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Why don’t you write a perfect course? | ||
Tags: Alexander Arguelles | Textbooks | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 5936 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes  | Message 73 of 78 31 July 2009 at 11:55am | IP Logged | |||||
Reading the excerpts from random chapters as provided on their site doesn't do justice to the method. The books are meant to be used linearly, with knowledge being built up through the course of the chapters. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kugel Senior Member United States Joined 6326 days ago 497 posts - 555 votes Speaks: English* | Message 74 of 78 31 July 2009 at 9:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
Of course, but it would be interesting to see just how a text can avoid being ambiguous when the text is not your native language. After all, you can't guess on words in your native text, so why would guessing on words be true for an L2? It's not like the direct method in language learning was designed by mathematicians using probability theory. Is it not like rolling the dice if the context is ambiguous? For each word is there a set of possible definitions that the author has considered? Did the authors considered the empty set? Why should there be an empty set? Naturally, one wouldn't come up with nonsense like, "America is in chocolate, and China is in doltons." But it can't be this simple in the "big sense" of language learning. The laws of indifference necessarily mean that a text will be ambiguous in most cases if one doesn't know the vocab. However, if one was a genius on probability theory, and if the direct method was designed so that it was mathematically impossible(probability of the sun not rising again) for a student to fail the language instruction, then that would be a very interesting language learning method. Edited by Kugel on 05 August 2009 at 6:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6258 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 75 of 78 05 August 2009 at 7:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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There is a vocabulary book available as a companion, but really, you don't typically need it. The contexts where you encounter new vocabulary have been chosen very well, and sometimes pictures or other explanations accompany the introduction of new vocabulary on the sidelines.
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| JonB Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6053 days ago 209 posts - 220 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Italian, Dutch, Greek | Message 76 of 78 05 August 2009 at 2:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I wonder if Prof Arguelles still reads the posts on the forum?
(Apart from one brief plug for a Youtube-video, he hasn't posted anything here for several months past, has he?) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5500 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 77 of 78 14 August 2009 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Actually,
I did think of one more thing I don't like. Since this course is more than likely going to be inspired by one of the old A. Cherel Assimil type courses, I can think of one more thing I dislike about that course. The exercises. After each dialogue is an "exercise," which I'm guessing doesn't mean "exercise" in the traditional sense (something done as a means of practice) but meaning to display aspects of the lesson. Now if there was an actual exercise one could COMPLETE I think that would be a great improvement. Also, as has been mentioned the "7th lesson" in the older Assimils were not exercises in the traditional sense: no drilling, no questions. Just an explanation of what you've learned. This is nice but this is one of the big reasons this course needs supplementation. I'd love to see something like a mixing in of my other favorite course: the old TYS series. Okay, I'm done! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5373 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 78 of 78 28 August 2009 at 4:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would DEFINITELY buy the ones for Italian, French, German, and Esperanto (if you made one for esperanto)
Best of luck, and I really hope that something stems from this idea :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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