Routledge "Speed Up Your xxx": Strategies to Avoid Common Errors

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Routledge "Speed Up Your xxx": Strategies to Avoid Common Errors

Postby Speakeasy » Thu Mar 23, 2017 2:10 pm

For those of you who are not subscribers to the Routledge promotional Email list, you might wish to know that this publisher has announced a new series of books entitled "Speed Up Your xxx" where "xxx" represents the name of a specific language. I have presented below a partial extract from the Email that I received and, with a view to rendering it somewhat more generic, have made slight modifications to the text:

Presently Included in the Series:
Speed Up Your Arabic
Speed Up Your Chinese
Speed Up Your French
Speed Up Your German
Speed Up Your Korean
Speed Up Your Spanish


Here is the LINK to Routledge's "Speed Up Your Language Skills" page
https://www.routledge.com/Speed-up-your-Language-Skills/book-series/SUYLS

Promotional Announcement

The following text is drawn directly from the promotional announcement; I would assume that the description, save for the name of the language, applies to all of the books in the series:

Speed Up Your German: Strategies to Avoid Common Errors
By Annemarie Künzl-Snodgrass, Silke Mentchen

Speed Up Your German is a unique and innovative resource that identifies and explains the errors most commonly made by learners of German, enabling students to learn from their mistakes while enhancing their understanding of the German language. Each of the twelve chapters focuses on a grammatical category where English speakers typically make mistakes. Each point is clearly explained and exemplified with a range of exercises to reinforce learning.

Key features:
• An emphasis on the areas where students most commonly make mistakes makes this an efficient learning and revision tool
• Exercises throughout encourage learners to play an active role in identifying the rules, allowing learners to internalize the main rules more readily
• A complete answer key to assist with self-study
Suitable both for classroom use or self-study, Speed Up Your German is the ideal resource for all intermediate learners of German wishing to refine their language skills.


Expanded Description on Routledge's Website

The Speed Up Your Language Skills series publishes innovative, high quality textbooks focusing on common errors as an effective tool to improve one’s skills in a foreign language. Such errors are often either driven by linguistic transfer from English or caused by common misperceptions about the grammatical structure of a foreign language.

The primary objectives of the series are to explain and illustrate in context the most common errors made by English-speaking students in a foreign language and to classify them in easy-to-reference categories. Students can thus learn the appropriate usage of words and expressions and understand the reasons why they persistently make the same mistakes. The inclusion of exercises, shortcuts, mnemonic devices and much-needed strategies, not usually seen in conventional grammar books, facilitates vocabulary acquisition and mastery of essential grammatical elements.

Books in the series are intended as primary or supplementary texts at the intermediate and advanced levels. Due to its self-explanatory approach and user-friendly format, the series is also recommended for self-learners who wish to "speed up" their language skills. Proposals for the series will be welcomed by the Series Editor.


EDITED:
To include the LINK to the relevant page of the Routledge website.
To include an expanded description of the series drawn from the Routledge website.
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Re: Routledge "Speed Up Your xxx": Strategies to Avoid Common Errors

Postby PfifltriggPi » Thu Mar 23, 2017 10:23 pm

They seem quite nice, but, just like all other Routledge books, they are very expensive.
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Re: Routledge "Speed Up Your xxx": Strategies to Avoid Common Errors

Postby jeffers » Fri Mar 24, 2017 12:08 am

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. The idea always seems great, make a book about common errors an English learner would make. Why didn't anyone else think of this? And then I looked at the table of contents for the French version:
1. Gender and number 2. Mastering false friends: verbs 3. Mastering false friends: nouns 4. Mastering false friends: adjectives and adverbs 5. Common verb phrases and idiomatic expressions 6. Pronominal verbs 7. Non-existent words, words with double meanings and other misused expressions 8. Use of prepositions and the translation of English phrasal verbs 9. Spelling, accents, elision, capitalization and punctuation


Basically, there's nothing special there as far as I can see. Most of these topics would be covered in any introductory course. Because, of course, every other teacher of French did think of this!

The sarkiness of my post is not directed at Speakeasy, but at Routledge.
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Re: Routledge "Speed Up Your xxx": Strategies to Avoid Common Errors

Postby Xenops » Fri Mar 24, 2017 2:58 am

This series made me think of the excellent "Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish" (found here ), and I was wondering if there were such books like this for other languages (and perhaps not as expensive?).
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Re: Routledge "Speed Up Your xxx": Strategies to Avoid Common Errors

Postby Speakeasy » Fri Mar 24, 2017 3:43 am

jeffers wrote: ...Basically, there's nothing special there as far as I can see. Most of these topics would be covered in any introductory course. Because, of course, every other teacher of French did think of this! …
I suspect that jeffers' supposition will turn out to be correct and that this latest effort from Routledge, while most likely quite potable in itself, will turn out to be not much better than any other review of grammar. I would point out, though, that the publisher indicates that the books in this series are destined for Intermediate students.

Xenops wrote:This series made me think of the excellent "Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish" … and I was wondering if there were such books like this for other languages ...
I have a copy of the book mentioned by Xenops: "Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish". It takes a refreshingly unconventional approach to sharing information on language-learning and it is rife with real-life experiences; however, as for jeffers, I suspect that the Routledge series will turn out to be a conventional review of grammar. That is, while the books in this series would certainly have their own merits, they would not be comparable to the "Breaking Out ..." book.
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Re: Routledge "Speed Up Your xxx": Strategies to Avoid Common Errors

Postby aokoye » Fri Mar 24, 2017 4:37 am

Speakeasy wrote:
jeffers wrote: ...Basically, there's nothing special there as far as I can see. Most of these topics would be covered in any introductory course. Because, of course, every other teacher of French did think of this! …
I suspect that jeffers' supposition will turn out to be correct and that this latest effort from Routledge, while most likely quite potable in itself, will turn out to be not much better than any other review of grammar. I would point out, though, that the publisher indicates that the books in this series are destined for Intermediate students.

As much as I love a number of the books that Routledge publishes, I don't see how this will be much better, in terms of content, than their countless intermediate grammar text and workbooks. I think what's useful about this is that it concentrates on typical errors as opposed to a wider breadth of what people class as intermediate grammar.
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Re: Routledge "Speed Up Your xxx": Strategies to Avoid Common Errors

Postby smallwhite » Fri Mar 24, 2017 5:10 am

Speakeasy wrote:Speed Up Your German is a unique and innovative resource that identifies and explains the errors most commonly made by learners of German, ...

I was also wondering how "unique and innovative" this resource could be, when every grammar website seems to have a page dedicated to "common mistakes". Googling "FRENCH COMMON MISTAKES" without quotes yielded "[a]bout 30,300,000 results". "Breaking out of xxx" also came to mind, "Correcting your ... Blunders" as well, and other similar books I always see in the library.

Ditto "The sarkiness of my post is not directed at Speakeasy, but at Routledge".

Oh, I've just realised that I've actually borrowed Speed Up Your Spanish before, in 2011, ISBN 9780415493321. I gave it 2.5 out of 5 which meant "not good, not bad", and commented "Not as useful as it seems".
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Re: Routledge "Speed Up Your xxx": Strategies to Avoid Common Errors

Postby Cavesa » Fri Mar 24, 2017 10:27 am

I agree this is a very good idea, but the realization leaves to be desired.

I looked at the sample on amazon. For 24 pounds (almost 28 euros, or 40 something dollars), I'd get only 236 small pages of content. I was looking at Spanish. There is the first chapter without the exercises in the sample. It starts with a nice assimil like joke. Nice, if only the point wasn' explained in the last dialogue bubble. I am not stupid and dislike being treated that way. And I am not a beginner, while this book claims to be for intermediates and advanced learners. This is a detail but definitely not a good sign. Add to it no cefr level mentioned everywhere, I am sceptical towards the words "intermediate" and "advanced, especially without the label and, at the same time, coming from other publishers than those in the country.

The half chapter itself is quite basic, all the stuff is being covered normally in courses or grammar books, there is no such gap on the market to be filled by Routledge, they are fighting a strawman. The explanations are rather short. But there are examples and quite many of those, which is a good thing.

I wish I could have a look at the exercises. Perhaps they are good, but I am not gonna risk it, I'll buy other intermediate Spanish resources instead.

I don' know why they talk about adressing the typical English natives' mistakes and present the book like a huge discovery and help we had been desperately in need of. ( ok I know marketing :-D )The issue they are treating in the 1st chapter (the one in the sample ) is a very common set of mistakes natives of many languages are likely to make, before the issue is properly explained. And I think all the usual courses and grammars do it.

But there is one nice thing, and we can use it without buying a mediocre grammar book: http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/97804 ... rcises.asp
The exercises are nice, I think the website checks them for you, a nice tiny resource to complement others.

Of course, I am now considering only the european languages, with tons of resources. This resources could still be very practice for the Arabic or Chinese learners, I cannot judge on that. Perhaps someone will try those out and tell us.
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