'Teach Yourself' Series

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loqu
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Re: 'Teach Yourself' Series

Postby loqu » 2008-10-22, 6:29

sa wulfs wrote:It varies from person to person. As for me, I need a teacher nagging me constantly in order to make progress.


Same here.
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Re: 'Teach Yourself' Series

Postby Karavinka » 2008-10-22, 6:32

Formiko wrote:You're misunderstanding me. Teaching yourself is a LOT better than a classroom setting. 4 years of University level French MAY of may not get you to a decent level. Teaching youself, learning what YOU want instead of having to keep at the pace of the professor is far superior.

Nighean-neonach does exactly what I'm referring too.


And if you teach yourself, your learning may be entirely based on the limited scope of your interests. Sure, your interest is the most important, but I believe that is for the advanced learners only - you first need to understand the language as a whole.

Be a good sport and show some rigor, so you can actually learn the damn thing. It's far better than uttering random 500 or some words and pray that the person may understand, God willing.

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Re: 'Teach Yourself' Series

Postby Car » 2008-10-22, 7:39

nighean-neonach wrote:
Narbleh wrote:They also use conjugated nouns/verbs in the vocabulary lists :nono:


"Colloquial" also does that. Lots of "self-taught" language courses do that. That's what I meant when I said they don't really count as textbooks for me, and that I prefer the materials we use in university.


:shock: I've never seen a language course do that, could you mention other examples?
So far, I haven't used anything in English because what I read or heard about many series didn't sound that good, is it a matter of the language the course is written in?
Please correct my mistakes!

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Re: 'Teach Yourself' Series

Postby nighean-neonach » 2008-10-22, 11:17

Car wrote:So far, I haven't used anything in English because what I read or heard about many series didn't sound that good, is it a matter of the language the course is written in?


Partly it is, yes. German language books usually have a more academic and systematic approach anyway :) English ones, especially those designed for self-study, are often more similar to what we would call Sprachführer (für Touristen) here.
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Re: 'Teach Yourself' Series

Postby Car » 2008-10-22, 18:21

nighean-neonach wrote:Partly it is, yes. German language books usually have a more academic and systematic approach anyway :) English ones, especially those designed for self-study, are often more similar to what we would call Sprachführer (für Touristen) here.


Based on what I've seen on many websites in English where they start by explaining in great detail at the beginning of a lesson what a substantive actually is, this doesn't surprise me.
I often have the impression that German language books have too many grammar terms, especially the more "complicated" ones, but I always had a problem to remember what the terms means. I know we dealt with them so often at school, so I probably can't really complain about it.
I'm quite happy with the materials we use at uni. Although we only have language courses once or twice a week, we still learn a lot because we also have to do a lot of homework.
Please correct my mistakes!

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Re: 'Teach Yourself' Series

Postby nighean-neonach » 2008-10-22, 18:27

Car wrote:Based on what I've seen on many websites in English where they start by explaining in great detail at the beginning of a lesson what a substantive actually is, this doesn't surprise me.


Germans usually do more formal grammar at school, as ours is a highly inflecting language. English speaking people only start to bother about what accusative or genitive are when the begin to learn an inflecting language... Apart from that, I get the impression that many academic language learning materials in Germany still expect people to have done some Latin.
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Re: 'Teach Yourself' Series

Postby Car » 2008-10-22, 18:43

nighean-neonach wrote:Germans usually do more formal grammar at school, as ours is a highly inflecting language. English speaking people only start to bother about what accusative or genitive are when the begin to learn an inflecting language... Apart from that, I get the impression that many academic language learning materials in Germany still expect people to have done some Latin.


I know by now, I was surprised when I saw that for the first time. Hmm, you might be right about Latin, maybe that's one of the reasons why so many resources for Romance languages love to talk about cases in them.
Please correct my mistakes!

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Re: 'Teach Yourself' Series

Postby Jalethon » 2008-10-23, 2:05

I personally experience information acquired through self-study to be much more substantive knowledge. Information acquired through means of exploration are often much clearer to me than anything my teachers can divulge to me.

Also, with regard to verbal proficiency, I'd relate that to personal effort rather than the means by which one studies.

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Re: 'Teach Yourself' Series

Postby TheKickInside » 2008-12-23, 17:51

Has anyone used the TY Arabic course?
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Re: 'Teach Yourself' Series

Postby ILuvEire » 2008-12-27, 2:29

nighean-neonach wrote:
Car wrote:Based on what I've seen on many websites in English where they start by explaining in great detail at the beginning of a lesson what a substantive actually is, this doesn't surprise me.


Germans usually do more formal grammar at school, as ours is a highly inflecting language. English speaking people only start to bother about what accusative or genitive are when the begin to learn an inflecting language... Apart from that, I get the impression that many academic language learning materials in Germany still expect people to have done some Latin.


Yes, in English we learn basic things about cases, nominative, dative, accusative, genitive in school, but most people forget it. No one actually uses this knowledge in English. :)

I think that our schools are really pushing grammar knowledge now. It has been largely neglected (as Spanish, the most common foreign language, doesn't use them much). Latin and German have gotten popular, which both have quite a bit of complicated grammar.
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Re: 'Teach Yourself' Series

Postby TaylorS » 2008-12-27, 21:06

ILuvEire wrote:
nighean-neonach wrote:
Car wrote:Based on what I've seen on many websites in English where they start by explaining in great detail at the beginning of a lesson what a substantive actually is, this doesn't surprise me.


Germans usually do more formal grammar at school, as ours is a highly inflecting language. English speaking people only start to bother about what accusative or genitive are when the begin to learn an inflecting language... Apart from that, I get the impression that many academic language learning materials in Germany still expect people to have done some Latin.


Yes, in English we learn basic things about cases, nominative, dative, accusative, genitive in school, but most people forget it. No one actually uses this knowledge in English. :)

I think that our schools are really pushing grammar knowledge now. It has been largely neglected (as Spanish, the most common foreign language, doesn't use them much). Latin and German have gotten popular, which both have quite a bit of complicated grammar.


I never learned anything about case in school except in the context of English pronouns (and the term "case" was never used). I'm 22 now so I wouldn't know how things were done before the 90s and inf things have changed in the past 4 years.
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