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Living Language Complete Edition? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5126 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes  Speaks: Spanish* | Message 1 of 26 09 August 2014 at 1:56am | IP Logged |
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Has anyone had the opportunity to use or examine this series? Is it any good? Reviews at Amazon are pretty much useless, either written by folks without much experience at language learning, or exalted, glowing pieces suspiciously resembling something an advertisement department would produce. A review from some of our members would be so much more relevant and trustworthy.
I am particularly curious about the non-West European languages they offer, such as Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese and so on. They seem to include a lot of audio, which would make them excellent basic introductions, however in order for them to be useful it would be essential that they employ the native script throughout, otherwise it is just a waste of time in my opinion. I hesitate to order one of them as these more "popular" series have a tendency to do just that, rely on transliteration and teach the scrip only marginally and as an afterthought. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 3833 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 2 of 26 09 August 2014 at 5:13am | IP Logged |
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Hello Juan,
I have a fairly large collection of self-study language-learning methods, which includes the Living Language series “Complete Basics” for French, German, Italian, and Spanish. I believe that Random House, like so many other publishers, has made an “honest effort” at providing a low-priced, (very) basic introduction to the languages covered in this series. However, to be brief, I also believe that several competing methods will take the student further in terms of vocabulary and grammar and I recommend that you look elsewhere. Essentially, the bulk of the material in the Living Language Complete Basic method is presented in a conventional manner wherein basic vocabulary is introduced through mock dialogues, based on standard “themes” (lodgings, shopping, restaurants, hotel accomodations, visit to the doctor, etcetera) along with an explanation of the main points of grammar that are illustrated in the dialogues. The end-of-unit dialogues are “deconstructed” (my term) and the words, phrases, and sentences that appear therein are introduced, in a cumulative fashion, before one reaches the dialogues. Each of the three volumes in the Complete Basics package contains appendices that include a surprisingly well-presented summary of grammar and a complete course glossary. However, in all of the courses that I used, I found that the explanations of grammar were, at times, somewhat incomplete in themselves. That is, in a given lesson, the authors would present a point of grammar in a manner that could lead the student to believe they have a full understanding of the particular point. Then, several lessons later, another feature of this same point of grammar would be introduced, again, in an incomplete manner. And so the process would repeat itself throughout the course. I found this both disconcerting and confusing, particularly since the authors could have easily advised the reader that the current presentation was partial, that point of grammar would be developed in subsequent lessons, and that the curious should read the summary in the appendix for a complete overview. I found that the translation into English to be a mix of transliteration and transposition, along with the occasional error. For me, while the target language audio in these courses is clear and seems to have been recorded by voice-trained professionals, it has one particularly annoying feature. That is, most of the English text in the course manuals has been recorded along with the target language audio. I can only assume that Random House’s intention was to provide an “in your car” version of the course. Quite frankly, I found the massive amount of English audio to be an annoying distraction and I found myself “skipping forward” in an attempt to avoid it. I estimate that the course material would take the student to somewhere within the CEFR A1-A2 range. In conclusion, I believe that several competing methods will take the student further in terms of vocabulary and grammar and I recommend that you look elsewhere. I have not studied the languages that you mentioned (Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, and Hindi); however, if I were interested in doing so, I would ask the members of this forum for advice, in a separate post. Edited by Speakeasy on 09 August 2014 at 6:14am 7 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4790 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 3 of 26 09 August 2014 at 10:43am | IP Logged |
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Hi, Juan,
I cannot find it but I wrote a post on this series a few months ago based on finding out as much as I could about it and ditching the series as an option. I had considered it as an introduction to the harder languages but all I found has changed my opinion. Basically, I find it outrageous to call something "complete" when it gets you only to level A1/2 or so by the contents and without telling you the goal. I believe this is one of the reasons why so many mainstream learners give up in general. The publisher (not only this one, it is a common thing) makes them believe the thin and easy going resource is going to teach them Everything(!), they get through it, find out how little they know and start thinking it is impossible to learn a language. Another sad thing is that Living Language used to produce well known courses of very good quality with lots of contents. Those could have brought you really far on you journey. "Complete" series is just a way to milk the good name. Sure, the course may be good at teaching the basics but so are many significantly cheaper courses. The last point I can remember: The horrible ipad exercises. The words like "interactive", "fun", "game", "ipad", "modern" sell and the company knows it. However, instead of producing a good quality app with exercises and audios and whatever, they made a horrible one that can harm your learning. Filling one foreign word into a sentence in English, that is not a way to practice your skills, that is not the way to progress. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4670 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 4 of 26 09 August 2014 at 11:58am | IP Logged |
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I've used it for Japanese and Italian, and think it's a brilliant course. The full course is only $40, so I think it
gives more bang for the buck than any course out there. It is definitely a beginner's courses, even though they call the third book 'advanced.' For the harder languages you need a lot more beginner's level work than with the Romance languages, so I find it useful to have three beginning-level books for Japanese. For Italian it's a bit much. I intend to order the Arabic course soon. Other courses try to bring you to an true advanced level too quickly, before you have a chance to truly assimilate the basics. I'm not sure what reviews Cavesa saw. It doesn't sound at all like the two LL I've done. I don't recall ever filling foreign words into English sentences. The recordings are not designed to stand alone. It's not an in your car course. It's a book course, with nine hours of audio and online. / iPhone supplements. For the phone app you can choose transliterated or native script. Edited by kanewai on 10 August 2014 at 12:00am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5156 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 5 of 26 09 August 2014 at 12:45pm | IP Logged |
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There are actually two different "complete" course series by Living Language (at least in Spanish). The precursor to the "Ultimate" was called "Complete" Basic/Advanced, etc and is actually quite a good series (at least in Spanish). I have seen the "basic" one and it is basically the same exact course as the Ultimate series basic except with cassette tapes instead of CDs.
Edit: I looked at the new "complete" series on Amazon and it is definitely different than the old "complete" series I have seen. Edited by James29 on 09 August 2014 at 12:48pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4790 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 6 of 26 09 August 2014 at 1:38pm | IP Logged |
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Those stupid exercises in an app are not info from reviews, I downloaded the official app and tried for a few languages. And it was horrible.
Yes, it is different to use a course for an easy and for a hard language. However, if even the courses for easy languages don't appear to be such a miracle, than how could I expect a hard language from the same series and methodology to be any better? I think part of the criticism comes from the comparison of the old Complete and Ultimate series with the new one. In this comparison, the new Complete just cannot win, in my opinion. But if it was a new series of courses, they would be probably just another option of the mediocre crowd. I was looking at info for languages I know, to get a better idea about the course, and about those I am learning. German was the one I considered to buy the course for. And I think there is just too little content for the money and Speakeasy's info about their approach to the grammar creeps me out. However, as one of the side resources for a language, even a hard one, it could give some more beginner friendly content, true. Kanewai, did you use it as your main course or just a side resource? If it can be used as the central structure, than 40 dollars is not a bad price. If it is just a side source to give a few more dialogues and exercises, than I wouldn't be so excited about the price tag. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6937 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 7 of 26 09 August 2014 at 2:07pm | IP Logged |
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I have the new Complete Korean course and agree with both Cavesa and kanewai. I've had a good look at it while actually using just a small part of it so far since I'm relying so far on "Spoken World Korean" and "Korean from Zero". Despite being divided into Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced sections, it does seem that you'd be at around A2 or B1 upon completing the course as is (see also this discussion on reddit about LL Complete Korean). It also does seem a little gimmicky (or trendy) with its packaging by using the talking head's cliché to "join the conversation" and log into the company website to share your experience as well as follow the company on Facebook and Twitter. The online language lab for many of the courses isn't too bad but nothing to write home about and what's more is that I prefer to study with pencil, lined paper, .mp3 player and hard copies.
On the other hand, if you can get one of the complete courses brand new for less than $40 including shipping and taxes as I did for the Korean course then it's not a bad trade off especially because of the audio that you get. There's a fair bit of English on the audio as some disembodied voice reads aloud the subsection's headers or the English translation of the Korean words in the example sentences/phrases. Yet it's not as intrusive or wasteful as on some editions of Colloquial or TY where the bloody voice also reads aloud every chapter's learning objectives or preambles of the dialogues, both of which are printed in English and plain for the learner to read. As for the Korean course, I do like that it has a small guide with grids just for learning how to write hangul and have been using it for extra practice. I do admit though that with minimal effort it's easy to print out similar worksheets available for free on the Internet (or even make up my own using Excel or Word). In regards to Romanization, "Complete Korean" uses it for the 1st half of the beginners' course only. It would have been better if it didn't use it at all (LL's "Spoken World Korean" which I am using it actively does something similar with the first third of the lessons being accompanied by that damned Romanization). Like Speakeasy, I do find the "deconstructed" (her term) approach a bit weird with vocabulary and bits of grammar coming in a disjointed way, although since I'm not using the course in full, I can't express the same frustration which is no doubt genuine. Tl;dr: it's worth it if you can get it all-in for less than $40 and are starting from scratch. Look for something else otherwise. Edited by Chung on 09 August 2014 at 2:39pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 3833 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 8 of 26 09 August 2014 at 2:12pm | IP Logged |
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Living Language « Complete Basic » Course
Here is brief explanation concerning the differences between the current edition of this series and the previous one. In the new edition, the introductory lessons were withdrawn and replaced by a separate volume, entitled "Essential", which seems to be a copy, partial or otherwise, of the previous Living Language course "Starting Out ...” The remainder of previous edition was retained, more or less, and separated into two volumes, entitled "Intermediate" and "Advanced". The printed manuals were updated and are definitely more attractive. They also contain a summary of grammar. The actual content of the “combined” editions is pretty much the same, save for the removal and replacement of the initial lessons. I do not know how the audio of the original "Starting Out ..." series was structured; however, with its inclusion in the new edition as “Essential”, virtually the entire English text has been recorded alongside the target language audio. As to the audio of the later lessons, it seems to me that the major change is that dialogues have been duplicated, with pauses and English translations, to give the student an opportunity to practice this portion. Also, it seems to me that there has been an increase in the amount of the accompanying English audio, but this might be just an impression. Yes, the new edition includes some online material; however, as Cavesa pointed out, the exercises are quite elementary. In my opinion, they are of little value. For some languages, but not all, the previous edition included a separate course, with more advanced material, that was sold as “Beyond the Basics ...” Finally, I would add that one can definitely learning “something” with the Living Language Complete courses, but you can do this with just about any course, n’est-ce pas? Living Language “Ultimate” Course Ah, now this is quite a different course! Regrettably, Random House has ceased publishing this series. In my opinion, for the languages that I have been studying, this series is FAR superior to the Complete Basics courses. The dialogues are more challenging, but are more realistic. There is more target language audio and there are more exercises. The explanations of grammar are succinct, but complete for a beginner. For several languages, this series published as two separate courses: Beginner-Intermediate and Advanced. In my opinion the CEFR level achievable with this material greatly exceeds that of the Complete series. The audio was separated into A and B file sets, one for use with the text and one without it. I found that the best use of the audio was to convert the CDs to MP3 files and string the A and B sets together by lesson number. My only (somewhat) negative comment would be that the material can be a bit “dry”. To enhance the usefulness and increase the exercise material, I would recommend that a user complete 10 lessons, then switch to Assimil to cover a similar level, then continue the process, switching back-and-forth. Living Language “Spoken World” Course The presentation, methodology and structure of the “Spoken World” courses follow EXACTLY that of the “Ultimate” courses. The only differences are that there is slightly less printed text and slightly less audio. It seems to me that the “Ultimate” courses covered the European languages, whereas the “Spoken World” courses covered the Asian and other less-frequently-studied languages (please do not jump all over me for this comment). While these are truly excellent introductory courses, I will reiterate my comments from the Ultimate versions; that is, that the material can be a bit “dry”. To enhance the usefulness and increase the exercise material, I would recommend that a user complete 10 lessons, then switch to Assimil to cover a similar level, then continue the process, switching back-and-forth. The audio was separated into A and B file sets, one for use with the text and one without it. I found that the best use of the audio was to convert the CDs to MP3 files and string the A and B sets together by lesson number. With respect to my comments on the “Ultimate” and “Spoken World”, please note that I have not studied any of languages that Juan mentioned. However, I have used them in combination with Assimil for Polish and Dutch and, while quite challenging, I found them to be very useful. Frankly, if I were to use this combination to study any of the languages that Juan mentioned, I would be tempted to begin with the introductory lessons of either Michel Thomas or Pimsleur, "to develop a feel for" these languages. But this extends the discussion well beyond the original question. Edited by Speakeasy on 09 August 2014 at 2:38pm 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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