Using Textbooks for Native Speakers

[Cavesa]

I love textbooks in my target languages. I used a few in French and English in past (one in German. But it was anatomy, so it was half Latin, half German), and popular science magazines as well, right now I am using a pathology textbook in English and I am looking forward to reading Neurociencia, right after my exam. I've been using presentations (with audio) made for students of the university in Grenoble...

I am a bit disappointed such textbooks aren't more common in the libraries. Really, the Cervantes library here is great but they obviously expect you to be a scholar, not a normal person with various interests learning Spanish. It is foolish. A few general highschool textbooks + some popular science magazines would be an awesome service to all those students of medicine, natural sciences, engineering, architecture and so on who go on Erasmus or another exchange with Spanish speaking countries, there are many! And to many other learners as well. I was told "there isn't enough demand for that". And those textbooks are not that cheap for everyone to buy their own. I wish there were more options to legally buy the ebooks, I'd say this is another of the holes on the market.

What makes them expensive is the fact they are, logically, divided into chunks: 1 volume=1 schoolyear. Well, I would like to find some kind of "review" books, that would cover more information in the language. If anyone has got tips, I'd appreciate them

However, I find it slightly wrong to necessarily try to fit these textbooks for natives into the CEFR.
1.Why? not everything falls into those cathegories. While I find cefr very useful, I don't find it that beneficial to grow too dependent on it. Many learning activities and resources spread across those levels.
2.You won't find a reliable way to sort the books. In French, even young children will have tons of passé simple in their history and humanities textbooks, no matter how "hard" it is considered to be for foreigners. The vocabulary in most subjects will be less rich than in textbooks for older students but the selection will, again, be different from the selection of easy vocab for foreigners. Native children are not the same thing as foreign language students.
3.I'd say most popular science books, popular psychology and relationship books, manuals, textbooks for natives (except for things like philosophy) can be approached by any intermediate learner. The more interested you are, the earlier you can get started and enjoy the process.

[AlexTG]

The great thing about textbooks is, although the latest edition is always super expensive, second-hand older editions are dirt cheap. Latest editions are expensive because students are forced to buy them no matter how expensive they are. The older editions are dirt cheap because they're of no use to students no matter how cheap they are. But for autodidacts like us the edition doesn't matter a bit ! Often the changes between editions aren't anything meaningful either, publishers just want to make sure students have to purchase expensive first hand copies rather than use the second hand market.

And even if the information given does change, does it really matter that you're getting a 2005 understanding of a subject instead of a 2015 understanding ?

[Cavesa]

In most cases, it doesn't. I've been using several awesome books, full color, tons of photos etc. And I got them for a tiny fraction of the price, just because they were older. The fact you've described is a sad dark side of the education industry.

However, the same doesn't apply to highschool or lower textbooks. Those keep their price for longer and are meant to serve more students. I highly doubt parents in most european countries (no idea about other continents) are forced to buy an expensive brand new set of books for each of their kids every year, with no option to buy second-hand books or to pass the books between siblings. And in some countries, the schools buy the books and lend them to students, at least up to a certain age. It is obligatory for the czech schools and, from what I heard, some german schools do it as well.

This thread reminded me of Anthony, the polyglot living in Prague who learns languages with children's encyclopedias, among other tools. I hope I remembered correctly and didn't confuse him with someone else. He was showing his way in a video. Basically, the book is a nice dictionary where every word is accompanied with a short article, where it is being used in context.

And I think it was Stelle, who used the Spanish version of the National Geographic to great success.

[aokoye]

I'll second AlexTG in saying that, for most subjects, an earlier version of a textbook will be just as good and significant/, significantly cheaper. In the US one of the reasons why textbooks, at least at the university level, are so expensive is that publishers come out with a new edition nearly every year (despite the fact that generally the information doesn't change).I know I used to have an idea as to why many professors keep requiring the latest edition despite this (they aren't getting a kickback from the publisher unless they themselves were the author) but I've forgotten the reason.

In the US public schools (that is schools that parents don't have to pay tuition for their students to go to) buy all of the textbooks and lend them to their students year after year. Though I remember in my high school German class we all got our own (paperback) dictionaries and copies of 501 German verbs to keep. There are some private schools that do the same and others that require you to buy the books.

All that is to say, just try to find an older edition of the textbook.

[aokoye]

This thread reminded me of Anthony, the polyglot living in Prague who learns languages with children's encyclopedias, among other tools. I hope I remembered correctly and didn't confuse him with someone else. He was showing his way in a video. Basically, the book is a nice dictionary where every word is accompanied with a short article, where it is being used in context.

I had forgotten about him but I love some of his videos! I actually have his encyclopedia one in my "watch later" (which I use as a, "watch again") category on Youtube. I should rewatch some of them:


Now I know what I'm going to look for at Powells today...

[tangleweeds]

Similar but not quite the what we were talking about: I recently made a log post with pictures illustrating the two competing series of Irish language readers for (English speaking) Irish primary school children. The next post/page has a link to a children's encyclopedia in Irish that I searched out, inspired by the video above (thanks for the suggestion & video post, great idea!). I haven't logged the links yet, but a few weeks ago I also discovered some standard curriculum gaelscoil textbooks from the same two competing Irish textbook publishers as published the readers, which I found intriguing as they would probably cover a lot of useful and interesting vocabulary.

Of course, these are all in the caighdeán oifigiúil, but (on the bright side for me) they don't follow the CEFR A1-2 curriculum, which I find very dull, having no realistic plans to visit Ireland any time soon. My turning point in a language is always when I can start using my TL for my mundane mental chatter ("Our car is blue. Where is the cat? I need coffee soon."), so I'm wanting to accumulate vocabulary for everyday (non tourist) life, and this is what the children's readers provide.

[sfuqua]

In a somewhat related point...
I've used "old" textbooks for learning for years. A few years ago I read out loud a series of college textbooks on English and world literature, in the mornings before I went to work. $100 dollar textbooks are common on amazon for $5, if you get a couple of editions older than the current edition. It took a few years to get through.

There is nothing more likely to prove you are insane than pacing the floor reading the Iliad in the Fitzgerald translation at five o'clock in the morning. When I got to the translated Indian literature, I was pretty sure I was insane.

My wife is very patient.

But really, old textbooks are an incredibly cheap resource. The rise of electronic books my make these go away, which would be a shame.

[aokoye]

I don't think ebooks are going to make college textbooks go away anytime soon. Right now in the US the newish thing is renting textbooks which doesn't actually solve the problem but it does mean you don't have to worry about selling back a textbook and getting next to no money for it. I think that the sheer amount of textbook editions (which is why it is so easy to get cheap three year old textbooks) is something that needs to be done away with. There are a handful of subjects are current enough that yearly republishing of textbooks makes some sense, but those are few and far between.

[Cavesa]

It is quite different here. On a smaller market, you get a new edition of a textbook after ten years or more in many cases. In the meantime, you get the new info in class (the worst source usually, I hate sitting in a lecture most of the times), in presentations or from internet resources ranging from wiki-like overviews to normal scientific articles. In some ways, it is a much better approach, no need to turn that much money in the bookshops. In others, it is not such a victory. First of all, some old examinators still require the old information (they have been in the field for fourty years so they are not gonna change their opinion just for the results of other scientists... sad but a reality.). Secondly, the material for the newer parts is not that readily availible sometimes. Thirdly, some weird parts of our society try to make us feel guilty when we download pirated things. Well, when there is no reprint, no other book covering the subject, just a handful of copies in the library, you either become a pirate or you fail the subject. (that really happened. The subject in question is a combination of different subjects, specific for one faculty. Either you can download the official and good quality czech book scan, or you can buy several very expensive foreign books and need just a chapter or two from each)

So, the american system (that surely applies not only to anglophone countries) of milking students every year isn't only bad. I could add a few more advantages you don't even realize but that would make this post too long.

While I love ebooks as well (hey, I love tons of things with letters and words on them...), I don't think paper books are gonna leave the scene. Many students remember things better from paper book, or even from using pencils and highlighters in it (ok, I do that all the time but not to the very expensive books).

Another good resource: The books from the "for dummies" series. They come in various languages and cover most topics well.

I wonder, do you have experience with foreign history books? One of my wild ideas I have not time for right now is expanding my european history knowledge and I wonder whether there will be many differences in interpretation even in the basic "highschool" or popular books from each coutry.

[aokoye]

Yeah the other thing that happens is that it isn't uncommon for university/college libraries in the US not to have a copy of the textbook. If you don't have the money to buy the book(s) you're left hoping that you can photocopy other students' copies. I've actually gotten really lucky over the years (I had to take time off of school for a while because of medical issues but I'm going back this Fall) in that a lot of my courses have used books that aren't textbooks, course packets (which you can buy from copy shops - generally one specific one on the campus), or there have been links to journal articles.

The German grammar course I"m taking is using a textbook but it's Klett's Grammatik mit Sinn und Verständ which is cheaper than any textbook published in the US. I'm not sure what books my other course is using but they thankfully aren't textbooks (it's a course on Nietzsche but in English).