|
 |
LEXTRA - Teach Yourself with German base | ||
Tags: Teach Yourself | German | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5137 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 1 of 3 13 October 2013 at 11:32am | IP Logged | |||||
|
We often discuss the various versions of Assimil and we know that the Ohne Mühe collection offers an extensive range of Sans Peine titles, but I didn’t know before today that Assimil is not the only series of self-learning courses that you can find in an adaptation for the German market (maybe that’s my fault and this topic has already been discussed here on HTLAL, but I’ve missed the relevant posts).
Anyway, in the last few years the publisher Cornelsen has brought out quite a few of the Teach Yourself books. Judging from the preview available on amazon.de (I’ve checked the Swedish textbook because that’s the one I know best) the texts are basically the same apart from very minor tweaks such as giving the non-Swedish characters German names instead of English ones. These German adaptations of TY books are part of the ‘Lextra – Sprachkurs Plus’ line of language courses, but it seems that that collection is also made up of brand new titles by German authors – for Chinese and Korean, for instance. What I find especially interesting, though, is that Cornelsen confirms that our skepticism regarding the CEFR level that Teach Yourself claims to cover was absolutely justified. The original Teach Yourself books that are used as a basis for the Cornelsen adaptations are now labeled “Teach Yourself Complete”. According to the Teach Yourself website, the “Complete” series is level 4 among their products and for them that equals CEFR B2. More judiciously the ‘Lextra – [Language X] -Sprachkurs Plus: Anfänger’ books only claim to lead up to A2, which seems much more reasonable. Here are the titles that have been adapted, at least the ones that I’ve found: Teach Yourself Arabic by Jack Smart and Frances Altorfer Teach Yourself Croatian by David Norris Teach Yourself Czech by David Short Teach Yourself Danish by Bente Elsworth Teach Yourself Dutch by Gerdi Quist and Dennis Strik Teach Yourself English as a Foreign Language by Sandra Stevens Teach Yourself Estonian by Mare Kitsnik and Leelo Kingisepp Teach Yourself Finnish by Terttu Leney Teach Yourself Greek by Aristarhos Matsukas Teach Yourself Hebrew by Shula Gilboa Teach Yourself Hindi by Rupert Snell with Simon Weightman Teach Yourself Hungarian by Zsuzsa Pontifex Teach Yourself Icelandic by Hildur Jónsdóttir Teach Yourself Italian by Lydia Vellaccio and Maurice Elston Teach Yourself Norwegian by Margaretha Danbolt Simons Teach Yourself Polish by Nigel Gotteri and Joanna Michalak-Gray Teach Yourself Portuguese by Manuela Cook Teach Yourself Russian by Daphne West Teach Yourself Swedish by Vera Croghan Teach Yourself Thai by David Smyth Teach Yourself Vietnamese by Dana Healy 13 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5088 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 2 of 3 13 October 2013 at 4:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's interesting, thnx for the hint. Lextra plus Reihe is where one can find the courses, and the audio to all of them is free to download! The quality of the recordings is very good imo, so this is indeed quite an excellent (amazing?) bonus feature. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6946 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 3 of 3 19 October 2014 at 10:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for lot for pointing this out. Now I can make better use of that used copy of "Teach Yourself Turkish" that's on my shelf. For courses where Cornelsen's edition is a translation of the original English version (see emme's list), the recordings of the dialogues are often identical. There are a few changes though to suit German-speaking users (e.g. the first dialogue in Chapter 2 of "Teach Yourself Turkish" deals with an English traveller who's asked at first if he's German. The corresponding dialogue in "Lextra - Sprachkurs Türkisch" has the order reversed with the now German traveller asked at first if he's an Englishman). In addition a lot of the tracks offered by Cornelsen are of listening or dictation exercises in the German editions that don't match at all the exercises in the English originals. You'd need the corresponding book published by Cornelsen to figure out the reference to "Übung 7" in "Kapitel 1" (Exercise 7, Unit 1) for example. The downloaded audio is of .mp3 files at 320 kb/s in joint stereo and so is pretty clear but the tracks' metadata is generic with the files and titles being labelled "Titelnummer x" (x is a number) and the album name being unknown. However that can be fixed somewhat tediously by listening to every track and modifying the metadata as desired in Windows Explorer or with a tagging utility such as Mp3tag or Tagscanner. To summarize, even though the audio is in German and a lot of it comprises exercises created for the Cornelsen's series/adaptations, anyone who doesn't know German but has only a source textbook in the "Teach Yourself..." series can use the audio for the dialogues rather than buy the CDs which are now often sold separately by the publishers and somewhat pompously called "audio support". Here're the tracks for all of the audio in "Lextra - Sprachkurs Türkisch" which differs only trivially from the audio in "Teach Yourself Turkish" by Pollard and Pollard. Lextra - Sprachkurs Türkisch CD 1 Track 2, Unit "0" Pronunciation Practice and Survival Guide Track 3 Unit 1, Dialogue 1 Track 9 Unit 1, Dialogue 2 Track 10 Unit 2, Dialogue 1 Track 18 Unit 2, Dialogue 2 Track 19 Unit 3, Dialogue 1 Track 25 Unit 3, Dialogue 2 Track 26 Unit 4, Dialogue 1 Track 30 Unit 4, Dialogue 2 Track 31 Unit 5, Dialogue 1 Track 34 Unit 5, Dialogue 2 Track 35 Unit 6, Dialogue 1 Track 38 Unit 6, Dialogue 2 Track 39 Unit 7, Dialogue 1 Track 42 Unit 7, Dialogue 2 Track 43 Unit 8, Dialogue 1 Track 46 Unit 8, Dialogue 2 Lextra - Sprachkurs Türkisch CD 2 Track 1 Unit 9, Dialogue 1 Track 4 Unit 9, Dialogue 2 Track 5 Unit 10, Dialogue 1 Track 8 Unit 10, Dialogue 2 Track 9 Unit 11, Dialogue 1 Track 12 Unit 11, Dialogue 2 Track 13 Unit 12, Dialogue 1 Track 16 Unit 12, Dialogue 2 Track 17 Unit 13, Dialogue 1 Track 20 Unit 13, Dialogue 2 Track 21 Unit 14, Dialogue 1 Track 24 Unit 14, Dialogue 2 Track 25 Unit 15, Dialogue 1 Track 28 Unit 15, Dialogue 2 Track 29 Unit 16, Dialogue 1 Track 32 Unit 16, Dialogue 2 Edited by Chung on 19 October 2014 at 11:19pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
