Language Resources and target level

[DarrenDaka]

Hi guys

Does any body know what the BBC Talk ( German, French ,Spanish, Italian) series are at if you finish both books one and two .

Regards

Darren

[Speakeasy]

Although the “BBC Talk” series of self-instruction language courses are seldom mentioned in this forum or in its predecessor, customer reviews on Amazon.co.uk are uniformly positive as to the course structure and the quality of the materials. My quick survey of my own copy of the “BBC Talk German” complete course, which was designed to accompany the video series, leads me to believe that the level upon completion of both levels would be roughly CEFR A1, if not a somewhat less, which would be “par for the course” (with the odd exception) for the BBC Languages Courses from the 1970’s onward.

While I will not provide a full review of the BBC Talk [Language] series here, I think that it is important to comment on the audio recordings. That is, with the exception of the very short dialogues, virtually every new word, phrase, or sentence is preceded by a comment or explanation in English; likewise for the audio exercises. While novice language-learners might find this reassuring, it also means that of the 4 CDs which accompany the combined Levels One and Two of these courses, somewhat less than 2 hours are recorded in the target language.

As an aside, I suggest that you edit the TITLE of this discussion thread to something more evocative of the subject matter such as “BBC Talk: Level upon Completion”.

EDITED:
Corrected links to reviews of BBC Talk French and BBC Talk Italian on YouTube.
Additional comment on the audio recordings.