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Your favorite language program?

 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes Post Reply
376 messages over 47 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 44 ... 46 47 Next >>
Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4867 days ago

2151 posts - 3960 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

 
 Message 345 of 376
17 June 2014 at 2:02pm | IP Logged 
TY stands for Teach Yourself. It is one of the big language publishers and has a lot
of courses. Most of their courses follow the traditional pattern of: dialogue,
vocabulary list, grammar notes, exercises. They also have beginner courses, audio
courses, advanced courses, etc.

They have a lot of the normal languages you would expect, like French, German, Italian,
etc. In that case, they have a lot of competition and might not be the best choice.
But for some languages, they are one of very few choices. So I recommend TY for people
learning Hindi in part because there are few other options.

One more comment: TY have a habit of bringing out new versions of courses every three
years or so. In most cases they have simply re-packaged the older course without any
substantial change. What makes it worse is that they re-name the course, which makes
people think it's a different course.

Edited by Jeffers on 17 June 2014 at 2:14pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 7114 days ago

4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 346 of 376
15 July 2014 at 3:15am | IP Logged 
On Oct. 14, 2009, Chung wrote:
administrator wrote:
What are your favorite language program?
I will use your results to create new tags/keywords so that you can dig out every post about your favorite program from the forum 5 year archive.
Thanks!


If we define "Language Program" as "Brand" or "Publisher" of language courses then it depends for me. Because I study "unpopular" languages, I'm sometimes forced to look beyond the commonly-used publishers for my materials. The approach, presentation and depth of coverage used by the course's author is much more important than the course's "publishing / branding flag".

For BCS / Serbo-Croatian, my favourite coursebook (so far) is "Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian - A Textbook" published by the University of Wisconsin.

For Estonian, my favourite coursebook (so far) is "Teach Yourself Estonian"

For Finnish, my favourite coursebook (so far) is "Finnish for Foreigners" published by Otava.

For Hungarian, my favourite coursebook (so far) is "Colloquial Hungarian" (older edition - the newer edition of "Colloquial Hungarian" isn't quite as good in my experience)

For Polish, my favourite coursebooks (so far) are published by Slavica (e.g. "Intermediate Polish") and Universitas (e.g. "Z polskim na ty")

For Slovak, my favourite coursebooks (so far) are published by Slavica (i.e. "Beginning Slovak") and Comenius University (e.g. "Slovenčina pre cudzincov - Gramatická a pravopisná cvičebnica")

When available, I like to use FSI Basic Courses but more as supplements since their value for me lies in how many drills they offer.


Almost five years later, I think that I can add to my list a bit even though my basic premise still holds in that it's not so much the brand that interests me as much as the course's quality. In the TY... and Colloquial... series, quality varies from one course to the next because of how the author(s) set to work. "TY Estonian" was excellent but "Colloquial Estonian" should never have seen the light of day. The first edition of "Colloquial Slovene" by Albretti is junk whereas the newer edition by Pirnat-Greenberg is much better.

For Turkish, my favourite coursebook (so far) is Öztopçu's "Elementary Turkish" (2 vols.)

I have no real favourite among the books that I've used for Ukrainian, although Shevchuk's "Beginner's Ukrainian" is probably the best of a so-so lot for beginners since its extensive audio is freely downloadable in .mp3 and the exercises come with an equally freely downloadable answer key despite Shevchuk not teaching quite as much grammar or vocabulary as "TY Ukrainian", "Colloquial Ukrainian" or the older "Modern Ukrainian".

It's hard for me to include Northern Saami, since I've really used only one set of coursebooks: the old series "Davvin" in 4 volumes. I've browsed the newer challenger "Cealkke dearvvuođaid" which is also in 4 volumes but was disappointed in that it didn't have answer keys like "Davvin".
3 persons have voted this message useful



hrhenry
Octoglot
Senior Member
United States
languagehopper.blogs
Joined 5088 days ago

1871 posts - 3642 votes 
Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese
Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe

 
 Message 347 of 376
15 July 2014 at 3:46am | IP Logged 
Chung, thanks for bringing up lesser studied languages again.

If anyone is interested in Ojibwe, there are a couple decent textbooks available:

Our Ojibwe Grammar

and

Ambe, Ojibwemodaa Endaayang!.

If you are in an area where universities teach Ojibwe, you might be able to find these books at their respective university book stores, otherwise they can be ordered from the links above. They are somewhat expensive, but the most definitive that I've found for the language.

And for a good intro to the language, Pimsleur, in association with Bemidji State University, has created a 30 lesson course. It's unlike the other Pimsleur courses.

R.
==

Edited by hrhenry on 15 July 2014 at 3:50am

1 person has voted this message useful



mentecuerpo
Newbie
United States
Joined 3710 days ago

2 posts - 2 votes
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 348 of 376
21 August 2014 at 8:52am | IP Logged 
Assimil Italian and French.
Living Language.
Babbel.com
Lingq.com

Assimil method for Italian and French: I remembered my father owing the German, English, Italian and French
editions around 1960's. It brings nostalgia and I remembered how much my father enjoyed this old vinyl recording. I
like the humor, the illustrations and the progressive learning as you go with the lessons.
Living Language for Italian.
Lingq.com reading as I listen to the pronunciation: Great to encounter the same word within different context and
meanings. Great vocabulary building.
I like babbel.com due to the "space repetition" "supermemo" vocabulary building.
1 person has voted this message useful



Enrico
Diglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 3703 days ago

162 posts - 207 votes 
Speaks: Russian*, English
Studies: Italian, Spanish, French

 
 Message 349 of 376
30 August 2014 at 2:31pm | IP Logged 
Assimil
Paul Noble
Michel Thomas
Pimsleur

Edited by Enrico on 30 August 2014 at 2:31pm

3 persons have voted this message useful



doodoofan
Tetraglot
Newbie
Vietnam
japanesetest4you.com
Joined 4673 days ago

19 posts - 25 votes
Speaks: Vietnamese*, English, Mandarin, Japanese
Studies: Korean, Spanish

 
 Message 350 of 376
13 September 2014 at 1:14pm | IP Logged 
My favorite program is Rosetta Stone. I've learned Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Spanish with it. It's a
great program for beginner, but not very good for advanced levels. If you finish 3 levels of Rosetta Stone
Japanese, you'll be at JLPT level N4.
1 person has voted this message useful



liam.pike1
Groupie
Australia
Joined 3712 days ago

84 posts - 122 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Esperanto, French

 
 Message 351 of 376
16 October 2014 at 3:44pm | IP Logged 
I am new to language learning, and my only real experience so far has been with Duolingo. I think it's great, but I
realise that it will only take me so far before I'll have to move on; then again, isn't this the same with all language
learning programs? And Duolingo is free! (Here is the post on DL which I recently made: http://how-to-learn-any-
language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=39413&PN=1 )

Just a question: do the Colloquial courses tend to be more easy-paced than the Teach Yourself courses? And do
Colloquial courses tend to not take one as far as TY courses? (I know each book varies, but just in general)
If so, then it'd make sense to go through the Colloquial book in one's target language, and then go through the
respective TY book...
1 person has voted this message useful



habadzi
Super Polyglot
Senior Member
Greece
Joined 5532 days ago

70 posts - 106 votes 
Speaks: Greek*, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Hindi, French, German, Italian, Ancient Greek, Modern Hebrew, Arabic (classical), Indonesian, Bengali, Albanian, Nepali

 
 Message 352 of 376
16 October 2014 at 5:44pm | IP Logged 
Jeffers wrote:
TY stands for Teach Yourself. It is one of the big language
publishers and has a lot
of courses. Most of their courses follow the traditional pattern of: dialogue,
vocabulary list, grammar notes, exercises. They also have beginner courses, audio
courses, advanced courses, etc.

They have a lot of the normal languages you would expect, like French, German,
Italian,
etc. In that case, they have a lot of competition and might not be the best choice.
But for some languages, they are one of very few choices. So I recommend TY for
people
learning Hindi in part because there are few other options.

One more comment: TY have a habit of bringing out new versions of courses every three
years or so. In most cases they have simply re-packaged the older course without any
substantial change. What makes it worse is that they re-name the course, which makes
people think it's a different course.



2 persons have voted this message useful



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