Stefan wrote:Seneca wrote:I have always found it interesting how the Spanish and German equivalents of French in Action never seemed to be even close to as popular. Any ideas why? Worse quality audio-visual? Weaker or less thorough accompanying materials?
What's the German equivalent? The most similar thing I can think of is Deutsch Plus and that's one of the most recommended programs for anyone learning the language. I just recently found out that there's a coursebook, workbook, study guide and audio tape that's supposed to be used along the Deutsch Plus show. They seem to share a common thread in how a lot of people only watch the videos and then get their "regular" language learning from another source.
In lack of better words, I also believe there's a Assimil effect. Alexander Arguelles is a well-known person within the language learning community so when he praised Assimil, it spread and now everyone recommends it. As we established in another thread, the method isn't new - they used it 2000 years ago, but it works and became popular. I might be wrong to credit Arguelles for it though but that's the impression I got when I discovered the international language learning community.
To summarise, FIA has three things going for it.
1) It works.
2) The videos makes it somewhat unique.
3) Popularity breeds popularity.
I've studied German on and off for years and own most courses you can get but still don't know about a FIA equivalent so a major part is probably knowledge about it. If no one knows abut it or recommends it, then new learners won't use it. In line with my point above about popularity breeding popularity.
Fokus Deutsch was what I was referring to.
You may be right about popularity breeding popularity. Perhaps French is just studied more often by people on forums I visit, so FIA comes up more. Though, I also am unaware of the workbooks being updated for Destinos like they were for FIA. I suppose it is just all about perception.