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What should a language book include?

  Tags: Textbooks | Book
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
Jacob_Kap
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Speaks: Arabic (Levantine), Russian, Modern Hebrew*, Arabic (Egyptian), German
Studies: Arabic (Written), Japanese, Swiss-German

 
 Message 1 of 7
04 November 2013 at 10:24am | IP Logged 
Hey guys,
There are many types of language books. Some teach you vocabulary, some teach you grammar, some teach you crap. What in your opinion should a language book include? What would you like to have in a language book of your target language? Would you prefer one big, thick book that teaches everything, or a series of books, each teaching a different aspect of the language (vocabulary, grammar, listening comprehension, reading comprehension etc). What is necessary to find in a language book?

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akkadboy
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France
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Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish
Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh

 
 Message 2 of 7
04 November 2013 at 11:30am | IP Logged 
Lots of exercises. I hate textbooks that give you 50+ wordlists in each lesson but only 10+ sentences to practice with.
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schoenewaelder
Diglot
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Germany
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Speaks: English*, French
Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch

 
 Message 3 of 7
04 November 2013 at 1:21pm | IP Logged 
Everything, but not necessarily at the same time. So it might start a chapter with a
dialog using new vocab but with familiar grammatical structures, then maybe some grammar
lessons, but using old familiar vocabulary, not the new stuff, and possibly finishing with
a dialog with both new vocab and grammar.
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tarvos
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5310 posts - 9399 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

 
 Message 4 of 7
04 November 2013 at 1:26pm | IP Logged 
Basically, graded readers with a comprehensive grammar overview. Separate grammar
exercises perhaps to practice complex things if they exist (cases, verb conjugations,
particle usage, whatever you can think of.)

Audio for all texts. No romanizations unless it's pinyin, an introduction to the
writing
system if there is one, translations to language X. (Can be anything, but preferably
should be a language I understand. Dutch/English jump to mind but if it's French or
German it's okay too)

Actually, if the Routledge course for Hebrew had more English translations for the text
and slightly less pointless exercises (I skipped a third) it would be perfect. The
foundation it's given me is so good that even after 2/3 months of no Hebrew usage I can
still come up with a good, coherent way of speaking. My writing is terrible though.

Edited by tarvos on 04 November 2013 at 1:27pm

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jeff_lindqvist
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Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French
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 Message 5 of 7
04 November 2013 at 4:15pm | IP Logged 
Accompanying audio for the text, target-language only (I can't stand the introductory lines like "Welcome to Rodian in 3 months", "Lesson 1 - Basic insults", "Imagine yourself in the Mos Eisley bar, pretend you're Greedo" etc.), no pauses, bells etc.

If the course is supposed to teach grammar along the way, it's important to have a reasonable amount of exercises and/or examples.

Similar thread:
What's important when you buy a course?
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shk00design
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Canada
Joined 4203 days ago

747 posts - 1123 votes 
Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin
Studies: French

 
 Message 6 of 7
05 November 2013 at 10:52pm | IP Logged 
A book should include short paragraphs that tell a story of short stories with words & phrases within it. And after
you read the story, the various sentence structures are explained in more detail with the new vocabularies. Just
introducing phrases, vocabulary and sentence structures individually would make no sense unless they are put
together in some meaningful way.

Just a textbook on its own isn't enough. If it is possible, a textbook should also include an audio CD or DVD that
shows people having a conversations in the native accent. Otherwise I actually learn more watching a few hours of
TV shows in a native language than from a textbook.

It is like someone learning to play a piece of music. Just knowing how to read music notation isn't the same as
listening to other people's performances and try to follow along. You pick up a lot more listening to other people
perform a piece and then trying it out yourself.
1 person has voted this message useful



sillygoose1
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United States
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566 posts - 814 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French
Studies: German, Latin

 
 Message 7 of 7
06 November 2013 at 2:00am | IP Logged 
I think a great language book would be a 150-200+ lesson Assimil with more idiomatic language and more formal language that goes in depth as far as grammar is concerned than Assimil's current "with ease" + "perfectionnement". Definitely keeping in mind to repeat vocab every few lessons or so.


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