to it. Also, he has courses in German and Spanish too. Here's a list of his courses 
And finally, since the books are so old it was very easy to find a free pdf on the internet. Here is the link, check it out for yourself. https://vivariumnovum.it/edizioni/libri/dominio-pubblico/Wor man%20- %20First%20French%20book.pdf (hyper linking isn't working for me, copy and paste that in your browser. The first page is a GOOGLE message about digital books, scroll down and the rest is the text book) If you're interested in the method check out the preface (it's only a few pages). If any of you have used any of these books before, let me know how you liked them! *edit, my current review* After going through a few lessons in this book, this is my current review: The cons Overall, let me start with this: I think this book can be extremely helpful, but There are a few minor issues. There are some punctuation errors (I'm not sure if it's from typographical errors from digitizing the book or what) They are usually minor though, such as a forgotten question mark at one point (nothing too serious). Also, this book consists of a lot of dialogue, but it's written in paragraph form. You can usually infer who is talking. Here is an example of how the dialogue within the lessons may look: Georges, avez-vous trois livres sous le bras? Non, monsieur, j'ai seulement un livre sous le bras. Louis, combien de livres avez-vous dans la main, un, deux, ou trois? J'ai deux livres dans la main, et deux livres sous le bras. but it would be a lot easier if it was written like Professor: Georges, avez-vous trois livres sous le bras? Georges: Non, monsieur, j'ai seulement un livre sous le bras Professor: Louis, combien de livres avez-vous dans la main, un, deux, ou trois? Louis: J'ai deux livres dans la main, et deux livres sous le bras. etc etc. However, it's not a big issue as the speaker usually be identified very easily. Also, with the way it is written in the book...it really damands that you pay attention. The Pros what I really like about this book is that when it introduces a grammar point, it goes on to display a functional use of that grammar in the following pages of the lesson. It's not like the typical grammar books that give you a vocab list, a grammar point, and ask you to fill in the blank; instead this book shows you the grammar in real life use and in it's various forms. It does an excellent way of showing you how it's actually used so that you as the learner can infer how the grammar is working within the actual language. If I had to compare the lessons to anything, I'd compare it to the French in action courses. If you've used the french in action courses, think back to the first 5 or so lessons where it was the professor speaking to the class in simple french parent—to—child (motherese) like language" slowly, lots of repeating phrases, repeat grammatical points but with different verb objects or subject pronouns etc etc). Now imagine that in written form with pictures and great grammar tips here and there to clarify things and you'll have a vague idea of how this course works. It would be amazing if it had audio, but it is extremely old so it's understandable. Like I said earlier, I may get a friend to record herself reading the lessons; but it may get boring or confusing since the lessons have various speakers and she is only one person. A revamped, modern version of this course with cleaned up punctuation/dialogue format and an audio component would basically be my dream course. Edited by fortheo on 28 December 2014 at 11:51am 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| redflag Senior Member Australia Joined 3842 days ago 123 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish, Indonesian, French | Message 2 of 12 28 December 2014 at 7:21am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for this. Interesting!
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| fortheo Senior Member United States Joined 5036 days ago 187 posts - 222 votes Studies: French | Message 3 of 12 28 December 2014 at 8:09am | IP Logged | ||
No problem. There is also a supplemental questionnaire book to go along with it, and a second book in the series. I've never heard of this guy before, but he seems to have put out a lot of courses. I really like the natural method so I may try it. I'm thinking of getting the hard copy though—I spend way too much time in front of computer screens already. the pdfs for all of the books in the German, French, and Spanish versions of this series can be found on googlebooks for those that are interested. Edited by fortheo on 28 December 2014 at 11:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| carlyd Groupie United States Joined 3989 days ago 94 posts - 138 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 4 of 12 29 December 2014 at 2:46am | IP Logged | ||
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If you're interested in old books, I proofread for Project Gutenberg and here's the listing for all the language books they have available. There should be no typos or scan errors--that's what we fix during proofreading.
https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Language_Education_(Bookshelf ) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4797 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 5 of 12 29 December 2014 at 6:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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The cover undeniably looks gorgeous.
If you go on Google Books and search for language books, you'll get a very comprehensive list of books, all public domain, that incorporate identical or similar methods. And for a lot of languages. I spent some time a while back poring over these books and thinking, "people back in the day had such an intuitive approach to language learning." Of course it's still basically artificial, graded material, but in my opinion, it's a bit more learner-friendly than books that bombard you with endless exercises. I hate exercises. The language may be a bit outdated, depending on how far back the editions are, but I personally don't find this to be such a huge issue, since it's still a learning crutch that you will eventually abandon once you approach native materials and real people. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4909 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 6 of 12 29 December 2014 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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That is a seriously awesome find! The copyright page says it's from 1883, but I don't think that is too much of a problem. I wish I had this text when I was a beginner, but I think I'll read it just for the fun of it. For anyone doing the Super Challenge, I counted the words on a couple of pages and there are about 150 words per page, so two pages would count as one page for the challenge.
And here is a working link: https://vivariumnovum.it/edizioni/libri/dominio-pubblico/Wor man%20-%20First%20French%20book.pdf EDIT: I couldn't find his "Second French Book", or his "First German Book". Any idea where these PDFs might exist? Edited by Jeffers on 29 December 2014 at 9:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5541 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 7 of 12 29 December 2014 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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There's also a series of Latin books called Lingua Latina that uses the natural method. You can find out about them here. I've read a number of good reviews and it looks like you can also buy ebook versions of at least part of the series (they're also available on Amazon).
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| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4797 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 8 of 12 29 December 2014 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | ||
Here you go. First German Book, Questionnaire: Supplement to First French Book (not the second book), First Spanish Book, and Second Spanish Book. Here's the Google Books link to his books. EDIT: Found the Second French Book and the Second German Book :) Edited by Woodsei on 30 December 2014 at 12:01am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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