Request advise on choosing and learning a new language.

Ask specific questions about your target languages. Beginner questions welcome!
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Seneca
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Re: Request advise on choosing and learning a new language.

Postby Seneca » Sun Jan 21, 2018 4:14 pm

Xmmm wrote:
Steve wrote:If you are picking FSI courses primarily because they are free, you might wish to reconsider. The courses and materials you choose are tools you will be spending many hours with to build your language skills. Spending perhaps $50 to $100 on a good course and good materials will more than pay for themselves over months and years. Many people have successfully used courses such as Assimil or Teach Yourself as good starting points.


What's wrong with FSI? I know that Modern Russian (which is essentially FSI Russian) is much more comprehensive and thorough than Assimil Russian. Assimil is an introductory course only (for Russian, anyway).


But do you think someone starting from scratch in Russian could handle Modern Russian? That could be a consideration.
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Re: Request advise on choosing and learning a new language.

Postby rdearman » Sun Jan 21, 2018 4:26 pm

Since you've decided on French, you might want to look at the following links.

List of French resources here on the forum, many of which are free.

The French Study Group here on the forum where we all try to share resources, information, and give encouragement. Also the first couple of posts in this group list all the logs of people who are also learning French, so you can read their progress and gather up some tips for learning.
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Re: Request advise on choosing and learning a new language.

Postby tarvos » Sun Jan 21, 2018 6:53 pm

Seneca wrote:
But do you think someone starting from scratch in Russian could handle Modern Russian? That could be a consideration.


Old Russian is harder anyway.
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Re: Request advise on choosing and learning a new language.

Postby Speakeasy » Sun Jan 21, 2018 9:54 pm

Xmmm wrote: What's wrong with FSI? I know that Modern Russian (which is essentially FSI Russian) is much more comprehensive and thorough than Assimil Russian. Assimil is an introductory course only (for Russian, anyway).
... to which Seneca replied:

Seneca wrote: But do you think someone starting from scratch in Russian could handle Modern Russian? ...
I apologize for contribuing to the mild digression but, in a word, yes!

I have an embarrassingly-large collection of audio-lingual courses from the 1960’s and 1970’s, all of which were designed for use in a classroom setting (as were the FSI Basic and DLI Basic audio-lingual courses of the period) and, in virtually every case, I found that these materials were quite easy-to-use in an independent-learning situation. The only problem with these materials is the virtual impossibility of finding the audio recordings.

My collection includes “Modern Russian” by Dawson et al, and “Beginning Polish” by Schenker, for which the FSI was a co-sponsor. I completed both courses and I found them to be essentially identical in approach to the FSI Basic German, French, and Spanish courses. In fact, I found that they were more comprehensive and easier to use in an independent-learning situation than were the FSI Basic courses. Many members have reported similar experiences in the LLORG and HTLAL.

EDITED:
Typos. Formatting.
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Seneca
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Re: Request advise on choosing and learning a new language.

Postby Seneca » Mon Jan 22, 2018 6:43 pm

Speakeasy wrote:
Xmmm wrote: What's wrong with FSI? I know that Modern Russian (which is essentially FSI Russian) is much more comprehensive and thorough than Assimil Russian. Assimil is an introductory course only (for Russian, anyway).
... to which Seneca replied:

Seneca wrote: But do you think someone starting from scratch in Russian could handle Modern Russian? ...
I apologize for contribuing to the mild digression but, in a word, yes!

I have an embarrassingly-large collection of audio-lingual courses from the 1960’s and 1970’s, all of which were designed for use in a classroom setting (as were the FSI Basic and DLI Basic audio-lingual courses of the period) and, in virtually every case, I found that these materials were quite easy-to-use in an independent-learning situation. The only problem with these materials is the virtual impossibility of finding the audio recordings.

My collection includes “Modern Russian” by Dawson et al, and “Beginning Polish” by Schenker, for which the FSI was a co-sponsor. I completed both courses and I found them to be essentially identical in approach to the FSI Basic German, French, and Spanish courses. In fact, I found that they were more comprehensive and easier to use in an independent-learning situation than were the FSI Basic courses. Many members have reported similar experiences in the LLORG and HTLAL.

EDITED:
Typos. Formatting.

Very nice! How long did it take you to work through each of those courses? Were you systematic or was it just on and off over the course of years? I know your language interests are quite broad!
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Re: Request advise on choosing and learning a new language.

Postby Speakeasy » Mon Jan 22, 2018 10:17 pm

Hello, Seneca. Rather than respond to your question "how long" in this discussion thread, as we are now really talking about general matters touching upon audio-lingual programs, I have added a comment in the following thread:

Audio-lingual language programs
https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 165#p96165
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