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Cheap Language Learning

  Tags: Low budget
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies Post Reply
43 messages over 6 pages: 1 2 3 46  Next >>
Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6357 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 33 of 43
14 December 2013 at 5:53am | IP Logged 
The whole point is that the more the content appeals to you, the more likely it is not to appeal to me.

Anyway, let's get back to actually sharing information about "cheap language learning" (the title of this thread) and not selling it. Cavesa, me and several other members have compiled some resources in the wikia.

Edited by Serpent on 14 December 2013 at 5:55am

3 persons have voted this message useful



Sprachprofi
Nonaglot
Senior Member
Germany
learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6230 days ago

2608 posts - 4866 votes 
Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese

 
 Message 34 of 43
14 December 2013 at 11:45am | IP Logged 
I don't think you realize how offensive you are being. Are travel guides "air" as well,
since they don't own the places they recommend? Are business consultants' reports
worthless? (You'll find it's the opposite - it's about the most expensive work hours
you can buy.) How'bout Arguelles and Luca Lampariello and Richard Simcott and many
others on this forum who work as language-learning consultants - is their work
worthless just because they recommend websites and methods that they didn't invent? If
you personally can't afford something or prefer to do the work yourself, that's fine,
but don't claim that no effort went into it.

Serpent wrote:
For example, how can ALL these numbers be the same for Spanish and
German?


"72 Ways" is a way to mark them as belong to one series, so I made an effort to put all
advice under 72 headers. This doesn't mean there are 72 websites, but 72 general ideas
or methods under which I file everything I want to say. For example:

Quote:
57. TV Shows for Learners

To get started on Spanish TV shows, even as a beginner, you
could try some shows that are created especially for language
learners. These shows feature comparatively slow and easy
language and they often introduce many useful words,
avoiding obscure ones. To learn Spanish, you could try
"extr@ Spanish" e. g. from
http://www.youtube.com/user/The
EasyLearning/videos

or "Mi vida loca" from
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/
spanish/mividaloca/



That's one out of 72. In "72 Ways to Learn Japanese", the same item reads:

Quote:
57. Easy Japanese Shows

To get started on Japanese TV shows and practise your listening comprehension, there's
a special show called Erin's Challenge, which features dialog that is harder than a
typical textbook's but easier than actual Japanese TV. Find all 25 episodes at
http://www.erin.ne.jp/en/. While watching an
episode, you will see Japanese
writing by default, but you can also switch on Romaji and English translation.

Anime may also be a comparatively easy introduction to watching Japanese TV, especially
if you choose a series that you're familiar with. Read about how I studied Japanese in
order to understand my favourite anime show in just 30 days:
http://www.learnlangs.com/step-by-step/understand_TV_in_30_d ays


I started out by thinking of all the different ways to practice a language. Then I
scoured the web for the most useful free (Spanish/German/French/Japanese) websites that
would be relevant to each way of practising. Then I scoured the web for all free
websites that anyone ever found useful for learning each of these languages and decided
a) whether to include them, b) whether they could be added to an existing section, c)
whether they needed their own section. Depending on the availability of resources, some
sections are longer/shorter in each language, some are completely new, some are
missing, but for Spanish and German I eventually had the same number of sections in
each chapter, though the sections themselves don't correspond 1:1. For Japanese, the
numbers are different, but I merged sections until I had only 72 - this way, people are
aware that the books are in a series.

Edited by Sprachprofi on 14 December 2013 at 12:30pm

7 persons have voted this message useful



s_allard
Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5190 days ago

2704 posts - 5425 votes 
Speaks: French*, English, Spanish
Studies: Polish

 
 Message 35 of 43
14 December 2013 at 1:21pm | IP Logged 
Right on, Sprachprofi. I feel bad that you had to spend time on this idiotic debate, Talking about air, I went to have
a look at the Wikia page mentioned above. The idea is certainly laudable but the contents for Spanish are
remarkably thin. On the other hand, it's totally free.

The whole point here is that for some people $3 is a lot of money and certainly too much to pay for somebody else's
work. C'est la vie.

I have to admit that the good thing about this thread is that it has given some nice publicity to Sprachprofi's great
publications. I'm so glad that what appeals to me doesn't appeal to everybody.
5 persons have voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6357 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 36 of 43
14 December 2013 at 3:35pm | IP Logged 
I'm sorry for offending you. The thing is just that I'm not that interested in the entire books, but most likely just in the links they contain.

Also let's not forget that we're all from different countries. 3$ is certainly affordable to me, but for example in Belarus it equals a large amount of the local money and it's equally offensive to assume that for everyone in the world it's just the price of a coffee. (while I'm at it, the part that says "if you are European, entering a university is a no-brainer and you can attend language classes unrelated to your degree" varies hugely between countries) More importantly, for this price one can get some actual native content.

s_allard pretty much all advice that isn't language-specific applies to Spanish/is available for it.

Edited by Serpent on 14 December 2013 at 3:39pm

1 person has voted this message useful



tlanguell
Newbie
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 3799 days ago

24 posts - 54 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Vietnamese

 
 Message 37 of 43
15 December 2013 at 10:04am | IP Logged 
Peace Corps languages:

http://www.livelingua.com/peace-corps-language-courses.php
2 persons have voted this message useful



luke
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6965 days ago

3133 posts - 4351 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Esperanto, French

 
 Message 38 of 43
15 December 2013 at 1:08pm | IP Logged 
kujichagulia wrote:
luke wrote:
Listen Reading is an inexpensive and effective method.

I don't doubt the effectiveness of Listening-Reading, but I wonder why you say it is inexpensive. It seems that buying two copies of novels (L1 and L2), then buying the audiobook version in L2 would be somewhat expensive, especially if you are buying a lot of them. I guess it depends upon one's "purchasing threshold", i.e. how much a person is willing to pay for learning a language.


I was thinking along the lines of the classics. At http://librivox.org and http://litteratureaudio.com there is lots of audio available for free. http://gutenberg.org also has a ton of books in the same genre for free.   I have found free bilingual texts with audio for free as well. One example is http://audiolivres.wordpress.com/2009/04/03/john-stuart-mill -sur-la-liberte/ which has audio in French as well as a bilingual text of On Liberty by John Stuart Mill. The audio in English is available at librivox.org.

So by inexpensive, I meant material that is available legally for free on the Internet.

The example above is not the only one. Don Quixote has a great Spanish reading in mp3 at another free legal website. Don Quixote is also available in translations for free. Some time back, I found a computerized parallel text version that was also free. There are many more examples.
3 persons have voted this message useful



montmorency
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4588 days ago

2371 posts - 3676 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Danish, Welsh

 
 Message 39 of 43
16 December 2013 at 2:15am | IP Logged 
Supporting Luke's point, but slightly qualifying, inexpensive can also mean that it
costs some money, but is still within the bounds of possibility for someone with a
modest income, some of which is disposable.


So for example, you can often buy very cheap, or quite cheap, books second-hand via
amazon or abebooks (or from a real second-hand bookshop if you keep your eyes open).
And even audiobooks bought new, need not be all that expensive (compared with some
language courses, say).

I've recently managed to buy printed TL books and corresponding translations at quite
low cost, and scanned them to make my own text version, which I then used to make my
own parallel text version. It needed a fair amount of time and effort, but very little
money.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Rsquest1
Newbie
Joined 3259 days ago

3 posts - 5 votes
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 40 of 43
26 September 2016 at 11:46pm | IP Logged 
I tried Lingualift, I didn't understand how it worked. I tired to ask, but they were total jerks about it and wouldn't answer my questions.
It doesn't seem to be anything more than an online textbook. I don't think it is worth the money.


1 person has voted this message useful



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