Audio lingual language programs

[Speakeasy]

Hello Ownerzeff,
Thank you for your reply as well as the links to the materials. I am nonplussed by my lack of success in locating these files through my own searchs; merci beaucoup!

Fellow Forum Member "daristani" has sent me an Email commenting on the subject of "Speak Dutch" textbook and audio files. As a follow-up to our exchanges (yours, mine, his), I will open a new discussion thread on "Speak Dutch" as I will be asking the Director of the Indiana CeLT to release the audio recordings to the public and I would like the discussion recorded separately. Thanks again for your comments and, once again, my public thanks to daristani for his support.

[Speakeasy]

Returning the question concerning "audio lingual language programs", I neglected to mention the series that was published by "E.I.L.(Experiment in International Living)" in the late-sixties and early-seventies under the direction of Professor Alvino Fantini, who still holds the copyright to the texts and the audio recordings.

Some of the texts, in PDF format, are available on the ERIC website; for example, E.I.L. Italian: http://eric.ed.gov/?q=E.I.L.&id=ED044984 for which I have a copy of the audio files. As you can tell from reading the example text, the course employs the "audio lingual" techniques that were popular during the period. Although these courses were designed for use in a classroom setting, I estimate that these courses would take a conscientious independent learner to about the A1 level, but that a simple grammar and dictionary would be required to support the materials.

About a year ago, I began a "quest" to collect the 32 E.I.L. language courses with a view to having them posted on the FSI/DLI/CeLT websites or elsewhere. While communications have been difficult, Professor Fantini has expressed his support for the project. However, he is TRULY occupied with matters of a more challenging nature. I have NOT abandoned this project and, hopefully, some day, these "legacy" courses will be freely available.

[peterbeischmidt]

Are there any other good comprehensive audio lingual language programs such as Modern Russian 1 and 2, or Speak Dutch, except for FSI/DLI?

I recently began studying Turkish, and since I enjoyed using audio-lingual courses in the past, I've been trying to find such courses for this language as well. In the case of Turkish, while there exists a DLI course, I can't find the audio recordings anywhere on the internet. The FSI course, on the other hand, is available in its entirety, but many so-called drills seem to be mere lists of slightly altered sentences followed by a gap. For this reason I've begun looking extensively for alternatives.

What follows is a list of Turkish courses that are at least in part audio-lingual. For the sake of completeness I'll also include the usual FSI and DLI courses.

• Turkish in Tapes by Ilhan Basgöz, which can be found in the Center for Language Technology's Recorded Materials Archive: http://www.iu.edu/~celtie/turkish_archive.html
• A Practical Course in Turkish by Müfit Yıldırımalp (I read that the author had been working for the DLI before he produced his own textbook)
• Turkish Self Study Course by Çankaya et al. (apparently comes with a fair number of drills, but I'm still trying to find the tapes)
• Hugo's Turkish in three Months (said to come with some drill sections)
• DLI Basic Course (audio missing?)
• DLI Headstart (does come with drill sections, but they seem pathetic in comparison to those of a real DLI course)
• FSI Turkish Basic Course
• SLS Spoken Turkish (may not be regarded as a "true" audio-lingual course, but can easily be turned into one by inserting a gap right after every announcement made by the English speaker, and adding repetitions, essentially "pimsleurifying" it)
• E.I.L Turkish Course (see viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1418)
• Methode de Turc comes with recordings that can be used as drills, but you would either have to hit the pause button many times or edit the recordings to insert your own gaps

In addition to those listed above, I found that the tapes of the well-known series Türkçe öğreniyoruz can also be used in a sort of audio-lingual fashion, by first listening to a dialogue, and then listening to the questions that follow without immediately listening to the reponse (again by hitting the pause button in time or suitably editing the recordings).

[Speakeasy]

@peterbeischmidt,
I found your list of Turkish Resources very interesting. I suggest that you create a separate discussion thread and that you copy/paste your post into it. This would enable other Forum Members to locate it more easily and it might encourage those who have an interest in studying Turkish to add their own lists of resources.

As to the DLI Turkish course, I notice that the JLU Archives database does not have a specific listing. However, were you to search EBay using "Defense Language Institute Turkish", as your search criterion, you would come across an offer for the course as a DVD (PDF text and MP3 audio) for about 10 $US. In your post above, you referred to two separate DLI Turkish courses: DLI Basic Turkish and DLI Headstart Turkish. It is not clear to me which of these two courses is covered by the current offer on EBay. Accordingly, if you decide to place an order, bear in mind the adage "caveat emptor"! Finally, please note carefully that I cannot vouch for this supplier or for any other seller on EBay; rather, I am merely responding to your comment about having searched the Internet.

[peterbeischmidt]

@speakeasy, thank you for your friendly response. With your permission, I will nevertheless leave my list of Turkish materials untouched because it strictly relates to audio-lingual ones. Later on I'll simply create a separate, more comprehensive thread with a list of materials.

As to the DLI Turkish course, I notice that the JLU Archives database does not have a specific listing. However, were you to search EBay using "Defense Language Institute Turkish", as your search criterion, you would come across an offer for the course as a DVD (PDF text and MP3 audio) for about 10 $US. In your post above, you referred to two separate DLI Turkish courses: DLI Basic Turkish and DLI Headstart Turkish. It is not clear to me which of these two courses is covered by the current offer on EBay.

I came across this offering myself a while ago, and concluded that it's something else entirely, neither related to the Headstart program nor the Basic Course. I'm wondering whether it would make sense to ask the DLI whether they still have a copy of the old Basic Course?

[Speakeasy]

@peterbeischmidt,

Over the past couple of years, I have sent a number of Emails to the Defense Language Institute requesting information pertaining to their older courses, but have never received a reply. Perhaps you will enjoy greater success with an enquiry.

Alternatively, you could create a new discussion thread entitled "DLI Turkish Basic course" asking our Forum Members where you can obtain a copy. I have no idea who created the http://fsi-dli.yojik.eu/DLI/ website and what efforts were required to locate, convert, and upload the materials. However, perhaps someone will respond identifying the source of these materials and you can ask them to upload the DLI Turkish Basic course.

Finally, I noticed that the following PDF file is available: https://poloniaistanbul.files.wordpress ... course.pdf It would seem that the person who prepared this document did so after using the DLI Turkish Basic course as an independent learner. If you can trace the origin of this post, perhaps the author will be able to advise you how to obtain a copy of the course.

Good luck!

[peterbeischmidt]

I would like to add three more items to the list:

Persian

• Lehrgang der persischen Sprache, by Khosrau Behrouz, Richard Flower, and Tilman Nagel, originally came with almost 10 hours of recordings on 7 cassettes. I haven't used it yet, but it seems to contain a lot of drills.

Korean

• Speaking Korean by Francis Park, which was accompanied by about 40 cassette tapes. The general structure is very close to that of a typical FSI course: there's a dialogue at the beginning of each lesson, and then new grammatical features, words and expressions are systematically drilled. The contents of the tapes are entirely in Korean, with not a single word being said in English. Apart from the drills, there are also three so-called 'short stories' at the end of each lesson. If you listen to the tape, each short story is first read to you, and then you are asked questions. After a short pause, the answer is given.
  
• Linguaphone's Korean course also comes with drills, but it's not as comprehensive as Speaking Korean by Francis Park.
  
• Sejong's Korean
  I can't say anything about this one other than that it's a series of textbooks for which cassettes with drill-based exercises have been produced. I just bought the cassettes (14 in all) for the first part on Ebay and might be able to talk about them in detail when I receive them.

Japanese

• Japanisch Intensiv I, II, III by Detlef Foljanty
  These are three textbooks published by the German publisher Buske in the 1980s and 1990s. Four cassettes have been produced to accompany the first volume, and another six for the second volume. They are now hard find, but they might be a blessing for someone trying to find an audio-lingual method for Japanese. In order to fully take advantage of the drills, one would need to know German, though, as they often involve a translation from German into Japanese
• Manuel de Japonais written by Kunio Kuwae and published by Asiatheque comes with five CDs on which all exercises and and example sentences have been recorded. While it can't be called a full-blown audio-lingual course, there seem to be numerous drill-like exercises on the CDs. I I have gone through only about a third, though, so can't tell for sure at the moment.
• Japanese Language Patterns: A Structural Approach by Anthony Alfonso is a complete audio-lingual course for Japanese. The drills were spread out over 74 cassettes.
• Fundamentals of Japanese by Toyoaki Uehara and Gisaburo N. Kiyose also looks like a great audio-lingual course but I wasn't able to determine if there were ever audio recordings
• the course by Eleanor Harz Jorden

[peterbeischmidt]

Modern Persian (Beginning & Intermediate): The University of Michigan published a highly-rated Persian/Farsi course in three levels for which they also offer 18 CDs worth of audio recordings. I do not know how the course is structured and it may not fit your criteria for an “audio-lingual” course. Nonetheless, given the positive reviews, it is worth checking out.

Is this the one produced by Windfuhr et al? If so, have you by any chance been able to locate the recordings for this course?

Here's an Amazon link to make sure that we're talking about the same course: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0916798550

[Speakeasy]

@peterbeischmidt,

In answer to your question, yes, the recordings are for the Windfuhr textbooks that can be purchased on Amazon and elsewhere.

As to the recordings, a few moments ago, I accessed the University of Michigan, Language Resource Center's website (LINK: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/lrc/sales and discovered that their "View Products" link at the bottom of the page lead me to a message advising "this content is no longer available". I see two possibilities: (a) the site is down owing technical problems and it will be reactivated, or (b) the Language Resource Center has ceased sales operations. I have sent an Email to the University of Michigan, Language Resource Center, requesting clarification.

[peterbeischmidt]

@Speakeasy,
thanks to you and the helpful people at the Center I received the recordings for the Modern Persian textbook. I mailed them late last week and just received a friendly email with a link to download the audio files.