Contest: The Worst Language Programmes Ever

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Speakeasy
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Contest: The Worst Language Programmes Ever

Postby Speakeasy » Wed Oct 28, 2015 10:17 pm

Much of the discussion in this Language Forum resolves around identifying, describing, locating, and extolling the virtues of the "best" language-learning programmes and learning techniques available. It occurred to me that there are few, if any, discussions of the decidedly “junk” language-learning programmes that have come and gone over the years. So then, to complete the archival record, I invite you all to list your candidates for the “Worst Language Programmes Ever” contest. A brief description of the programme and its most glaring faults would be appreciated.
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Polyclod
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Re: Contest: The Worst Language Programmes Ever

Postby Polyclod » Thu Oct 29, 2015 12:45 am

I'm thinking back to when I was a teenager and really, really wanted to learn German. This was back in the olden days of brick and mortar bookstores (around 2000 :o), and I picked up a copy of *German for Dummies*. That particular line of books isn't so bad for a quick overview of subjects like religion or history, but for languages...well, the title is relevant. Even sixteen year old me knew something was wrong. The whole book was a jumbled mess that made everything more confusing than it should have been. Fifteen years later and I can now actually *speak* German (and I'm still pinching myself that it's true, it was a dream of mine for so long), and they're still selling that same book. And they have a Russian version that doesn't teach the Cyrillic alphabet. I'm not even kidding.

I guess Rosetta Stone gets honorable mention. I really don't understand how it's supposed to "work". And the price tag and the annoying marketing is just too much. They even advertise on local Spanish radio and TV. Yuck.
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Re: Contest: The Worst Language Programmes Ever

Postby pir » Thu Oct 29, 2015 5:50 am

My high school French program. Seriously. Teacher had a heavy German accent, and was an authoritarian -- whenever people make fun of Germans via sad stereotypes like "Helga, the she-wolf of the SS" I shudder and think of her. Her teaching consisted of pounding grammatical rules into us, with everyone living in fear they would be called upon to actually read something out loud -- she liked to humiliate people; none of us learned to have even a simple conversation that would have sounded natural to a native French speaker. Corporal punishment went out before I ended up with her, but she liked to pretend she could still beat people by slapping down her ruler next to your hand. She almost turned me away from languages altogether, and if her class had been my first one, she would have succeeded. Fortunately my English teacher was better.

Nothing I ever saw afterwards did as much damage to me. I concur, the "for Dummies" books are pretty dumb, but seriously, I'd rather be stuck on a lonely island with nothing but those books than ever be back in that French class.

Among modern programs that have much hype that they IMO don't live up to, Rosetta Stone gets my golden turkey for its lousy cost-benefit ratio. Duolingo is in second place because its pedagogy sucks, but at least you don't have to pay for it and you can collect a lot of cutesy flags next to your name without ever learning to speak any of the languages -- woohoo!

In general I don't have any tales of truly abysmal language programs, only of abysmal availability of materials. For languages where there are lots of courses available I read in-depth reviews or torrent things to check them out before investing my hard-earned cash, so I avoid the real duds.
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Re: Contest: The Worst Language Programmes Ever

Postby Ed1991 » Thu Oct 29, 2015 2:40 pm

Russian for Dummies (2006), introduces the Cyrillic alphabet and then decides this is too much like hard work. Teaches everything via romanized transliteration of Russian, lacks any exercises (has some "Fun and Games" tasks), and has plenty of incomprehensible grammar tables thrown in for good measure. Never bought or owned the book, but it's possible to find a full PDF copy with a quick Google. I have heard the audio supplement to the book is also terrible. I reckon this has to be one of the front runners.
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Re: Contest: The Worst Language Programmes Ever

Postby Speakeasy » Thu Oct 29, 2015 7:33 pm

I have a few candidates for this contest:

FSI Programmed Italian / Barron’s Mastering Italian
The “programmed instruction” method of teaching has existed – unofficially -- for untold generations, but it was studied intensively and applied during WWII by the U.S. Armed Forces and further refined in the post-war era. Although the “programmed learning” method is no longer in vogue, some of the more senior Forum Members will probably have come across some interesting and successful applications for teaching elementary college-level courses in economics, statistics, algebra, physics, chemistry, and so on. As many readers are aware, the Foreign Service Institute commissioned a couple of successful projects that employed this concept and resulted in the self-study programmatic courses for Portuguese and Spanish. A programmatic German course was also published to meet different, much more limited, objectives. And then, near the height of popularity of this teaching/training concept, the FSI commissioned and published their FSI Programmed Italian course …

I had previously completed the FSI Programmed Portuguese, Spanish, and German courses, along with a small number of similar programmatic courses in my first year at university all of which I found to be successful applications of the “programmed instruction” methodology. In my opinion, the FSI Programmed Italian course was an abject failure. The author, under the direction, guidance, and encouragement of the Senior FSI Language Staff misapplied a fairly successful methodology and provided the best example that I have ever encountered of how a good idea can be so poorly implemented that the idea itself becomes discredited. I made roughly ten unsuccessful attempts at completing the FSI Programmed Italian course before finally buckling down and forcing my way through to the end. As an example of the misapplication of an instructional method, who, in their right mind, would design a language course that introduces an open vowel as “no. 70” where the “0” is meant to remind the student to open his mouth wide while pronouncing it and, later in the programme, require that the student reproduce “vowel no.70” from memory? This bullsh*t goes on for chapter-after-chapter and, while the student is ultimately introduced to some elementary phrases of rather limited use, the cumulative effect of the author's application of the programmatic method mirrors that of water-boarding … and I’m being generous!

Fokus Deutsch by McGraw-Hill
Riding on the popularity of their classroom-dedicated French in Action and Destinos Spanish programmes, McGraw-Hill sought to repeat their success with a German course which they published as Fokus Deutsch. Having used and been impressed by their French and Spanish courses, I purchased, at great expense, the entire package of teacher and student manuals, including all of the audio and video recordings. While I admit that the basic elements of the language are presented and while the video portion was particularly challenging, although sometimes confusing, I found the printed materials and even the audio recordings to be extremely poorly organised. Quite seriously, I have never, in my entire life, come across supposed “instructional materials” that require such massive jumping around amongst the various course components within a particular lesson unit. It was the distracting and frustrating disorganised nature of the materials that lead me to put the entire, expensive, package in the recycling bin. Had I been taking classes with these materials, I would have withdrawn early on and would have requested a refund.

Trash Courses and Other Rip-offs
I think we've all come across a fair number of "trash courses" and some of us (me) may have even purchased a few "just for fun". Invariably, these courses are quite limited in their scope, make outlandish claims of efficacy, are unbelievably poorly-designed, are so low-priced that they are not worth the attempt at returning them to the supplier ... which is part of the business model ... and communications with the supplier make one feel that one has truly entered the Twilight Zone. The names of these "just for fun" rip-off language courses are but a blur to me now, but I did bite and was bitten in return!
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Re: Contest: The Worst Language Programmes Ever

Postby pir » Thu Oct 29, 2015 9:54 pm

I forgot one (repressed memory?), and I hesitate to put it amongst the "worst programmes ever"; the author is well-respected, and there are people who swear by it, and universities who use it, but when I first tried learning Japanese, Eleanor Harz Jorden's Japanese: The Spoken Language stopped me dead. I think that qualifies it as one of the worst programmes for me; I make no such claims for anyone else.

Why was it so bad for me? The course was taught entirely in romaji, and what's worse, not in a commonly used romaji, but in Jorden's own concoction which is almost, but not quite the romaji Japanese use themselves. She designed it to be more true to the syllabic nature of Japanese, but whenever somebody reassigns very different phonemes to letters I am well familiar with already from several other languages, my little brain gets very confused at a time when it is already suffering from information overload. I grant that learning to speak and read Japanese at the same time probably confuses other people's little brains, but for me associating a strange, new character with a new sound works ever so much better than reassigning and overlaying an old one -- writing a language aids the reading which aids the hearing of it for me. I don't do well with just spoken language at the start, but that would have been better than this unholy mishmash. I actually learned IPA years ago (some people laughed at me) and that has been very useful across all my language learning, but a special transliteration language nobody else uses, and which I myself will never use again either? That was not worth the effort.

Furthermore, there is a lot of rote drill and memorization of entire dialogues. I despise that. It leans heavily on the ALM, though at least it does give you grammar instead of expecting you just suck that up from exposure. Well, I don't, and I might have loved the grammar. It is very, very good, it probably used to be the most insightful Japanese grammar in existence in English, but I didn't love it. And that's because it puts the cart before the horse; it reminded me of the hated French course by stressing the grammar too much, without teaching enough vocabulary to really put it in context. The vocabulary one learns is way too little, dated, and very stiff and formal. I am not really opposed to the formal part, but that ties in to the course being abysmally boring to boot, providing no connection at all to the rich Japanese culture -- not even a single picture; nothing. This might work better in a classroom context -- glowing reviews I've heard were usually from people who did use it that way; I've not met a single self-learner who loved it.

Money not well spent, for me (and it was actually pricey at the time).
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Re: Contest: The Worst Language Programmes Ever

Postby Polyclod » Thu Oct 29, 2015 11:21 pm

...And that little book was republished by Barron's as Mastering Japanese, volumes 1 and two.

Hear it. Speak it. Read it. Write it.

:roll:
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Re: Contest: The Worst Language Programmes Ever

Postby astromule » Fri Oct 30, 2015 3:14 am

When I read your post this graphic came to my mind:
Image

My vote goes for Rosetta Stone. I belive that was my first attempt to learn Swedish. After a very short while, I started researching, found HTLAL... and long story short, I realized that Rosetta Stone is BS.

I must also express my dissapointment with http://www.amazon.com/Velocity-Instant- ... nt+fluency. I read it and I didn't achieve fluency instantly, despite all my efforts in almost beginning the book.

Speakeasy wrote:Fokus Deutsch by McGraw-Hill
Riding on the popularity of their classroom-dedicated French in Action and Destinos Spanish programmes, McGraw-Hill sought to repeat their success with a German course which they published as Fokus Deutsch. Having used and been impressed by their French and Spanish courses, I purchased, at great expense, the entire package of teacher and student manuals, including all of the audio and video recordings. While I admit that the basic elements of the language are presented and while the video portion was particularly challenging, although sometimes confusing, I found the printed materials and even the audio recordings to be extremely poorly organised. Quite seriously, I have never, in my entire life, come across supposed “instructional materials” that require such massive jumping around amongst the various course components within a particular lesson unit. It was the distracting and frustrating disorganised nature of the materials that lead me to put the entire, expensive, package in the recycling bin. Had I been taking classes with these materials, I would have withdrawn early on and would have requested a refund.
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Re: Contest: The Worst Language Programmes Ever

Postby aokoye » Fri Oct 30, 2015 4:21 am

pir wrote:Why was it so bad for me? The course was taught entirely in romaji, and what's worse, not in a commonly used romaji, but in Jorden's own concoction which is almost, but not quite the romaji Japanese use themselves. She designed it to be more true to the syllabic nature of Japanese, but whenever somebody reassigns very different phonemes to letters I am well familiar with already from several other languages, my little brain gets very confused at a time when it is already suffering from information overload.


Her romanji system...ugh it's horrible and she uses it for all of her books. I have her book, Reading Japanese, and I want to like it but i can't get over her system of romanji (which is used in introducing Kanji).
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Re: Contest: The Worst Language Programmes Ever

Postby Montmorency » Fri Oct 30, 2015 5:05 am

As far as I know it doesn't actually exist, but if there were a course (or series of courses) with titles like:

"I can make you speak [insert language(s) of choice" by Paul McKenna,

...I think those would be candidates.

Horrible thought: perhaps they really do exist...
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