Paid listening resources and the problem of 'amateur' teachers

[Le Baron]

Disclaimer: I have not studied the resource I mention as a student, but I'm helping someone with French and she brought this to me to look over. I've also not listened to every last minute or read every last word of the accompanying texts. also excuse the length of the post.

This is something sold via a website - Français Authentique. The fellow behind it has a YouTube channel and she suggested I could watch some of them to get an idea of who he is. Of course I made a mistake and watched a couple of videos of a completely different channel called Français Facile before I realised my error!

The resource in question: 'Pack Deux' - Français Authentique
From what I've perused of the texts it seems to be a few years old now. I've had it on my computer for a week, copied from the student's tablet, but I looked it over more thoroughly today. I listened along with her to the first two 'units' when I was at the languages café group last week. This was so I could follow her concerns/complaints in real time.

The Problem
My own French comprehension is much better than this girl's, so initially I thought I wouldn't be able to share her frustrations, but after listening to what she said I now think that the problem is pretty much a universal one outside of the well-known, professionally produced material. I've had a similar one with Spanish (and other languages). Briefly it is that too much focus is placed upon explaining obvious words you could just look up in a dictionary, and the listening resource goes about explaining these using a level of language where anyone understanding it likely doesn't need these words to be explained at all. Much worse is that nothing is said about the things you really need to know.

Listening to this 'Pack Deux' I was initially struck by the dialogues, which seemed pretty in-depth and likely more difficult than the Spanish DELE type dialogues I've been listening to recently. So I thought, yes they're probably hard for her, but worth re-listening to in order to get a handle on how French is spoken normally at speed. All good, it even has transcripts. However the dialogue is followed by a bizarre rambling monologue about the supposedly notable words/phrases in the dialogue. At one point this guy spent about two minutes explaining what a barbecue is... Really? A barbecue? Then 'an apartment'. Then he lingered on 'demain'. I realise students will come from different language backgrounds, but surely these are common, basic words?

Furthermore, in the accompanying scripts the highlighted so-called 'key phrases' sit right beside unexplained and probably more difficult/useful phrases. I can't fathom the reasoning behind this. He highlights "éviter les problèmes", but ignores the immediately following: "ça va bien se passer." Surely the first one is easier to work out or guess than the second is for a student? Then shortly after this he finds it necessary to highlight (in green no less): "ça ne peut pas se passer comme ça", yet didn't explain the similarly-structured "ça va bien se passer". A bit later he highlights 'possibilité' right after 'il y aura'. Surely if you understand 'il y aura' you likely also know 'possibilité'? Finally he says nothing about 'avec une petite cuisine aménagée' clearly because everyone can guess the word aménager and its conjugation, but will be flummoxed by 'carte d’identité', another well-known object he spends minutes describing.

I find all of this very odd. It also makes me wonder how many of these 'resources' are like this in all these online paid French courses and other languages. And how many people are really just wasting their time listening to anything more than listening to the dialogues with transcripts. They are the only useful part of this 'pack'. The rest, if it goes on like that, seems to me a waste of time and life. The problem of people who simply declare themselves a teacher and then get lots of followers on youtube channels, who then buy their wares, might well be a big problem. It's one thing making little videos chatting about something or other and hitting a few grammar points. Those are likely useful in a casual way and for listening, but to then use this to sell listening material with a haphazard approach is a bit dubious.

What I draw from this is that a fair portion of people who set themselves up as online language teachers, and who happen to be natives, don't really know or understand what students need to know, because they don't see their own language from a real student's perspective. I'm curious to know how many actual 'students' these people have aside from people subscribing to their cash cow programmes which is no better than sending someone away with a book and saying: 'read this and learn it'. That's not teaching. The problem is these people seem to have huge numbers of followers hanging onto their every word, and likely trapped in a perpetual beginner/intermediate stage living on unfulfilled promises.

[BeaP]

This type of material exists in other language as well. I usually don't bother about them, because big publishers make relatively bad textbooks as well. For me the biggest problem of 'modern' language learning is the need to pick out a good resource, which is often only possible in retrospect. (When you already know the language.) The biggest problem with these courses is that they are way overpriced. For example for the price of the course you've mentioned one could buy 5 Clé books (for example Grammaire en dialogues all 4 levels plus something else). The excellent Vite et bien (2 volumes, from zero to B1) costs less than the half of this course. I don't know how many people buy these courses though, I hope not too many.

[Fortheo]

I used to listen to a lot of his content many years ago, so I have a decent idea of his style, although I've never used his paid content. The creator has put out a lot of material, and seeing as how that's a pack deux, it's possible that the phrases you found to be more demanding of clarification were already discussed in his previous courses.

Personally none of this has ever bothered me because I have a dictionary and I can easily look up any word or phrase that I need and I never expect any course to be perfectly catered to my exact level. Also, I welcome someone "rambling" and explaining phrases, even if they're phrases I already know, because it's just deepens my understanding of the phrase to hear it explained from various perspectives and I usually pick up other synonyms in hearing those explanations.

With all of that said, his material isn't something I'd ever pay for.

[Carmody]

Well, I followed Français Authentique from a long time ago, however, in his self-help videos in French he came out saying how wonderful Donald Trump was with the Art of the Deal. When people criticized him for his support, he said that people did not understand Donald Trump.

So I have stayed away from him.....

[Fortheo]

Well, I followed Français Authentique from a long time ago, however, in his self-help videos in French he came out saying how wonderful Donald Trump was with the Art of the Deal. When people criticized him for his support, he said that people did not understand Donald Trump.

So I have stayed away from him.....

He always felt a little disingenuous to me for some reason. Maybe I'm a cynic, but he was always talking about doing everything for the learners, and how any money he gets goes back into the channel to make it better etc etc; but it started to become obvious that it wasn't selfless and he was doing it for himself and his brand. I don't blame the guy -- he needs to make a living -- but it just felt like he was practicing marketing techniques on the audience at times, or as if he was reading an entrepreneurial book and practicing techniques with his channel under the guise of selflessness. I don't know. He just always felt a little unauthentic to me at times. I think this is less of a problem with him and more so my problem with most of youtube now though....rant over.

I am still grateful though because I did spend a lot of time with his earlier videos back before his YT channel was his career and those videos did help improve my comprehension a lot.

[BeaP]

I think this is less of a problem with him and more so my problem with most of youtube now though....rant over.

I am still grateful though because I did spend a lot of time with his earlier videos back before his YT channel was his career and those videos did help improve my comprehension a lot.

This is an interesting question. I used to watch Italiano Automatico, a very similar channel. Actually, I think that the two creators are friends and have similar views on language learning. My experience was the same as yours: the early videos were very helpful and effective, but later it all turned to something that I didn't want to watch anymore. I think the main problem is that you can't compete with the big publishers economically. I do understand that for these guys creating a full language course requires months of hard work, but for the learners' point of view these prices can't be justified. The big publishers go to conferences, teacher training programmes, and they know for sure that their books will be bought by a large number of learners. Why? Because they only need to convince the teachers. They need to convince professionally trained people, in a professional setting, with rational claims. I often have the impression that these YouTube guys don't know the resources that exist. They always seem to compete with grammar books in Latin, without any example sentences, written in gothic letters. Like it was the only other option. Then comes this teleshop type of argumentation, that your life is in ruins, but now you can change it forever. Is it their fault? I don't know, but people can't really be convinced with rational claims outside of a professional setting. I'm often sorry for these channels, because they start out in an enthusiastic way, more often than not giving some very good advice to learners. But I think making money with this is totally impossible unless you corrupt your channel in some way. It's sad that all this enthusiasm and creativity can't be channeled into something beneficial for both parties. I only follow youtubers who are professional teachers (teach in schools or online beside YouTube) and I only buy courses that have a fair (justifiable) price and can't be replaced with a million other options. For example I'm really looking forward to the DELE C2 video course of Mar (aporeldele). Her DELE courses contain a lot of information about how to write the essay part of the exam. There are very few materials that can help you in this, so youtube can lead you to high-quality and useful resources as well. The problem is that 'amateur' teachers can't create resources like this, because they lack the knowledge, insight and experience. It's obviously easier to write everyday dialogues in your mother tongue than to train essay writing for an exam.

[garyb]

This has been my issue with some of the Italian YouTubers and podcasters. They make a lot of assumptions about what the learner knows and doesn't know. When they interrupt the flow of what they're saying to explain a relatively simple word or expression, or repeat or put unnatural emphasis on a phrase that happens to use a supposedly "difficult" feature like the subjunctive, it can feel a bit patronising. It also puts me off their paid materials, particularly since the value-add is often that they go into more depth on some of the words and expressions used in the free content. Episodes that explain a certain expression or grammar point can be very useful, as can ones that are a monologue or a dialogue based around a certain subject, but when the producers try to combine these two formats it can get messy.

I also dislike how their marketing is inevitably based on the typical straw-man-ish attack on "traditional" learning methods and courses.

It's a relatively minor complaint, as I still enjoy that kind of content even with a relatively advanced level in the language and it can complement "real" native materials (and the bad old traditional resources!) quite well.

[aaleks]

I watch the Français Authentique youtube channel from time to time but I've never bought any course of his and am not planning to. Just because I don't like working with language-learning courses in general, not because I have something against the creator. I've always assumed (wrongly?) that people who buy such courses usually watch the videos on the youtube channel, and that is the reason they buy them. I mean, they're supposed to know what to expect from the courses and the teacher before buying the course.

[einzelne]

Only used audio with dialogues from such resources going through the transcript by myself (with a dictionary, of course). All these additional explanations are just a waste of time.

To be fair, it's not only about amateur resources. I read some adapted books from respected publishing houses and their glossing practice didn't make any sense to me.

[Le Baron]

Reading all the above I find this all quite interesting. I don't follow any French learning videos so I didn't know what was out there. Somewhere on this forum I was made aware of a fellow called Hugo, a rather personable chap with a channel called Inner French where he speaks very slow for learners - something I won't criticise. I had a listen to some of his podcasts, which seemed to me actually interesting and well-researched. I skipped forward and the latest podcasts speed up quite a bit and he speaks with other people. As far as I can tell his material is worth listening to (he also provides transcripts). Who knows for how long? He also seems to run courses and, as was said above, once the cash starts rolling in it goes off the rails.

The other one I mistakenly visited on YT, Français Facile seems to have everything openly available on his website. I suspect he might be an actual teacher or ex-teacher and his videos cover useful topics. Before yesterday I looked at something called French School TV, with another slow talking fellow, and he also had videos that seemed to me useful for students, though probably best if you've already studied these topics and just need assistance. Once you click on one more of them keep appearing in the sidebar! There are dozens of these people! They all eventually fall into that hole of having to put out videos to remain visible, so like the Spanish videos I've watched you get a lot of '10 words for this or that' and 'never say this!', which are just annoying after a while.

There's that other thing on YT: the 'Easy' series. I follow the Easy Spanish videos (which I find anything but 'easy' at times!), but from there I've had a look at the Easy French and the Easy German, which appears to be the original one. The German one is genuinely interesting. The people who do it seem nice and don't ask for anything; I often wonder how they fund it. For listening to languages as they are spoken on the street in a casual way I think those are actually useful.

As for Français Authentique I sent a message to the frustrated girl and told her to just use the dialogues or dump the entire thing and just look at those Hugo podcasts or the Easy French, at least for YT. Many of the others seem to be drip-feeding their audience with beginner-low intermediate tidbits.