A language learners’ forum

I just happened across this thread and went to visit the site. It seems German is long-overdue for being done being posted in its entirety!

Hank wrote:

Fortheo wrote:Does anyone have any news about when complete German will be complete? German is on my hit list, so i'd definitely like to give the course a try and see what all the talk is about, but I'm hesitant to start an incomplete course.

From the Language Transfer Facebook page posted on March 24th:

One week until the end of the month and our monthly budget is now at $372!! If we reach $450 by April, then we can promise Complete Greek, Complete German, Intro to Italian and at least one publication all finished this year!!!

This seems like an interesting, stress free way of learning. German is the language I'm leaning towards for L3. I listened to the first two Complete German lessons. I'm not ready to totally commit yet, but I can see squeezing in ten or fifteen minutes of Complete German most days. This doesn't seem like an optimal way for me to learn, but then again I have never tried it.

I'm still waiting for complete German. It seems like even the delays get delayed. The site says he expects to release new tracks in July 2017, but I won't be surprised if that date is pushed back too.

The people who started this course as it was being released could very well be B2 or even more advanced students now and have no need for the rest of the course.

I'm still interested in satiating my wanderlust with this course, but if there's no new releases this month I'll just jump into good ole frustrating, but trustworthy, Michel Thomas.

LesRonces wrote:I listened to the first few tracks of the Italian course yesterday. I don't get the hype - seemed like a lot of talking in English and very little of substance to me.

Maybe i'm missing something though ?

I listened to others, not the Italian one. While I agree it is good to keep the hype moderate and I share some of your concerns, I think the points your experience is missing might be these:

1.It is a rather logical approach to learning languages, meant to help people create their own sentences. I wish that could be said about most professional courses that are being published these days(included the audio ones like Pimsleur), which are more like phrasebook memorisation.

2.The amount of explanations is needed for the harder languages. I tried the first 10 or so Arabic lessons and liked the approach.

3.A part of the hype are the non FIGS courses. Unfortunately, Language transfer is now, due to unreasonable yet understandable user pressure, trying to take part on an already saturated market, where some of the strengths of LT are pretty useless. There are tons of free or cheap resources for beginner French, Spanish, or Italian learners, and some are logical and user friendly too. But it is awesome to see a serious and efficient beginner course, and free on top of that, that can help with the basics of languages like Greek, Arabic, Swahili, or Turkish. This is a great reason for the hype.

LesRonces wrote:I don't get the hype - seemed like a lot of talking in English and very little of substance to me.

I can't stand the slow pace. I prefer written materials so I can skim and skip things. If you like the method but prefer it written, you can look for the script (of Language Transfer or Michel Thomas) or try Paul Noble's books by Collins which use the same method.

Btw, just saw in the newsletter that Complete Greek has finally been released!

http://www.languagetransfer.org/complete-greek

crush wrote:Btw, just saw in the newsletter that Complete Greek has finally been released!

http://www.languagetransfer.org/complete-greek

Well that only took, what, 6 years...?

Cainntear wrote:

crush wrote:Btw, just saw in the newsletter that Complete Greek has finally been released!

http://www.languagetransfer.org/complete-greek

Well that only took, what, 6 years...?

I think we all know by the time you read my reply, you will likely have already listened to the whole thing with a breakdown ready of how it fell short of what Michel Thomas would've done

crush wrote:Btw, just saw in the newsletter that Complete Greek has finally been released!

http://www.languagetransfer.org/complete-greek

Why so surprised? We live in the world of George R.R. Martin, Robert Jordan, and that BBC team creating Sherlock. Who knows, perhaps even Complete Arabic will be out before the Winds of Winter, as that is my standard for "waiting too long".

Seneca wrote:

Cainntear wrote:

crush wrote:Btw, just saw in the newsletter that Complete Greek has finally been released!

http://www.languagetransfer.org/complete-greek

Well that only took, what, 6 years...?

I think we all know by the time you read my reply, you will likely have already listened to the whole thing with a breakdown ready of how it fell short of what Michel Thomas would've done

I've got a dissertation to write, thank you very much!

And if I was going to spend any time with language materials, it'd be studying Tamazight ahead of leaving the country.

Cavesa wrote:

crush wrote:Btw, just saw in the newsletter that Complete Greek has finally been released!

http://www.languagetransfer.org/complete-greek

Why so surprised? We live in the world of George R.R. Martin, Robert Jordan, and that BBC team creating Sherlock. Who knows, perhaps even Complete Arabic will be out before the Winds of Winter, as that is my standard for "waiting too long".

As Cainntear mentioned, it only took 6 years to complete I listened to the original Greek course when it first came out and stuck it all the way through even though i had no intention of studying Greek because i enjoyed it so much. I dunno, i've only ever touched the old Greek course, don't know how the other courses are, but i thought the Greek course was amazing. I like these audio courses because i can do them while walking outside. That's also why i like the FSI and Glossika courses, i find it's much easier to concentrate when i'm walking and also when outside of the house and free from the distractions there.

Anyway, i haven't started the new course yet but i'm hoping to once i've finished the Glossika Cantonese course early next month.