Macmillan Dialogue Language Courses (circa 1994) ???

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Speakeasy
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Macmillan Dialogue Language Courses (circa 1994) ???

Postby Speakeasy » Sun Jan 05, 2020 1:36 pm

Macmillan Dialogue Language Courses
Recently, I came across an auction on eBay for a copy of a course identified as “Macmillan Dialogue French Set” which likely dates from the 1990’s. The images indicate the presence of 10 audio cassettes which would have been a fairly substantial quantity of recordings for the period, plus 2 video cassettes which would have been rather unusual for a self-instructional language course, and some fairly attractive course manuals. All of this suggests that this course would have been sold at a premium price. Macmillan Dialogue French Set Language Book Cassette and Vhs Brand New Set Boxed – eBay.com.uk
Macmillan Dialogue French course 0.JPG

Chatting With Ancient Philosophers?
My continued searches yielded an image on Google Books which suggests the method of instruction may have taken the form of a series of fictional “dialogues” between historical figures, hence the name of the course. While such an approach might have appealed to some language learners, my “gut feel” tells me that most customers would have recoiled in horror at the thought of learning a foreign language based on hypothetical discussions between Confucius and Socrates (now, why would I think such thing?). Thus, the Google Books image may very well be something of a red herring. Macmillan's Progressive French Course: First, Second, and Third Year, Volume 3 - Google.ca
Macmillan Progressive French course (Google Books).JPG

Copy of the BBC Master Series?
From the images above, there is a similarity of appearance to the BBC French Master course of the same era (the number of cassettes is not the same, but the boxed presentation and overall production values are similar)
BBC Master French 1.jpg

Information?
In addition to the offer of the Macmillan Dialogue French Set, I have come across offers for the VHS tapes for the Macmillan Dialogue Spanish course as well as traces of obsolete offers for a Macmillan Dialogue German course. My searches suggest that this series was published by Palgrave Macmillan circa 1994. However, despite the obvious high quality of the materials in the example above, I have not found any other offers for used copies.
Would anyone happen to have any information on the Macmillian Dialogue series of language courses?

EDITED
Tinkering
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faburns
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2020 11:47 am
Languages: English (N), French (beginner)
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Re: Macmillan Dialogue Language Courses (circa 1994) ???

Postby faburns » Thu Apr 23, 2020 11:48 am

I have the complete Macmillan French box set, which belonged to my late parents, complete with all the books and videos/tapes - all unused! What is it that you would like to know and maybe I can help with the box I have.
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Speakeasy
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Re: Macmillan Dialogue Language Courses (circa 1994) ???

Postby Speakeasy » Thu Apr 23, 2020 4:20 pm

Welcome!
Welcome to the forum, faburns! I look forward to following your participation in many of the fascinating discussions here on the forum. Now then, …

How did you track us down?
As your comments on the MacMillan Dialogue French course are your first appearance on the forum, and as this discussion thread has drawn so little attention from other members (not at all unusual), I wonder if you might explain how you tracked down the forum and, more particularly, this thread?

Your French Studies
Your profile indicates that you are at the Beginners level in French. Pray tell, how long have you been studying French, what materials have you been using, and what are your goals? You might be interested to learn that the forum hosts a number of “Study Groups” one of which is for students of French entitled “Le groupe français 2016 – 2019 Les Voyageurs ”. I invite you to read through the discussions and join in whenever you have questions or comments.

MacMillan Dialogue Language Courses
Beyond what I presented above, which is limited to not much more than a photograph of the boxed materials, I could not find much information on the MacMillan Dialogue Language Courses. They seem to have been packaged in a manner similar to those of the BBC Mastering courses of the period. Is there any indication that your French course was a reprint of another course under a different title? Could you tell me who were the author and publisher of your course? Is there any indication of your French course having been part of a series (e.g., German, Spanish, Italian courses in the same series)? Have you used the materials yourself? If so, how would you assess their effectiveness? How would you characterize the speech on the audio recordings (artificially slow, somewhat slower than conversational speech, rushed, highly-articulated, mumbled, voice-trained speakers or non-voiced-trained speakers, et cetera)? If you’re familiar with, say, the Assimil or Linguaphone courses, how would you compare the MacMillan course to the former? Could you please attach a couple of images of the interior of the course manuals depicting the dialogues, exercises, et cetera (you’ll have to save the images on your computer or on some device accessible by your computer and, while in the EDIT mode, use the “Attachments” function at the bottom of the page). Finally, there seem to be only a few traces of these courses on the internet, do you happen to know how they were marketed? Merci à l’avance!
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