Grammaire Progressive for other Languages

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galaxyrocker
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Grammaire Progressive for other Languages

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Jun 19, 2022 5:39 pm

So having dedicated the past few months to seriously studying French, Grammaire Progressive series (and the other stuff CLE put out) has definitely shown its value and worth as a set of graded, easy to digest grammar books. Do other languages have an equivalent? You could kind of consider the Routledge "Beginner X" and "Intermediate X" series, but I don't think they're nearly on Grammaire Progressive's level.

But, interested to hear about some others that maybe don't get the same level of hype but are out there. I'm working on a possible language experiment if I stay in Ireland and don't focus on the TEG (or after it's done) and would love to see what exists for various languages.
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Re: Grammaire Progressive for other Languages

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Sun Jun 19, 2022 5:43 pm

This is such a good question! I’m very curious about the answers.
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Grammaire progressive du français -
niveau debutant
: 60 / 60

Grammaire progressive du francais -
intermédiaire
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: 3 / 5

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Re: Grammaire Progressive for other Languages

Postby Cavesa » Sun Jun 19, 2022 6:08 pm

Sure, I'll put together a list of my favourites (and less favourites) for the thread, this is a type of resource I use all the time.

The Routledge series is actually rather disappointing imho, not thorough enough, not enough content, etc. The main advantage: available for a lot of languages. Sure, it is not exactly bad, you are just not getting by far the same amount of value for your money, time, and for the carried weight of the paper.
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Re: Grammaire Progressive for other Languages

Postby iguanamon » Sun Jun 19, 2022 6:29 pm

For Spanish- "Gramática de uso del Español" is a great resource for deepening understanding of how Spanish works. It's monolingual with exercises and answers. It comes close to providing the same benefit for Spanish as the French series does.
Image

For Haitian Creole, my favorite resource is the monolingual "Gramè Deskriptif Kreyòl Ayisyen an" by Jockey Berde Fedexy.


Portuguese has the great Lidel (Portugal) series of grammar books, some with exercises

Catalan has so many wonderful online resources available, I've never had to buy a book. It's almost like the Catalans actually want people to learn their language.
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Re: Grammaire Progressive for other Languages

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Jun 19, 2022 8:53 pm

Cavesa wrote:ge series is actually rather disappointing imho, not thorough enough, not enough content, etc. The main advantage: available for a lot of languages. Sure, it is not exactly bad, you are just not getting by far the same amount of value for your money, time, and for the carried weight of the paper.



That honestly summed up my exact thoughts about it as well. Sadly, it seems for some languages (Irish) it's a close as we can get to anything near Grammaire Progressive's level.
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Re: Grammaire Progressive for other Languages

Postby jeffers » Thu Jun 23, 2022 10:18 am

The Practice Makes Perfect series of workbooks is available in a lot of languages (they even have a few for Latin). Unlike the CLE books, they use English for the explanations and instructions, which is unfortunate. I've never used one, but I do remember several users recommending them here on these forums. I bought the Hindi workbook, but found it was really aimed at complete beginners, so I gave it to a Hindi teacher.
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Re: Grammaire Progressive for other Languages

Postby luke » Thu Jun 23, 2022 10:49 am

jeffers wrote:The Practice Makes Perfect series of workbooks is available in a lot of languages. I bought the Hindi workbook, but found it was really aimed at complete beginners, so I gave it to [my] Hindi teacher.

And then got a new teacher for Hindi? :lol:

Note: edited jeffers post for comic effect
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Re: Grammaire Progressive for other Languages

Postby BeaP » Thu Jun 23, 2022 12:26 pm

In my opinion there's nothing similar enough. Other books have shortcomings and almost always lack levels.
The most important information here isn't the list, it would be the assessment. How clear are the explanations? Do the exercises help retain the information? Are they good to teach you new material or just as a revision tool? (In short: do they reach the efficiency level of the Progressives?) I haven't done any of these cover to cover, so I'm really looking forward to Cavesa's opinion: which one is better, which one is weak.

German
Hueber's Schritte Grammatik / Sicher Grammatik. The same content comes with different titles and covers as well, but I don't remember them now.
https://shop.hueber.de/media/livebook/9783190110810/index.html
https://shop.hueber.de/media/livebook/9783193012067/index.html
Hueber has a lot of grammars, sometimes combined with vocabulary as well, it might worth it to look at their site. If you want only A1, then A2, I think they offer several options.

Grammatik Aktiv. Click on 'Blick ins Buch'.
https://www.cornelsen.de/produkte/grammatik-aktiv-verstehen-ueben-sprechen-uebungsgrammatik-a1-b1-9783060239726
https://www.cornelsen.de/produkte/grammatik-aktiv-verstehen-ueben-sprechen-uebungsgrammatik-b2-c1-9783060214822
It comes with audio drills.

Klipp und Klar:
https://www.klett-sprachen.de/klipp-und-klar/c-1456

Spanish
Beside the one iguanamon has mentioned:
Uso de la gramática https://edelsa.es/usodelagramatica/ Click on 'ver muestra'.
Anaya en https://www.anayaele.es/anaya-ele-en Click on 'Mira la muestra'.
Francisca Castro Viúdez: Aprende gramática y vocabulario (Can't find sample pages but it's excellent. A new version is coming out.)
This series is very good but stops at B1: https://www.difusion.com/metodos/gramatica/cuadernos-de-gramatica-espanola

Italian
Mezzadri: GP
https://www.loescher.it/dettaglio/opera/o_b2506/gp Click on 'sfoglialibro'. I doesn't have several levels, but the structure is similar.
The same applies for gramm.it : https://www.loescher.it/dettaglio/opera/O_B4275/Gramm-it
Grammatica pratica:
https://www.almaedizioni.it/en/catalogue/scheda/grammatica-pratica-edizione-aggiornata/ Click on the 'Anteprime' pdfs.
https://www.almaedizioni.it/en/catalogue/scheda/grammatica-avanzata-della-lingua-italiana/
Una grammatica italiana per tutti:http://www.edilingua.it/it-it/Prodotti.aspx?ElementID=9056850e-ce6f-4566-a782-95174e4b48c2&Action=First

Portuguese
https://www.lidel.pt/pt/catalogo/portugues-do-brasil-lingua-estrangeira/materiais/gramatica-ativa-1/
This one has 2 levels, and separate versions for European and Brazilian Portuguese. The Brazilian has CDs with all the answers recorded.
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Re: Grammaire Progressive for other Languages

Postby lingua » Thu Jun 23, 2022 6:13 pm

I have seen Grammaire Progressive mentioned often enough on this site that when I return to French next year I'd get them. But having not used them I can't compare them with sources for other languages.

From BeaP's list:
I have the two Gramática Ativa European Portuguese books from Lidel and like them but they don't have enough exercises in my view. I have the Mezzadri Grammatica pratica della lingua italiana book as well as the additional exercise book and think they are excellent. The German Grammatik Aktiv books are on my wish list because like the French source they're mentioned frequently.

I have the Routledge Hammer's German Grammar and Usage along with the workbook and I like them because there are lots of examples in the reference book and plenty of exercises in the workbook.

As far as the Practice Makes Perfect series I have all of the Italian ones and think they are pretty decent. I have many of the German and the limited Portuguese and Latin and didn't think any of them were as good as the Italian series. In all honesty I'm not sure if it's because Italian is my most advanced language or they are better authors. The one thing good about PMP is they have tons of exercises for those who like repetition. As a side note the Portuguese ones were written with European rather than Brazilian in mind.

For minor languages with few sources I'll take what I can get.
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Re: Grammaire Progressive for other Languages

Postby Chung » Sat Jun 25, 2022 10:25 pm

galaxyrocker wrote:But, interested to hear about some others that maybe don't get the same level of hype but are out there. I'm working on a possible language experiment if I stay in Ireland and don't focus on the TEG (or after it's done) and would love to see what exists for various languages.


In general, FIGS have high-quality workbooks that are similar to CLE’s “Progressif/Progressive” series. I do think that the French series is very suitable for learners because of how the volumes can be sorted by domain (i.e. grammar, conjugation, communication, vocabulary) and CEFR. In other words, workbooks for each domain are geared for just one or two levels of CEFR (e.g. Communication Progressive A1, Communication Progressive A2-B1, Communication Progressive B2-C1).

I’d say that the nearest counterpart for German comes from the various books published by Hueber. Of particular interest are the series “Deutsch üben” and “DaF-Palette”. Within the former series there are books geared by CEFR for listening and spekaing (“Hören und Sprechen”), reading and writing (“Lesen und Schreiben”), and improving knowledge of grammar and vocabulary (“Wortschatz und Grammatik”). The latter series consists of workbooks that focus on a specific aspect of grammar which are also graded by CEFR so that you have a clue for their level of difficulty. For straightforward workbooks on grammar in general, the “Grammatik” series published by Schubert is also very good with its three volumes being graded broadly but progressively by CEFR.

In Italian, the series of workbooks issued by Alma Edizoni are comparable to CLE’s series, as BeaP notes.

We all know about the English-language workbooks in the series published by Routledge, McGrawHill (e.g. “Practice Makes Perfect”, “Schaum’s Outline”), Barron’s (i.e. “E-Z”) and Hodder Education (i.e. “Teach Yourself Grammar and Vocabulary Workbooks”). I’ll just add that the usual observation applies in that FIGS are very well-represented while it’s clearly more hit-and-miss when you start to venture past the “polyglot’s ‘dozen’” (i.e. English, FIGS, CJK, Russian, Portuguese, Arabic).

If you’re adventurous (bored?) enough and have already learned the basics in one of Finnish, Hungarian, Polish or Slovak as potentially gained by working through the appropriate volume of “Teach Yourself…” or “Colloquial…”, then you could try using one of the following workbooks:

Finnish

- “Harjoitus tekee mestarin” (Sanuela) It’s a series of four volumes with the first three being grammar workbooks graded progressively by difficulty while the fourth is a preparation workbook for intermediate students planning to take a certification exam in Finnish. The answer key for the first three volumes is free to download by the publisher here.

Unless Serpent has other ideas, this is unfortunately all that I know is available for pure workbooks that are independent of a textbook. Monolingual grammar-based courses like “Aletaan ja jatketaan!” (Bessonoff & Hämäläinen), “Suomen kielen alkeisoppikirja” (Lepäsmaa & Silfverberg) and “Kieli käyttöön” / “Suomi sujuvaksi” (Kenttälä) come with workbooks whose exercises are perfect for drilling but are hard to use unless you’re also using the series’ corresponding textbook. If you’re willing to overlook this, then perhaps consider using the “Suomi sujuvaksi” series as it’s readily available and you just might feel right at home with the old-school feel of the course.

For more information about Finnish courses, check out the site uusikielemme.fi, especially its recommendations based on a learner’s goals. The review of learning material there is an excellent extension of the list of material in the Finnish profile.

Hungarian

- “Sok kicsi sokra megy” (Gyöngyösi & Hetesy). This is a workbook for intermediate students who want extra practice to figure out aspects of Hungarian grammar or vocabulary that often trip them up because the Hungarian distinctions aren’t expressed similarly (if at all) in their native tongue. It’s a little reminiscent of Hueber’s workbooks “Weg mit dem typischen Fehlern!” and “Das Gleiche ist nicht dasselbe!” for students of German.

- “Gyakorló magyar nyelvtan szójegyekkel” (Szita & Görbe). It’s not a pure workbook but a reference manual of grammar with each section consisting of explanations and a set of exercises. It’s also a dual-language guide with English translations next to the original Hungarian rather than in Hungarian only. It’s somewhat similar to Routledge’s series of concise grammars and grammar workbooks.

- “A magyar mint idegen nyelv grammatikája. Elémlet és gyakorlat” (Budai). This can be thought of as a more extensive version of the preceding book by Szita and Görbe. It goes deep into Hungarian grammar with each chapter containing a set of exercise relevant to the grammar point under discussion (usually fill-in-the-blank and transformation drills) while its explanations in Hungarian are matched with English translations. Even though it could be used as a standalone workbook, it's actually a companion of Budai's reference manual on grammar “A magyar mint idegen nyelv grammatikája”.

- ”Miről van szó”, ”Variációk négy témára” and ”Variációk újabb négy témára” are monolingual workbooks meant for intermediate and advanced students who want to build their vocabulary. They’re a little similar to workbooks such as “Da fehlen mir die Worte” and the series ”treffend!” for German.

- Igék - Nyelvtani gyakorlókönyv (Hlavacska). This is a workbook for students of any level wishing to improve their grasp of conjugation.

- Igéző - Igekötös igék gyakorlókönyve (Hoffmann & Máté). This is a workbook for students of any level wishing to practice using prefixed verbs.

Unfortunately, that’s about it for stand-alone workbooks of Hungarian as a foreign language. If you want to replicate the drill-like approach that you get with a workbook, then you could adapt the exercises in FSI Hungarian Basic Course. However, they’d still be quite hard to use without background knowledge or unless you also work through the course’s units sequentially to familiarize yourself with a given unit's vocabulary and grammar which are then recycled in the exercises.

You could also turn to free handouts for downloading such as those at magyarnyelvtanfolyam.blogspot.com and Magyaróra.

Polish

In my experience, Universitas publishes the only worthwhile set of Polish workbooks which can compare with the better-known examples for FIGS mentioned previously. The relevant volumes are the following:

- “Kto czyta – nie błądzi” and “Per aspera ad astra” (Seretny). They’re meant for students at CEFR B2 or C1 who want to improve their reading comprehension.

- “Na łamach prasy, cz. I” and “Na łamach prasy, cz. II”(Kubiak). They’re meant for students at CEFR C2 who want to improve their reading comprehension using texts from mass media.

- “Księżyc w butonierce” (Lipińska). It’s meant for students at CEFR B2 and higher who want to improve their reading comprehension using texts by Andrzej Sikorowski, a composer and lyricist.

- “Pisać jak z nut” (Lipińska & Dąmbska). It’s meant for students at CEFR B1 or B2 who want to improve their writing abilities.

- “Nie ma róży bez kolców” (Lipińska). It’s meant for students at CEFR B1 or B2 who want to improve their spelling abilities.

- “Gramatyka? Dlaczego nie?!” (Machowska). It’s meant for students at CEFR A1 who want to improve their grasp of grammar.

- “Gramatyka! Ależ tak!” (Machowska). It’s meant for students at CEFR A2 who want to improve their grasp of grammar.

- “Co z czym?” (Mędak). It’s meant for students at CEFR B2 or C1 who want to improve their grasp of word order.

- “Przygoda z gramatyką” (Pyzik). It’s meant for students at CEFR B2 or C1 who want to improve their grasp of declension and noun derivation.

- “Liczebnik też się liczy!” (Mędak). It’s meant for students at CEFR B1 or B2 who want to improve their grasp of the declension and case governance of numerals.

- “Powiedz to po polsku. Say it the Polish Way” (Drwal-Straszkowa & Martyniuk). It’s meant for students at CEFR A1 who want to improve their listening comprehension.

- “Czas na czasownik” (Garncarek). It’s meant for students at CEFR B2 who want to improve their grasp of conjugation and case governance of verbs.

- “Iść czy jechać?” (Pyzik). It’s meant for students at CEFR B2 or C1 who want to improve their grasp of verbs of motion.

All of the preceding are in Polish only.

Slovak

For foreigners, the only suitable choices for standalone workbooks are those published by Comenius University Bratislava. They assume that the student already has a basic understanding of Slovak as the explanations (if any) and instructions are in Slovak only. The relevant titles are the following:

- “Slovenčina pre cudzincov. Pravopisná a gramatická cvičebnica” (Žigová). This is a small workbook full of fill-in-the-blank exercises in grammar and spelling.

- “Praktikum zo slovenskej gramatiky a ortografie pre cudzincov B1 - B2” (Žigová). This is something like an extended version of Žigová's small workbook listed above. As the title states, it's meant for students at CEFR B1 or B2 who'd like more practice with elements of Slovak grammar and spelling while its exercises are a little more varied than those in the other workbook.

- “Slovenčina pre cudzincov. Gramatické cvičenia” (Vajičková). This is a small workbook full of exercises in grammar.

In a pinch, one could also try to use the exercise book in the series “Krížom-krážom” which is meant to supplement the volumes for students at CEFR A1 or A2. However, it might be tricky to repurpose the exercise book as a standalone workbook since it's tied to the content presented in the corresponding textbooks of the series.

There are also workbooks published by didaktis which a foreigner might be able to use even though these books are actually meant as supplements for Slovak children and thus in Slovak only. The relevant titles are the following:

- “Prehľad gramatiky a pravopisu slovenského jazyka” (Caltíková & Tarábek). This is a small workbook with exercises, quizzes and dictations that let students improve their grasp of grammar and spelling.

- “Cvičebnica slovenského jazyka pre stredoškolákov” (Galková). This is a collection of worksheets, exercises and dictations meant for high school students.

- “Čítajme s porozumením - hráme sa s textami” (Gahérová). This is a collection of texts with exercises meant to improve reading comprehension for children in 3rd or 4th year of primary school.

- “Budem vedieť pravopis pre 5. ročník ZŠ” (Lukačková & Solčanská). This is part of a series of workbooks meant for children to learn spelling with the linked title being the workbook for students in 5th year of primary school.

- “Zbierka úloh zo slovenského jazyka” (Péteryová et al.). This is a preparatory workbook of Slovak language and literature for students who need to take entrance exams for high school (i.e. students usually aged 14 or 15 and in the last year of primary school). Its exercises cover grammar, spelling, style, syntax and literature.

Lastly, there's a freely downloadable workbook of grammar issued by the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University of Košice. It's fairly wide-ranging and in Slovak only while also lacking an answer key. You'd need not only a lot of motivation to use it, but also a Slovak tutor/friend for any explanations and feedback.

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Only a few of the workbooks in these lower-profile languages above are easy (enough) to obtain on Amazon. You'll likely need to order them from bookstores in the country of origin. This is especially true for the Slovak books considering how "unpopular" Slovak is among foreign language-learners.
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