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Collins Paul Noble Language series

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Random review
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German

 
 Message 41 of 51
06 December 2010 at 10:58pm | IP Logged 
Cainntear wrote:
Also, listening to the free sample from the Collins website, Noble has made some of the same mistakes as are common in the posthumous Thomas courses. Which is kind of ironic when one of the post-Thomas teachers is moaning about the course....


Oh, I know!!!!! I'm just checking out the booklet for his Spanish Course, and for someone who criticised Thomas' "unnatural sentences" he's not afraid to use them himself- nor should he be, there was a REASON Thomas used them; but coming from someone who criticised that point...

For instance "he preparado el café para Vd"

Correct Spanish? Yes. Natural, no! Without some supporting context it sounds forced, the neutral sentence is "le he preparado el café"

Of course Thomas did this too, but that's fine because it's not actually incorrect and you were never meant to remember his sentences; but tell me, if you are not meant to remember Nobel's sentences then why does he include "situational vocabulary"?

Edited by Random review on 06 December 2010 at 11:03pm

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Random review
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5578 days ago

781 posts - 1310 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German

 
 Message 42 of 51
06 December 2010 at 11:09pm | IP Logged 
The more I think of it the more ridiculous the whole thing seems! It's neither fish nor fowl. Fancy teaching invitar? Fine if you do it to illustrate how you can find cognates, and also if you use the verb as a vehicle to illustrate grammar (all of which Thomas did), but a bit silly if you want to teach situational vocabulary, as Nobel does. I'm only on P.22 of 80, but I'll wager that he doesn't warn his students to be a little cautious when using invitar with meals etc unless they plan on paying for the person they're inviting, how could he in just 10 hours?

I'm pleased to see he seems to be teaching the vosotro(a)s form of the verb, bet he doesn't teach "vos" though (which between Argentina and Central America must have about as many users).

Update: possible serious error! I rarely use the vosotros form myself, but I watch a lot of Spanish telly, and I could have sworn that the present indicative vosotros form of tener was tenéis, can someone confirm? His booklet lists "vosotros tenís", is that a typo, or is it on the recording too.

Edited by Random review on 06 December 2010 at 11:21pm

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Random review
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5578 days ago

781 posts - 1310 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German

 
 Message 43 of 51
06 December 2010 at 11:13pm | IP Logged 
"Quisiera reservar una mesa para la cena pero quisiera
saber si es romántico."

I stand corrected, it's realistic sentences all the way with this guy.
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Cainntear
Pentaglot
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Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
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 Message 44 of 51
07 December 2010 at 1:29am | IP Logged 
Random review wrote:
I don't really CARE if it's legal or not- I care whether it is RIGHT. The fact that many perfectly ethical things are illegal, and v.v is neither here nor there for me, and in my opinion it's just not right how he has gone about this.

Well if we're talking legal vs right, what about the other people making low-quality knock-offs of MT and selling them as the real thing? I'm mostly thinking Hodder and Stoughton here....
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Cainntear
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
Joined 5806 days ago

4399 posts - 7687 votes 
Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh

 
 Message 45 of 51
07 December 2010 at 1:32am | IP Logged 
Random review wrote:
The more I think of it the more ridiculous the whole thing seems! It's neither fish nor fowl. Fancy teaching invitar? Fine if you do it to illustrate how you can find cognates, and also if you use the verb as a vehicle to illustrate grammar (all of which Thomas did), but a bit silly if you want to teach situational vocabulary, as Nobel does. I'm only on P.22 of 80, but I'll wager that he doesn't warn his students to be a little cautious when using invitar with meals etc unless they plan on paying for the person they're inviting, how could he in just 10 hours?

Yup, he's completely missed the point of cognates by jumping in with coffee and dinner from the word go -- just like everyone else who has done a Thomas clone course, pro or amateur, authorised or unofficial.
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Random review
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5578 days ago

781 posts - 1310 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German

 
 Message 46 of 51
07 December 2010 at 1:47am | IP Logged 
Cainntear wrote:
Well if we're talking legal vs right, what about the other people making low-quality knock-offs of MT and selling them as the real thing? I'm mostly thinking Hodder and Stoughton here....


Most of them were pretty crap (I haven't tried Japanese, Greek, or Polish), but I think they were done in good faith by people who *thought* they knew what they were doing, and as I have said before IMO the authors of the Dutch course *did* actually do a very good job, and the Mandarin and Portuguese courses were OKish, if not nearly up to the standard of the original 4. What Nobel is doing, on the other hand, is quite deliberate. I guess it probably must be legal if Collins are involved, which only goes to show that Thomas wasn't as paranoid as I used to think.     :-(

Cainntear wrote:

Yup, he's completely missed the point of cognates by jumping in with coffee and dinner from the word go -- just like everyone else who has done a Thomas clone course, pro or amateur, authorised or unofficial.


well, to be fair to me, whatever mistakes I made in my German Case System patch that wasn't one of them.

Edited by Random review on 07 December 2010 at 1:51am

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Cainntear
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
Joined 5806 days ago

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 Message 47 of 51
07 December 2010 at 11:44am | IP Logged 
Random review wrote:
Cainntear wrote:

Yup, he's completely missed the point of cognates by jumping in with coffee and dinner from the word go -- just like everyone else who has done a Thomas clone course, pro or amateur, authorised or unofficial.


well, to be fair to me, whatever mistakes I made in my German Case System patch that wasn't one of them.

Ooops... I'd forgotten about that and I'd never looked at it so wouldn't be able to criticise anyway. No offense meant....
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Random review
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5578 days ago

781 posts - 1310 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German

 
 Message 48 of 51
07 December 2010 at 8:01pm | IP Logged 
Far from taking offence (why should I expect you to have seen it) I was having a look around your blog at the time. I think I just mentioned it for the record, and maybe to goad you into looking at it, because (as you will see if you DO read that thread) I had been actually hoping for some comments from you (I don't always agree with your criticisms, but they are always interesting and well thought out).

Edited by Random review on 08 December 2010 at 9:15pm



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