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How best to use Linguaphone German? | ||
Tags: Linguaphone | German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4097 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 9 of 17 01 July 2013 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
Old post, but what?! I'm not sure which lesson is supposed to be the sudden wall. The course I presume we're talking about (...available...) starts with "Sie sind Student, ich bin Lehrer" and then introduces everything else in the language from the ground up, with exquisite coherence. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sabotai Senior Member United States Joined 5671 days ago 391 posts - 489 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French | Message 10 of 17 01 July 2013 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's not what I said. I said the difficulty increases faster than with newer courses. Not that there is this sudden wall. That means when you are half way through the Linguaphone coarse, you'll be further along than when you are half way through (the newer) Assimil German coarse, for example. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5354 days ago 938 posts - 1839 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 11 of 17 01 July 2013 at 11:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Can I just get clarification - are we talking about the 30 lesson that follows the Kuhn
family's holiday to German from Brazil? If so, having 'done' both courses, - I would say the newer Assimil (L'Allemand - Collection sans Peine) goes beyond the level of the Linguaphone course it at around lesson 75. Still I prefer the Linguaphone course - in fact, having only skimmed the surface of it, I am going through it again in more depth. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4097 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 12 of 17 01 July 2013 at 11:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
You seemed to be saying that the difficulty gradient is too steep. I was saying that I didn't personally perceive such a large ramp in difficulty ("sudden wall"). That said, I didn't learn from zero with the course, but having read them as a more advanced beginner, I believe that all the content unfolds from nothing excellently .
I am, yes. I have the old Assimil German course too so I'm happy that there is more similar material to systematically study - I will post my own comparison in this thread when I finish Linguaphone to my satisfaction and have had good time to sample the later Assimil dialogues. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Retinend Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4097 days ago 283 posts - 557 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 13 of 17 12 August 2013 at 7:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Okay so I went through the courses in this order: Linguaphone 1977(?), Assimil 196?, Assimil 200?. It's difficult to compare how complex each is
in comparison to the others, because I tackled them in this order, and with each book completed, I got better at the language. That said, I'll try to judge what the relative strengths are, as I perceived them. Linguaphone's major strength is the clarity of its explanations in the handbook. Assimil encourages you to plough on even if you're confused, but Linguaphone typically addresses points of grammar as they turn up. More specifically, the course focuses on one sort of structure per lesson. E.g. Lesson 24 ("Eine Erkältung") focuses on relative pronouns in subclauses. Lesson 29 ("Ein Theaterabend") is a workout in the subjunctive. In both these cases, the main feature (realtive pronouns, subjunctives) are sprinkled in earlier lessons with a only short explanations and the promise of later analysis. In this way you should feel somewhat familiar with the structures before they're thrown at you at high frequency. The audio is very well recorded and is crisply pronounced. The gaps in the tape are a big problem until you edit them out with the "truncate silence" option in Audacity. Even after editing the total runtime is, I think, 2.5 hours, which is impressive, but because they talk much slower than necessary, the total number of words is about as long as a short story - about 17000 words. The Linguaphone format of many books is inconvenient. The intention, I'm sure, is to get you to word things out, but I don't see the advantage of leaving so many blanks in the translation. How it works is that you get the German lessons and a vocabulary list, but only a handful of sentences are actually given an English gloss. This is frustrating because sometimes you think "this is a difficult sentence, why haven't the given it a gloss?" and you waste time searching back in the book for where the structure first appeared. Sometimes it doesn't ever seem to have been covered. But it's not a big sticking point, as you can always make an educated guess. OLD Assimil gives 125 lessons in comparison to NEW Assimil's 100. The audio is speeds up to more or less natural speed at lesson 75 or so. The material hasn't aged except for a few boring lessons about etiquette on trains and jokes about telegrams. Aside from the dull lessons towards the end, which take a narrow narrow focus on travelling, hotels and restaurants, there are lots of idioms, witticisms and jokes that are fun to learn. The audio totals 1.5 hours for lessons 50-125. But because this is material spoken at a quicker pace, this probably equals the Linguaphone course for its wordcount. For lessons 50-125 I typed 13000 words. New Assimil was, to my surprise, the most enjoyable course to use by far. The audio is charming and the conversations are genuinely funny rather than corny fun. It has only 100 lessons instead of 125, but the material is more diverse and challenging than the old Assimil. For example, it introduces many kinds of spoken contractions whereas old Assimil doesn't at all. It briefly covers topics of regional rivalry, health foods, and the German nation, and it includes language representative of a broad range of registers: fairy tales, travel brochures, gossipy conversation, jokes, and conversations between adults and children. It's odd to say it's "well written" but I really had a smile on my face listening to and writing out lesson 54, for example. For it's breadth of registers and vocabulary it's the strongest of the three, and is also the most enjoyable to learn by heart. Some lessons were so challenging, such as l.65 and l.81, that I still had to look back at the book even when I was typing out my handwritten version into a word processor. But this is a good sign. The audio materials are crystal clear and, as I said, charmingly acted. However the pauses are out of control. "Truncate silence" really cuts it down to size. For lessons 50-100 there is a total of just 53minutes. The word count for this second half of the course is about 10000 words. In summary. The winner of "most challenging" and "most enjoyable" indeed goes to new Assimil. The award for "best treatment of grammar" goes to Linguaphone and the winter of "if you have to pick one" goes to Old Assimil by virtue of its wealth of audio. 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4500 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 14 of 17 14 August 2013 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Awesome review, Retinend. It looks as if a combination of Linguaphone for the grammar
treatment and the older Assimil would be a great idea due to the longer audio. I plan on getting the new German Assimil that is coming out in November, so it will be interesting to compare it to the current German With Ease (with English base). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 3871 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 15 of 17 28 September 2013 at 6:36am | IP Logged | |||||
There is a new German Assimil course coming out? Is it in English base? Crap, I just bought the current German with ease. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5354 days ago 938 posts - 1839 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 16 of 17 28 September 2013 at 10:52am | IP Logged | |||||
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It will be in the English base in November (or whenever they bring it out). Its a very
nice course (I have used it in the French base) but it complements German With Ease very well, so if you get both you haven't wasted anything. Edited by Elexi on 28 September 2013 at 12:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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