Re: General Linguaphone Discussion
Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2020 11:06 pm
Welcome!
Welcome to the forum, wroy! I look forward to following your participation in many of the fascinating discussions here on the forum.
Wiki / Master List of Resources / Yojik Website
While I confident that you are quite capable of navigating this forum, I would draw your attention to (a) the “Wiki” tab at the top of the main page of the forum, (b) to the Master List of Resources which can be found under the “Language Programs and Resources” sub-forum, and to (c) the Yojik website which hosts are large number of legacy language courses covering a broad range of languages.
Linguaphone 3rd Generation
Yes, the image that you provided is of the Linguaphone 3rd Generation Italian course. The materials include the Course Manual in the L2 only, the Handbook which contains extensive notes, vocabulary, grammar, and the Written Exercises manual, plus a set of audio recordings. The subsequent 4th generation was produced for French and Spanish only.
Linguaphone 3rd Generation “Plus / Extended”
I could be mistaken about the dates but, at some time during the 1990’s, Linguaphone began including a fourth course manual accompanied by a collection of audio recordings designed to support the materials of the main dialogues. These were “oral exercise” materials , somewhat similar to the sentence-pattern drills which form the basis of the audio-lingual method. In the image below, which I located on eBay.co.uk a few moments ago, you will notice that there are four course manuals (the fourth one being the oral exercises). More Audio Recordings? Yes, but ...
With a view to dispelling the apparent large difference in the number of audio cassettes between the two editions, please allow me to explain a little. The number of audio cassettes shown in the image above is due only in part to the inclusion of the oral exercises which I just mentioned. For a period of time, the audio recordings were provided on four C90 audio cassettes as shown in the image which you provided. Subsequently, Linguaphone provided the audio recordings on sets C60 cassettes (or even C30 cassettes) thereby increasing their total number but without expanding the total duration of the recordings. Nevertheless, in subsequent editions, Linguaphone expanded the recordings through the addition of short exercises which were really nothing more than a partial repetition of the main dialogues with pauses inserted. To me, this “expansion” was an illusion, it was unnecessary, it was annoyance, and it was even counter-productive because it did not cover the entire set of dialogues, only a portion of them; that is, in order to practice the materials, one still had to refer to the main dialogues. This expansion and the use of smaller capacity C60 or C30 cassettes were the major reasons for the increased number of audio cassettes.
Which 3rd Generation?
I believe that the “oral exercise” drills (which resemble the sentence-pattern drills which form the basis of the audio-lingual method) were a significant improvement in the totality of materials included in the Linguaphone courses. For this reason, while I still support the use of the first edition of the 3rd generation, I feel that the 3rd Generation Plus editions were superior. They show up fairly frequently on eBay.co.uk and, in any case, these are the versions that the publisher now offers on their website (with the soft-bound course manuals and CDs).
Ciao!
Speakeasy
Welcome to the forum, wroy! I look forward to following your participation in many of the fascinating discussions here on the forum.
Wiki / Master List of Resources / Yojik Website
While I confident that you are quite capable of navigating this forum, I would draw your attention to (a) the “Wiki” tab at the top of the main page of the forum, (b) to the Master List of Resources which can be found under the “Language Programs and Resources” sub-forum, and to (c) the Yojik website which hosts are large number of legacy language courses covering a broad range of languages.
Linguaphone 3rd Generation
Yes, the image that you provided is of the Linguaphone 3rd Generation Italian course. The materials include the Course Manual in the L2 only, the Handbook which contains extensive notes, vocabulary, grammar, and the Written Exercises manual, plus a set of audio recordings. The subsequent 4th generation was produced for French and Spanish only.
Linguaphone 3rd Generation “Plus / Extended”
I could be mistaken about the dates but, at some time during the 1990’s, Linguaphone began including a fourth course manual accompanied by a collection of audio recordings designed to support the materials of the main dialogues. These were “oral exercise” materials , somewhat similar to the sentence-pattern drills which form the basis of the audio-lingual method. In the image below, which I located on eBay.co.uk a few moments ago, you will notice that there are four course manuals (the fourth one being the oral exercises). More Audio Recordings? Yes, but ...
With a view to dispelling the apparent large difference in the number of audio cassettes between the two editions, please allow me to explain a little. The number of audio cassettes shown in the image above is due only in part to the inclusion of the oral exercises which I just mentioned. For a period of time, the audio recordings were provided on four C90 audio cassettes as shown in the image which you provided. Subsequently, Linguaphone provided the audio recordings on sets C60 cassettes (or even C30 cassettes) thereby increasing their total number but without expanding the total duration of the recordings. Nevertheless, in subsequent editions, Linguaphone expanded the recordings through the addition of short exercises which were really nothing more than a partial repetition of the main dialogues with pauses inserted. To me, this “expansion” was an illusion, it was unnecessary, it was annoyance, and it was even counter-productive because it did not cover the entire set of dialogues, only a portion of them; that is, in order to practice the materials, one still had to refer to the main dialogues. This expansion and the use of smaller capacity C60 or C30 cassettes were the major reasons for the increased number of audio cassettes.
Which 3rd Generation?
I believe that the “oral exercise” drills (which resemble the sentence-pattern drills which form the basis of the audio-lingual method) were a significant improvement in the totality of materials included in the Linguaphone courses. For this reason, while I still support the use of the first edition of the 3rd generation, I feel that the 3rd Generation Plus editions were superior. They show up fairly frequently on eBay.co.uk and, in any case, these are the versions that the publisher now offers on their website (with the soft-bound course manuals and CDs).
Ciao!
Speakeasy