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Living Language Complete Edition? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4639 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 9 of 26 09 August 2014 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have bought Living Language Complete Irish and I was rather disappointed by the course. First of all, the approach of teaching vocabulary and grammar first and then presenting everything in a dialogue was a bit strange. I hate learning words from lists, I need context! Unfortunately, the dialogues were a bit unrealistic and consisted mainly of an enumeration of the vocabulary items, so they didn't really help.
Second of all, the grammar explanations were in-depth, but badly structured. In Irish, every preposition merges with a following personal pronoun into a so-called prepositional pronoun. That means every preposition has seven (I, you (sg.), he, she, we, you (pl.), they) prepositional pronouns which need to be learned. Other courses normally teach one preposition and its pronouns per unit, Living Language however teaches ALL prepositional pronouns in one unit. So the learner is expected to memorize 13 x 7 = 91 different forms in one unit - without any practical examples! That's simply insane! Third of all, not only are the recordings bad, they are unusable! Several speakers are neither native nor non-native speakers of Irish, they simply don't know the language at all! Instead, they are reading the so-called "phonetic" transcript, which accompanies the beginner volume of the course. This renders the Irish language unintelligible. For example, the simple greeting "Dia dhuit!" ("Hello!"), which should be pronounced /dʲi:a ɣʷitʲ/, becomes "deeah gwitch". This is more than ridiculous and prevents beginners from learning the correct pronunciation. If you have another course for learning correct pronunciation and basic grammar, Living Language might be a suitable complement, especially for broadening your vocabulary or studying advanced grammar. I wouldn't recommend it as a single resource on its own though. A little caveat at the end: Maybe other courses for more commonly studied languages are better than the one for Irish, but I haven't tried them. Edited by Josquin on 09 August 2014 at 9:03pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5140 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 10 of 26 09 August 2014 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
For those of you who have commented on transliteration, is the native script included from the beginning alongside the transliterated text? I don't object to Romanization as an aid to pronunciation, only if it is done to the actual exclusion of the original script.
That is a very big letdown. We can then reduce by at least half of the advertised number of CDs the amount of effective audio included. The great quantity of audio was one of the big draws for me. Even the old Hugo In Three Months courses included 4 cassettes mostly in the target language.
Indeed. Their Ultimate Advanced courses are absolutely excellent, comparable to Assimil's Perfectionnement series, even if they are somewhat hobbled by a cumbersome layout. Their Spoken World series is also a very good introduction to less commonly studied languages, and I like it quite a bit. The Hindi course in particular is great. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6951 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 11 of 26 09 August 2014 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The Korean course does use hangul from the beginning with the damned Romanization adjacent. It's a real distraction since my eyes flit down to the Romanization rather than the hangul. The Romanization disappears after the 5th lesson of the beginners' course.
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| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5140 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 12 of 26 09 August 2014 at 7:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
I would be impressed if they used kanji, hiragana and katakana along with romaji from the start on their Japanese course. I wonder too which is the case with the Chinese one. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6951 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 13 of 26 09 August 2014 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
In the Korean Complete Course, it's not too bad with the English (or at least not as egregiously wasteful as in some installments from Colloquial or Teach Yourself (e.g. the audio of Colloquial Finnish or Colloquial Ukrainian are especially bad in this area) as there it's restricted to someone reading the headers of a subsection or the English translation of a Korean word (which is also recorded). None of this idiocy of the author or some narrator reading aloud lists of learning objectives or summaries of the grammar notes which have been printed in English too. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4684 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 14 of 26 10 August 2014 at 1:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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The Japanese course had native script from the beginning. I'll post some screen shots Monday. I wasn't
personally focusing on the kana, so I was glad for the transliteration. It might be more irritating with Arabic, where I want to focus on the script. I used Michel Thomas, Pimsleur (2 levels), and LL (about half the course) for Japanese. LL was an integral part of my approach, and I would use it again if I go back to Tokyo. I was able to ask for directions, order food, do all the polite things, and make lame jokes with sushi chefs. For me that was perfect. For Italian LL is an add-on rather than a core method. I use it much more to consolidate what I've intuited through extensive reading and Assimil. I also find it extremely useful, albeit not essential. I'll do the lessons in the book, use the recordings to work on pronunciation, then play the games as a diversion when I'm in the mood. It's excellent for reinforcing concepts. I've never visited the website, and the Rosetta-Stone style expensive Platinum Edition has no interest for me. Side note: I think sometimes we at HTLAL underplay just how much work A2 is! Saying a course only brings you to A1/A2 isn't much of a criticism! Awhile back I tried to correlate all the estimates from FSI, British Foreign Office, and official language schools, and got the following: Number of hours study needed for CEFR A2 (for native English speakers) 300 - French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch 400 - German 500 - Indonesian, Swahili 600 - Russian, Turkish, Hindi, Greek 1200 - Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Japanese A lot of courses move too fast, and are on a B- level before the student is ready. Assimil is a prime example; I've hit walls with the harder languages, where the lessons just become too opaque after a point unless you've already spent a lot of time with the language My recommendations for any course are to use it in combination with others; for LL specifically: Romance and Germanic languages: an inexpensive option for experienced learners; I'd strongly recommend it for beginning learners. Turkish - I wish they had Turkish! It'd be perfect. Japanese - strong recommendation for those wanting a solid introduction. Arabic - I intend to find out. It's my follow up to MT and Pimsleur Hindu, Russian - Options I'm considering; I'd like to see more trust-worthy reviews 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4804 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 15 of 26 10 August 2014 at 1:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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I wasn't criticising the fact they might bring you to A2. I am criticising the fact someone dares to call such a course "Complete" and not even give you the needed info on realistic goals achieavable with the product anywhere on the website. Their presentation is just a more flowery equivalent of "use out 80 pages long course with the 150 most common words for a month and you'll be a fluent speaker, ready to understand a movie, read a book or get a job in the country".
I am not criticising the level, even though I dislike courses that bring you only to such low level without offering a follow up. It is always a little bit complicated to skip from a beginner course to an intermediate one if they are not designed together but that is a matter for another time. I just hate false advertisement and all kinds of marketing tricks bordering it ;-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 3847 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 16 of 26 10 August 2014 at 7:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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Juan,
Living Language Complete Basics - CDs Just to confirm your understanding of the number of CDs, I have the previous and current editions of this course in German and Spanish. The previous edition came with 4 CDs, whereas the latest edition comes with 9 CDs. My primary reason for buying the latest edition was that I believed, erroneously, that the increase in the number of CDs equated to an increase in content in the target language. However, my estimate is that, in the latest edition, the repetition of the dialogues, with pauses and instructions, "might" account for the equivalent of 1 CD's worth of audio, but I'm being pretty generous here. The bulk of the additional 5 CDs are recordings, in English, of the printed text that appears in the course manuals. What a disappointment! Linguaphone Complete Courses Another fairly highly-regarded publisher is Linguaphone. They offer courses in the some of the languages that you mentioned above. The audio in their "Complete" courses, often 8 to 10 CDs, is recorded only in the target language. As far as I understand, the dialogues are always printed in the target language, using whatever script is actually used in that language. I suspect that this might yield a rather steep "learning curve" in cases where the target language does not use the Latin alphabet. Like any self-study method, these courses have many strengths and a few weaknesses. Linguaphone U.S.A. (Elite Commerce) offers "refurbished" courses at discounted prices. Although the packages have been opened for display purposes, the material is new. Linguaphone AllTalk Courses If you visit the Linguaphone website, you might notice their "AllTalk" courses. Some of them comprise up to 16 CDs. "Great!", I thought, and I bought a couple. Uh, not so fast, junior. The method is "all audio" and most of the sound files are recorded in English. The approach is "interesting", but the level achieved is only around A1. The actual dialogues, when strung together, take up somewhat less than 2 CDs. While some reviewers like the approach, I would not recommend these courses to a serious student, as you seem to be. Rather, "if" I wanted an all-audio course, I would pay a little extra and buy Michel Thomas or pay a lot of extra money and buy Pimsleur. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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