Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5581 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German
| Message 33 of 42 02 January 2012 at 5:51pm | IP Logged |
Well the core method is based on their development of the work of Michel Thomas, they
openly acknowledge that, so all the stuff about the pause button is no coincidence.
They do the same at the start of the Greek course. Regarding the start of the English
course, all that ible/able stuff (which is well known and used by many courses) is a
hook: it's a key feature of the method to get people excited and showing them how much
knowledge they can transfer is the easiest way to do so and they undoubtedly got this
"hook" from Michel Thomas too. But the structure of English is Germanic, not Romance,
so it will be completely impossible for them to just reverse the whole MT Spanish
course, and so I'm willing to bet they don't. It's just a case of taking bits here and
there to improve their own new material and build a new whole: this is neither plagiarism nor even blame-worthy, though it might indeed be possible to sue- but if it
is then it's frankly disgusting. I started to listen to their English course out of
curiosity when it first came out, but I stopped because I noticed what sounded to me
like mistakes in the Spanish base language, and while I guess I might be wrong (I'm not
qualified to say they definitely WERE mistakes), I didn't want to risk harming my own
Spanish, so I can't say how they broke English down, I wouldn't mind knowing!.
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Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5663 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque
| Message 34 of 42 03 January 2012 at 9:18am | IP Logged |
Just a note: the coures aren't "based" off the MT courses, they simply mention MT as being a big influence for them and thinking that MT was on the right track, but the actual methodology or system is different (and in my opinion, much more effective).
Also, I think their Spanish is actually very good. I'll listen to it again, but when i first checked it out (apart from the Argentinean accent ;)) i remember being impressed by their Spanish.
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Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5581 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German
| Message 35 of 42 03 January 2012 at 6:05pm | IP Logged |
Er, I didn't say it was based on the MT courses; I said it was based on their
development of MT's work. In other words they took what was good in his
method
and added to it.
Don't you think that's true?
You may be right about the Spanish, I acknowledged that it was just my impression. I
rather liked the Argentinian accent too :-)
Edit: just listened to the first track of English for Spanish speakers for an example
of what I'm talking about. On 36 seconds he seems to me to say, "desde Reino Unido y
Estados Unidos". For me this should be "desde el Reino Unido". I listened to
this phrase a few more times to be sure and in fact on closer listening it seems like
he says "desde e Reino Unido", so perhaps I just have trouble understanding his
accent. The native Spanish speaker doesn't seem to have any such trouble, so it's
probably me.
Edited by Random review on 03 January 2012 at 6:39pm
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Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5663 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque
| Message 36 of 42 03 January 2012 at 10:14pm | IP Logged |
Oh, i misunderstood what you meant, sorry! I think you're absolutely right, i just think it's important to note that it's not simply an improved MT course. I'm really interested in seeing how the courses progress. Has anyone started either of the new courses yet? I'll need to go through the first part again, as it's been several months since i've done it.
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daristani Senior Member United States Joined 6942 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek
| Message 37 of 42 28 February 2012 at 9:30pm | IP Logged |
For those interested, the Language Transfer project has now added the third level of their Greek course.
http://www.languagetransfer.org/
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Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5663 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque
| Message 38 of 42 02 July 2014 at 11:42pm | IP Logged |
There have been a few major updates recently at Language Transfer.
1. The entire (complete) Spanish course has finally been recorded. This is a new course written from scratch and i imagine the recording is much clearer than the old Spanish course. It hasn't been uploaded yet as they are still in the process of cleaning it up and whittling it down to fit into 15-20 hours. This will be the first complete course released so we can get an idea what to expect after completing an entire course.
2. The Introduction to Arabic course is scheduled to be released this fall (though i think we've long since learned to take these dates with a grain of salt ;))
3. On a similar vein, the Introduction to Turkish course is also scheduled to start recording and there are plans for a Winter '14/'15 release. Unlike the Arabic course, they've already been giving Turkish workshops so they've already tested the course out a bit.
Personally i'd like to see the Greek course finished before expanding into the others, but i guess it depends on who's available for what.
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embici Triglot Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4408 days ago 263 posts - 370 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Greek
| Message 39 of 42 03 July 2014 at 1:26am | IP Logged |
Crush wrote:
Personally i'd like to see the Greek course finished before expanding into the others,
but i guess it depends on who's available for what. |
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I second that. It's great.
By the way, is it possible to fix the spelling of Cyprus in the title or is it too late?
Edited by embici on 03 July 2014 at 1:28am
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Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5581 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German
| Message 40 of 42 03 July 2014 at 2:12am | IP Logged |
Crush wrote:
There have been a few major updates recently at Language Transfer.
1. The entire (complete) Spanish course has finally been recorded. This is a new course
written from scratch and i imagine the recording is much clearer than the old Spanish
course. It hasn't been uploaded yet as they are still in the process of cleaning it up
and whittling it down to fit into 15-20 hours. This will be the first complete course
released so we can get an idea what to expect after completing an entire course.
2. The Introduction to Arabic course is scheduled to be released this fall (though i
think we've long since learned to take these dates with a grain of salt ;))
3. On a similar vein, the Introduction to Turkish course is also scheduled to start
recording and there are plans for a Winter '14/'15 release. Unlike the Arabic course,
they've already been giving Turkish workshops so they've already tested the course out
a bit.
Personally i'd like to see the Greek course finished before expanding into the others,
but i guess it depends on who's available for what. |
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I loved their Greek course too. I think I saw something on the website or FB page about
a new Greek course "late 2014".
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