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I found this linguaphone course for sale. Is it the 3rd generation?

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

Speakeasy wrote: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.

They introduced them earlier, probably in the mid 80s. I know this because I was living in Spain in 1987 and used the Spanish course with the oral exercises.

. . . and while we are mopping up historical corrections - the 'partial repetition of the main dialogues with pauses inserted' was always part of the 3rd generation courses, right from their inception in the 1970s. The repetition exercise relates to the mini-dialogues of Part 3 of every lesson, which (apparently) isolate the main grammar/communication points from the lesson.

Like Speakeasy - I have never found these useful. The idea (which in typical Linguaphone fashion is never quite cogently explained, even in the How To .... leaflet) seems to be that one memorises the short dialogues in Part 3 and then practices them viva voce in the pauses in the exercise. Memorising dialogues is not my idea of fun, so I just shadow the whole lesson while walking my dog.

tractor wrote: They introduced them earlier, probably in the mid 80s. I know this because I was living in Spain in 1987 and used the Spanish course with the oral exercises.

Elexi wrote:. . . and while we are mopping up historical corrections - the 'partial repetition of the main dialogues with pauses inserted' was always part of the 3rd generation courses, right from their inception in the 1970s …

Speakeasy, in response to his having been tricked into publicly humiliating himself, has decided to commit ritual suicide. However, he won’t be going alone; he intends performing this act of expiation on one of your doorsteps, thereby obliging one of you to follow suit. He leaves it up to you to decide who between the two of you will act as his Second. In reaching your decision as to which role you will assume in this spectacle, it would useful to take into consideration that the Second will be responsible for the mopping-up afterwards. While participating in this manner might appear somewhat distasteful, I suggest that you bear in my mind that the other of you will have his doorstep publicly disgraced, the only honourable remedy for which is Seppuku. Sorry, I didn’t make the rules.

Sorry for the newbish question, but does Linguaphone offer their courses in base languages apart from English?

thevagrant88 wrote:Sorry for the newbish question, but does Linguaphone offer their courses in base languages apart from English?

They used to, at least the 3rd generation courses. The Spanish course I mentioned earlier in this thread was in Norwegian. The only thing they had to adapt was the handbook. All the other books and the audio were target language only.

Gotcha. I was hoping they had the Chinese course or really anything available in their catalog aimed at Spanish speakers. Thanks for the input!

Hello all, introduced myself over at the introductions.

I wanted to ask. I've been looking at the different vintage Linguaphone courses on eBay and wanted to know which one would you recommend between the 1980s Grey/Silver course with cassette tapes or the 1970s brown attache with cassette tapes and hard back books with the recognisable monuments? I am looking at French and German

ironjaw wrote:I wanted to ask. I've been looking at the different vintage Linguaphone courses on eBay and wanted to know which one would you recommend between the 1980s Grey/Silver course with cassette tapes or the 1970s brown attache with cassette tapes and hard back books with the recognisable monuments? I am looking at French and German

They are the same. Layout and binding may be a bit different, but content is the same. The most important difference is that they added the oral exercises (book + audio) at some point.