Audio lingual language programs

All about language programs, courses, websites and other learning resources
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reineke
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Re: Audio lingual language programs

Postby reineke » Tue Aug 22, 2017 10:07 pm

MAUGER Gaston, BRUEZIERE Maurice, Le français et la vie 1 (le "Mauger rouge"), Paris : Hachette, 1971,

le+francais+et+la+vie-1.jpg


I suspect that the audio portion is around 30 hrs long. A native speaker was able to read through the first two books in under three hours (on YouTube).

PDF samples

Histoire des méthodologies de l'enseignement des langues, Édition numérisée au format pdf

https://www.christianpuren.com/mes-travaux/1988a/
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Re: Audio lingual language programs

Postby Speakeasy » Mon Jan 22, 2018 10:11 pm

Time to Complete Either “Modern Russian” or“Beginning Polish”

I have copied/pasted a portion of the “Request advise on choosing and learning a new language” discussion thread. The OP had requested comments on whether he should learn French or German, he also mentioned that he would be using a selection of the FSI courses. I have added colour for emphasis. At one point in the discussion, Xmmm commented:

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?...
... to which Speakeasy responded:

Speakeasy wrote:I apologize for contributing 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.
... which promoted Seneca to ask the following question:

Seneca wrote: 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?...


... Speakeasy pontificates as follows:

Speakeasy’s Quesstimate
The FSI, under their previous language difficulty rating system, classified Slavic languages as Category IV languages. That is, the FSI estimated that it would require about 1,100 hours of instruction, in a classroom setting, for a small number of students (who had been vetted based on their perceived ability to learn a foreign language) to learn a Slavic language to about the B1-B2 level. This evaluation was exclusive of the additional three hours per day of additional study required of the students during the estimated 44-week instructional period. Based on this information, I believe that it would be reasonable to assume that the time required to cover either the “Modern Russian” or the “Beginning Polish” course materials on a part-time basis in an independent-learning situation could easily extend over two years. In addition, despite the quality of these materials, one’s actually ability in speaking these languages at the end of the period would be somewhat less than what the FSI students achieved.

Speakeasy’s Mea Culpa
For all of the languages that I have attempted to learn (with the exception of French, which I learned “sur le tas” while working in Quebec), I have invariably acquired a large quantity of materials from: Assimil, Linguaphone, Living Language, FSI Basic/Programmatic and DLI Basic or their civilian equivalents, Langues pour tous, Méthode 90, Michel Thomas, Pimsleur, Routledge, as well as readers, grammars, dictionaries, and sundry materials from a host of other sources.

My approach to studying languages is highly erratic. When embarking on the study of a "new" language, for about the first six months, I ferociously attack the audio-lingual materials and, generally speaking, make it about half-way through them. I managed to do this with Modern Russian and Beginning Polish (without comment on how much I retained). During this period, I explore the other materials in my collection, some of which retain my interest to the point where I begin to focus solely on them. Unfortunately, at about the eighth-month mark, wanderlust settles in, my enthusiasm flags, and I switch to another language, returning to this "new" one sporadically, for periods of some three months, which are always interspersed with a brief return-to-and-quick-abandonment-of another language or languages. The process is unrelentingly repetitive and admittedly self-defeating (consult any dictionary for the definition of "being one's own worst enemy").

So then, the long-and-the-short-of-it is that I managed to cover the “Modern Russian” and “Beginning Polish” courses, along with the Assimil, Linguaphone and the other materials over about a four-year period (it was, perhaps, even longer). I would not recommend this approach!

EDITED:
Tinkering (OCD).
Additional tinkering.
Last edited by Speakeasy on Tue Jan 23, 2018 1:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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iguanamon
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Re: Audio lingual language programs

Postby iguanamon » Tue Jan 23, 2018 12:00 am

Courses are so chock full of promise. I'm not talking about the cover hype. To us, the learners, it can seem as if they hold the key to what we want- to speak, read, listen to and understand the language. We all know that learning a language to a high level can be very hard work... even an "easy" language isn't all that easy.

I myself have done two DLI Basic Courses by self-study- Portuguese and Haitian Creole. They were the most thorough courses I've ever done and gave me a great foundation upon which to build my language skills. It pains me when I see someone writing that the courses are "dry", "boring" and "old". Just because something is old doesn't mean you throw it out, especially if it still works. I completed the HC Basic Course despite the horrible, at times un-listenable and at other times barely listenable, audio. I completed the Portuguese Basic Course and didn't mind it's age.

I got through them because I didn't just rely on the courses. I had fun. I listened. I read. I watched. I conversed. I like to think that my multi-track approach was a sort of substitute for a really good teacher with whom I would have been happy to have had. Someone I could have talked with after class and sought advice. Someone who might have loaned me a record or music tape, a magazine or a book, or maybe even had lunch with me. That's the missing element that these courses, no matter how good they may be, just can't provide. I love this quote about a US soldier's experience in his DLI course at Monterey, California. It encapsulates the feeling I am trying to convey.
MSgt E. W. Forbess wrote:I was on the hill at DLIWC Jan-Jun 1972 as a Haitian Creole linguist. Both of our instructors were native speakers as well as husband and wife -- Roger and Rolande Turnier. We had a blast in class, but the best parts were the weekends that we got to spend with the Turniers and their friends and family in Monterey. source

That's what's missing when we download or buy one of these courses... and we have to add that missing (almost intangible) element in ourselves. It can be difficult for a beginner to do that, but for an experienced learner- it can be done. Talking with my Haitian friend, reading real Haitian Creole in parallel text and working my way through songs and folktales (and, yes, vodou too), that's what kept me plowing through DLI with a smile and eagerly awaiting the next chapter. I knew that all the hard work and repetition would have a payoff. I was already seeing that payoff occur in real time.

The method is still good and valid as far as I am concerned. The downloaded DLI Basic Courses worked for me (but not on their own). I wish someone would modernize and update these courses to include some of the new technology that we have combined with the audio-lingual method in a self-learning format. Although, I must admit that there was a certain charm in doing a reading about an American traveling to Brazil on a ship and learning Portuguese with one of the passengers in my DLI Portuguese Basic course. I, for one, am grateful for Speakeasy's dedication and effort to giving these old courses a chance at new life and introducing them to a new audience. Mèsi anpil, zanmi'm, Ayibobo !
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Re: Audio lingual language programs

Postby Speakeasy » Tue Jan 23, 2018 12:36 am

Iguanamon, I greatly appreciate your comments in support of the audio-lingual method including, more specifically, the DLI Basic courses, several of which I either completed or played around with. Like you, I find that they are unequaled for providing a solid base at the Beginner-to-Intermediate level.

On another matter, I respectfully decline any credit for having contributed to a revival movement for the audio-lingual method. The merit goes to a small group of individuals who, as members of the HTLAL, gathered the FSI and DLI materials (often at their own expense), digitised them, created a website, and rendered them freely-available to the public. Although “commercial editions” of the FSI courses had been available for a number of years, these were almost prohibitively expensive, a matter which did little to popularise their wide-spread use. It was the hard work and enthusiastic support of the small group of HTLAL members who, like yourself, represented the true revival movement. As I recall only a few of their Usernames, but not all of them, I will not list any of them here, for fear of rendering an injustice to those other “unsung heroes” of the HTLAL. My sole contribution was to join them at their table, order from their menu, enjoy the feast they had prepared, and then leave without paying.

This small interjection provides me with an opportunity to publish yet another Amazon Customer Review that I came across recently.

A-LM Spanish Level Three
(4 stars) Worth a second look on their 50th anniversary – December, 2011 – by Amazon Customer

Audio-Lingual Materials - A-LM... While many students remember the headaches from the heavy headphones, hours of mindless repetition drills, multiple choice tests that were ambivalent at best, I remember a series of textbooks that presented the grammar of 5 languages clearly and succinctly. If you dedicated a modicum of time to the listening comprehension tapes, you could develop a darned good accent, and since the materials in 5 languages were almost mirror images of each other, you could progress from one language to the next with relative ease, becoming not just bilingual but multilingual. The Level Three and Four books offered a wealth of reading materials of a caliber not found in today's modern textbook or classrooms. I think we have a few things to learn from A-LM before we dismiss them on this, their 50th Anniversary.


PS: I really love the concept of the "multi-track approach." My problem with its effective application, entirely personal, is that my lack of discipline leaves me feeling like "a kid in a candy-store."
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Re: Audio lingual language programs

Postby n_j_f » Sat Sep 15, 2018 3:43 pm

Speakeasy wrote:I have checked the "Spoken Language Services" website (they sell mostly audio-lingual courses that were often the precursors of the FSI courses) and they do not offer an Indonesian course.


Au contraire, Spoken Language Services did in fact have an Indonesian course available but their last catalogue before disappearing seems to have deleted this. The first image is from an earlier generation/print run with books that were roughly folio/A4 size . . .

Spoken Language Series 1.jpg


. . . whereas the later editions were A6 or 32vo (?).

Spoken Language Series 2.jpg


Unfortunately, I've been unable to locate a copy or an entry in any type of catalogue. It would perhaps help if I knew the name of the author.

Has anyone comes across or used Spoken Indonesian?
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Re: Audio lingual language programs

Postby Speakeasy » Sat Sep 15, 2018 4:40 pm

n_j_f wrote: ... Spoken Language Services ... Indonesian course ... their last catalogue before disappearing seems to have deleted this ...
And I thought that I was a pack rat!!! :roll:
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Re: Audio lingual language programs

Postby Daristani » Sat Sep 15, 2018 6:25 pm

Just another pack-rat chiming in:

I don't think we can be certain that the mere inclusion of a course in the Spoken Language Services' list of offerings necessarily means that they actually ever marketed it. I say this because I have a "Spoken Albanian" book which on the back lists their other publications. These include "Spoken Baluchi", which I'm fairly sure, having looked for it for a long time, they never actually produced.

I think "Spoken Baluchi" was almost certainly a version of the two-volume "A Course in Baluchi" by Barker and Mengal, originally published by McGill University, that they may have intended to market but never actually did. The books are now available on archive.org

https://archive.org/details/McGillLibrary-109612-472

but I've never been able to find the audio. (The book's co-author, Barker, told me in correspondence that it had been produced, but even he didn't have a copy when I asked him about it.)

(The SLS "Spoken Urdu" series, which they did sell for many years, was also a later republication of Barker's earlier series, "A Course in Urdu", likewise originally published by McGill.)
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Re: Audio lingual language programs

Postby Speakeasy » Sat Sep 15, 2018 7:22 pm

Daristani wrote:J ... I don't think we can be certain that the mere inclusion of a course in the Spoken Language Services' list of offerings necessarily means that they actually ever marketed it. I say this because ...
I agree with Daristani. I ordered "Spoken Polish" from Spoken Language Services and it turned out to be an exact copy of "Beginning Polish" by Alexander Schenker. It is quite possible that Spoken Language Services’ listing of "Spoken Indonesian" was actually a copy of a course that was not part of the original series which was published during the Second World War under the auspices of the USAFI (United States Armed Forces Institute) for which Spoken Language Services claimed to hold the copyright.
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Re: Audio lingual language programs

Postby neumanc » Sat Sep 15, 2018 7:31 pm

n_j_f wrote:Has anyone comes across or used Spoken Indonesian?
Maybe there was indeed a Spoken Indonesian course: https://www.amazon.com/Spoken-Indonesian-Beginning-Set/dp/0879507160.
In this review of a former revised two volume edition published in 1974, the reviewer states that this course has been used for many years:
https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1974.76.1.02a00880.
The good news is that it seems to be still available (however, without audio) under a different title at Cornell Press: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/search/?searchtext=Beginning+Indonesian&fa=search
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Re: Audio lingual language programs

Postby Speakeasy » Sat Sep 15, 2018 7:47 pm

neumanc wrote: ...Maybe there was indeed a Spoken Indonesian course: https://www.amazon.com/Spoken-Indonesian-Beginning-Set/dp/0879507160. In this review of a former revised two volume edition published in 1974, the reviewer states that this course has been used for many years ...
Neumanc, thank you for this reference; I came across it, too. Nevertheless, while Amazon lists Spoken Language Services the publisher, this work was first published by Cornell University in 1967 under contract with the U.S. Department of Education, amongst others. You can locate the PDF copy on the ERIC website: https://eric.ed.gov/?q=Spoken+Indonesian&id=ED021206. This example supports Daristani's comments and my own to the effect that, although Spoken Language Services may have offered courses for sale under their own imprimatur, in certain cases, these were copies of other courses which did not form part of the original USAFI series and for which it is highly likely that Spoken Language Services did not even hold the copyright despite their claims to the contrary.
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