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Has anyone used Hugo ’X in Three Months’? | ||
Tags: Language Program | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4953 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 9 of 19 21 February 2014 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've used Norwegian in Three Months and I liked it way better than TY or Colloquial. for
instance. I don't see it as a 'grammar-translation' book, just like I don't view the Living Language ones the same way. In fact, the Hugo and LL books I've used have consistent, up-to-date dialogues. Since those dialogues are longer than, say, Assimil's, they actually give me a better insight into a conversation in the target language with a beginning and an end. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| aodhanc Diglot Groupie Iceland Joined 6047 days ago 92 posts - 130 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish | Message 10 of 19 21 February 2014 at 9:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've used Hugo Spanish in 3 Months before, but found it disappointing, due to some
mistakes and also the not very user-friendly layout and style. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| yantai_scot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4589 days ago 157 posts - 214 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 11 of 19 21 February 2014 at 11:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm currently using the German in 3 months having
found the complete pack (3 months and advanced books and cds) for sale in a charity shop. I'm an inexperienced self teacher of languages. Using it alongside a class and now assimil, I find it meaty but definitely extremely helpful. I think I've found a mistake in the grammar already but that served to reinforce what i'd learned in class previously as I recognised the discrepancy which i see as a good thing. The audio on the cds is clear and you are given lots of pronunciation examples before you even hit a proper lesson. I'm only on week 6 but I like it, intend to keep studying until the end of the advanced book and would, at present, certainly look to Hugo for one of the main components my next language. Wouldn't use it on its oqn but wouldn't use any other method alone either. So one happy camper here. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4696 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 12 of 19 23 February 2014 at 2:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting thread. Like yantai_scott, I got a complete pack of Hugo French cheap (less than £10 on Amazon), but I have only worked on the very beginning. I bought it to help fill in the grammatical gaps left by Assimil/Pimsleur/MT, and it looks to me like it will do the job very well.
The OP mentioned 'Living Italian', and everyone seems to have mixed this up with the Living Language series. It is part of a different series, which contains Living French, Living German and Living Spanish. They are quite old, and though the books have been updated, the dialogues still feel like something from the 1950s. The Living French book comes from a world where husbands read the paper in the lounge while their wives knit and a child plays at their feet. The husband goes out to work while the wife takes the bus to town with her friends for shopping. They are clearly upper-middle class, but it comes from a time when a family wouldn't have had two cars, and a woman wouldn't drive anyway. I bought Living French near the beginning of my French studies, for the purpose of giving me a grammatical overview. It was fairly cheap and had very favourable reviews, so it didn't seem to be a risky purchase. I was frustrated by the fact that the dialogues used vocabulary words which hadn't been given until later chapters, and so I quit using it after finishing chapter 2. I assume that mistakes like this crept in when the book was re-written. If you are using it after studying other material, this sort of thing will probably not be a problem. But I think the Hugo books will do a better job for my purposes. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Elizabeth_rb Diglot Groupie United Kingdom polyglotintraining.b Joined 4423 days ago 54 posts - 84 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: GermanB1 | Message 13 of 19 27 February 2014 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yup, 'Living Italian' is certainly *not* to be confused with 'Living Language: Italian'.
Thanks everyone for their thoughts. When I've got some time and umph, I'll have a go at the Norwegian title and see how it works for me. Shame I don't know any Norwegians to practice with!!=) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5263 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 14 of 19 28 February 2014 at 7:58am | IP Logged | ||
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I've used Hugo Dutch in 3 Months (completed it), German in 3 Months (up to around week 7,8 or 9, French in
3 Months (completed it), Spanish in 3 Months (up to 9th or 10th week) and Hugo French Advanced a few chapters in only. Of all the courses in comparison with each other I found the Dutch one the most enjoyable followed by the French (3mths) version. Having not completed the others the sense of appreciation may be lower simply because I didn't complete them and am less familiar with them. The German course I probably merely liked it slightly less due to the (I found) complicated grammatical explanations crammed into short periods of time. Spanish I don't remember the course too well. They all have excellent audio, drill well on grammar, but yes like almost all course books the idea is to one introduce a concept with a bit of vocab, two drill you on it with some exercises and move on following a decent conversation. Not enough time to assimilate the concept, but that's language learning for you, you need more input (as i've recently come to realise via the constant good advice of others) by reading a lot of native materials, watching, listening and so on. Courses can only get you so far, you must come across the concepts in real contexts on numerous occasions after being introduced to them (having them explained) in a course such as these. Following native exposure I'm talking from other ppls experience that they begin to really grasp these concepts, have them sink in and mould them successfully in interaction. The Hugo French Advanced course, hmm, well being a perfectionist I found this a relatively large step up from the 3 Mths book- not because of tricky grammatical concepts - as I sincerely think that the 3 mths series successfully introduces most of the central grammatical concepts of each language albeit in a short period, but only really touches on them. Advanced French is trickier in that I found as there is a lot of assumed vocab. Thinking back I had to look up a lot of words However it still is a very worthwhile course, all of them are in my honest opinion. Note I've also used Colloquial Dutch (very near completion), Colloquial French (completed), Colloquial Spanish (half), Teach Yourself Dutch Beginner's and Teach Yourself Dutch. I found them all good. What is better with Hugo is the structure in my opinion. They are set out methodically and follow a good flow of introduction of new concepts. Colloquial is a bit random. TY is even a little bit messier. However I actually Find the 3 Months series and the Colloquial series equally as good as each other and would recommend beginning with 3 months and following with Colloquial to reinforce the concepts and provide more examples before moving onto more advanced material or even during. TY could be a third option if you really wanted to drill some more while finding the odd bit of new vocab (French is not recommended for TY in paperback, bad reviews I hear, Dutch is okay in my opinion, actually I'm quite fond of TY Dutch). 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 3869 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 15 of 19 02 March 2014 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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*Curses Elizabeth_rb*
I bought Hugo German complete for 20 euro used because of this thread. I really need to stop collecting German books. One thing which attracted me to this series was that it has an excellent choice of vokab - you need to know the words they have here. The advanced book says that they focus on the small words in German, the words which make German what it is (rather than just random vokab words). I just wish the books were thicker, and had more material. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mutant Groupie United States Joined 3698 days ago 45 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German | Message 16 of 19 31 March 2014 at 9:04pm | IP Logged | ||
There must be a glut of these series about, because I found a copy of Hugo Complete German (German in Three Months and Advanced, with books and CDs) for $3.99 USD at a used book store. I've barely started using it, but it looks like it'll be a good supplement to my Assimil German with Ease, which I love. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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