Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Living Language Ultimate Series

  Tags: Living Language
 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes Post Reply
23 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3  Next >>
randy310
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6824 days ago

117 posts - 117 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 1 of 23
05 August 2005 at 8:26pm | IP Logged 
Has anyone had any experience with the Living Language Ultimate series which comes in 10 languages? Most of them come in 2 levels with 8 hours audio and a 400+ page text for each level. They are crammed with an incredible amount of information. The languages covered are Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Mandarin, Russian, Arabic, and English for Spanish speakers. Each course seems to cover much more material than Pimsleur even though there is only 16 hours audio due to the thick texts. I used this series for Spanish after pimsleur and before Fsi. What Pimsleur does cover it covers very well. You will find it intertwined within your dna when you finish it!
1 person has voted this message useful



ElComadreja
Senior Member
Philippines
bibletranslatio
Joined 6997 days ago

683 posts - 757 votes 
2 sounds
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Cebuano, French, Tagalog

 
 Message 2 of 23
05 August 2005 at 10:25pm | IP Logged 
So how would you compare Living Language it to FSI? More/less advanced, same but different approach, or complementary?
1 person has voted this message useful



randy310
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6824 days ago

117 posts - 117 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 3 of 23
05 August 2005 at 11:17pm | IP Logged 
I would say that Living Language Ultimate Spanish is a good program for what you get for the money but not as effective as Fsi. It does go through most of the grammatical structures but their method of taking part in dialogues without such Fsi standbys as substitution, transformation etc, are not going to be as effective but better than most anything else out there. One upside is that ultimate is good to add more up to date vocabulary to supplement Fsi which is a bit dated as far a some of its vocabulary is concerned.
1 person has voted this message useful



ElComadreja
Senior Member
Philippines
bibletranslatio
Joined 6997 days ago

683 posts - 757 votes 
2 sounds
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Cebuano, French, Tagalog

 
 Message 4 of 23
05 August 2005 at 11:35pm | IP Logged 
From what you describe, Living Language sounds like many of the FSI courses. Spanish FSI is quite unique in its exercises.
1 person has voted this message useful



timinstl
Triglot
Groupie
United States
timsviajes.com
Joined 6876 days ago

88 posts - 92 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, French
Studies: Italian, Mandarin

 
 Message 5 of 23
09 August 2005 at 12:11pm | IP Logged 
I have Ultimate Chinese and I rather like the course. I use it simultaneously with Pimsleur. I often will see the words in the Ultimate book that I hear on the Pimsleur CDs. They also have different ways of saying some things, for example: Ni de jia-li you ji ge ren? is what Pimsleur says is the proper way to say "How many people are in your family?" Ultimate omits the "-li" meaning "inside" after "jia" meaning "home." I wonder which is more common?

I would also say that Ultimate Chinese sounds more authentic. The "native" speakers on Pimsleur's courses don't sound too native to me.
1 person has voted this message useful



Kyle
Groupie
United States
Joined 6834 days ago

49 posts - 49 votes

 
 Message 6 of 23
10 August 2005 at 10:50pm | IP Logged 
I don't know about other the languages, but the Living Language Ultimate Japanese (maybe Chinese too?) has an inherent flaw: They don't teach you using the native script! I've seen the book, and all new information (vocab, examples etc.) is written in the latin alphabet. Would it be so hard to have Japanese script printed over the latin for the people who actually want to learn the entire language and not bypass one of its most facinating parts, the wiritng system.

It's just impossible to have a decent course in Japanese using "romaji." Romaji is EXTREMELY misleading for a non-native speaker of Japanese. It's like Living Language decided to take the easy way out, assuming Japanese script is too difficult for the learner. And if even if someone is absolutely insistent on ONLY learning the spoken language, they could simply ignore the Japanese script. Who knows, maybe they might pick up some kanji and kana just from seeing them on the page...
1 person has voted this message useful



randy310
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6824 days ago

117 posts - 117 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 7 of 23
11 August 2005 at 1:04am | IP Logged 
Some of the experts feel that it is best to concentrate on the spoken language first in Japanese and Chinese before starting on the written language. Didn't you learn to speak English before you learned to read and write it?
1 person has voted this message useful



Shusaku
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6859 days ago

145 posts - 157 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: English*
Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese

 
 Message 8 of 23
11 August 2005 at 8:05am | IP Logged 
There is a very good reason for including the native script - it makes it much easier to get help from a native speaker. I've never met, for example, a native Cantonese speaker who can read romanized Cantonese text, yet all of them can read Chinese characters. If you don't want to learn the script, no problem, just ignore it! I personally refuse to buy any book which contains only romanization.


1 person has voted this message useful



This discussion contains 23 messages over 3 pages: 2 3  Next >>


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 7.2188 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.