Anyone used 'French Fluency 1/2/3: Glossika Mass Sentences'?

[bedtime]

Thank you so much for your comments. I'm on the fence with Glossika, but still looking around for something similar. I'd like to get your opinions on another book that I found:

A Frequency Dictionary of French (Routledge Frequency Dictionaries):
https://www.amazon.com/Frequency-Dictio ... 819&sr=8-1

They seem qualified to write the book:

Deryle Lonsdale is Associate Professor in the Linguistics and English Language Department at Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah). Yvon Le Bras is Associate Professor of French and Department Chair of the French and Italian Department at Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah).

This book has a list of 2500 of the most commonly used French words. There is an example sentence for each word along with the IPA for the word itself. Anyone used this or able to comment?

Here is a picture of the inside:

[Speakeasy]

... I'm on the fence with Glossika, but still looking around for something similar… [/i]

… If you're interested in sentence-pattern drills or similar exercises, the options seem to be limited to Glossika, DLI Basic, FSI Basic, or creating and using your own Anki (or similar) decks...

In my opinion, while “A Frequency Dictionary of French” might serve as a basis for creating a set of sentence-pattern drills, it falls short of being one. Without wishing to seem flippant, my advice is "bite the bullet!"

While I could be mistaken, it seems to me that the availability of large sets of sentence-pattern drills is as follows:

Sentence-Pattern Drills
Sentence-pattern drills formed the “core” of the “audio-lingual method” courses, which benefited from wide-spread support from American academia in the 1960’s through the early 1970’s. However, as the method was replaced by the “communicative method” by the end of the seventies, it is highly unlikely that you’ll find any contemporary courses employing large volumes of drills. While a number of classroom-oriented audio-lingual-based textbooks from the era can still be found on the internet, tracking down the accompanying audio recordings (which were often available on reel-to-reel magnetic tape) is almost impossible. Whereas a few educational institutions may have copies of the original tapes in their archives, there are precious few freely-available mp3 sound files available via the latter’s website. For anyone seeking large, packaged sets of sentence-pattern drills, for all practical purposes, the choices seem to be limited to:

DLI/FSI basic courses
Owing to the efforts of a small group of members of the HTLAL are now freely-available on the Yojik and Live Lingua websites. A couple of years ago, the was a private (commercial) initiative to update the FSI French basic and FSI German basic courses. While I believe that the initial batch of materials is still available, I am under the impression that the project has stalled (you can communicate with the owner/developer).

Glossika Fluency Mass Sentences
As confirmed by Anthony Lauder, the original sets of Glossika Mass Sentences were designed to illustrate and to assist the practicing of English structural features and vocabulary. The L2 translations were not prepared by professional translators or educators and, for this reason, may not reflect customary use in the target language. Nevertheless, for the astute learner, they remain an option.

Linguaphone: “Small” Sets of Sentence-Pattern Drills
The only other commercially-prepared materials that come to mind are two Linguaphone courses of the 1970’s as: (1) For a number of languages, the standard Linguaphone Complete courses incorporated a small set of sentence-pattern drills in support of each lesson. However, as the volume of materials does not, in any measure, match that of the average audio-lingual course, given your apparent desire for large volumes of exercises, I’m not convinced that purchasing the Linguaphone French course would be justified. (2) In the late 1970’s, the Linguaphone catalogue included a very limited series of audio-lingual method “For Business” courses (the “business” appellation was actually just a marketing ploy). Typically, these courses included 60 lessons, each comprising a dialogue (recorded with and without pauses) and about five sets of sentence-pattern drills (about 10 drills per set) in support of the structural elements deployed in the dialogues. The volume of drills does not match that of the DLI/FSI basic courses and, for this reason, I have at times characterized them as “audio-lingual lite” variants. Although you and I have discussed these materials privately, it seems to me that they would not really meet your apparent need for massive amounts of drill materials.

More Recent Commercial Efforts?
Advances in recording technology and the greater ease of distribution of large volumes of sound files would seem to leave the door open to the creation of language courses based on the audio-lingual method or variants of it. However, even in today’s context, the preparation of such materials would still be a costly venture which few publishers would undertake without a very high probability of financial success. One obstacle is that the use of large volumes of sentence-pattern drills in second language instruction no longer enjoys the wide-spread support of academics and linguists. Another obstacle is that the “average” purchaser of self-instructional language courses would be discouraged by the sheer volume of materials (viz., “I only want to become fluent in the language … over the next two weeks (in 10 x 15-minute sessions) … for my holiday in fill-in-the-name-of-the-country”). So then, I do not see the likelihood of this method being revived anytime soon.

EDITED:
Expansion of the text.

[bedtime]

... I'm on the fence with Glossika, but still looking around for something similar… [/i]

… If you're interested in sentence-pattern drills or similar exercises, the options seem to be limited to Glossika, DLI Basic, FSI Basic, or creating and using your own Anki (or similar) decks...

In my opinion, while “A Frequency Dictionary of French” might serve as a basis for creating a set of sentence-pattern drills, it falls short of being one. My advice? Bite the bullet!

For now I'm still using Assimil for learning colloquial French. Seems I just can't resist trying to find better tools. It's just with Assimil you really have to be patient to see the results.

[Speakeasy]

Hello, Bedtime. Thank you for your comments, which I have just read (I was off-line, preparing an expansion of the text, above, which I posted without noticing your reply.)

I had in mind suggesting that working with the Assimil dialogues (particularly shadowing them) might provide an effect somewhat similar to that of working with large volumes of sentence-pattern drills. But, then again, this could be said of just about any set of dialogues.

Perhaps another approach would be to acquire a large collection of courses and to "drill" the dialogues. You could add the DLI GLOSS and NFLC practice sets into the mix.

[bedtime]

Hello, Bedtime. Thank you for your comments, which I have just read (I was off-line, preparing an expansion of the text, above, which I posted without noticing your reply.)

I had in mind suggesting that working with the Assimil dialogues (particularly shadowing them) might provide an effect somewhat similar to that of working with large volumes of sentence-pattern drills. But, then again, this could be said of just about any set of dialogues.

Perhaps another approach would be to acquire a large collection of courses and to "drill" the dialogues. You could add the DLI GLOSS and NFLC practice sets into the mix.

Still doing Assimil. At least a few hours a day, until something better comes up. But I am quite satisfied with it.

I couldn't find any info on NFLC dialogues. I found DLI GLOSS, and that seemed to be a decent resource, but I did find it a trifle targeted to specific topics. The voice that it comes with sounds good, though.

...

I had a look at the first 250 words in the French/English Frequency Dictionary and made flashcards of out those that I wasn't absolutely sure of. It might be interesting to know that I never study individual words—not nouns, adjectives, preps, or even verbs. I only study sentences as a whole and the rules guiding the grammar within. With that, I was able to know 98/100 (first 100 words) and 210/250 words (84%). Just thought it worth mentioning as it seems this system does have some merit.

[Speakeasy]

I couldn't find any info on NFLC dialogues ...

Hello, Bedtime. Please excuse me, I’ve being hanging around on this language forum for so long now that I developed the mistaken impression that everyone was familiar with the University of Maryland’s NFLC Portal. The graded practice sets are similar in scope to those on the DLI GLOSS website. The differences between the two services are: (1) the NFLC covers a broader range of languages, and (2) access to the NFLC files is subject to a monthly subscription of 5.00 $US.