Reader’s Digest Language Courses: Variants

[Speakeasy]

Reader’s Digest Language Courses: Variants
I have changed the title of the original discussion thread so as to better reflect the fact that Reader’s Digest published at least three separate series of language courses beginning sometime in the 1960’s. The original post stands largely unchanged, save for a few minor modifications, including the addition of a couple of photographs of the Reader’s Digest “Pimsleur” series. I will be making two separate posts to this file that will introduce the additional series that I have recently discovered.

Reader’s Digest Language Courses: 1980’s (Pimsleur)
Recently, while searching the Internet, I came across an introductory language course published by Reader’s Digest in 1984. As is so often the case, the description of the materials did not provide much information and was limited to specifying that the course included 16 audio cassettes, plus a course manual and dictionary, all packaged in a carrying case. My continued searches of the Internet revealed that the following versions of the course were published:

Reader’s Digest At Home With French
Reader’s Digest At Home With German
Reader’s Digest At Home With Italian
Reader’s Digest At Home With Spanish

Reader's Digest At Home With French 1980's (Pimsleur) image 1.jpg

There were only a few customer reviews on Amazon and they were not very informative. I hesitated. Then, given the sheer quantity of audio recordings (16 cassettes), the fine reputation that Reader’s Digest enjoys as a publisher, and the fairly low price for these materials, I placed an order for the German course. I received the materials today …

The upper section of the cardboard insert of the audio cassettes is labelled “Reader’s Digest, At Home With German” along with the number of the tape. The lower section of the cardboard insert contains the annotation “Pimsleur Programmed Learning Tapes”, which came as something of a surprise to me! The inside labelling of the cardboard inserts identify Reader’s Digest as the holder of the copyrights for the recorded contents, the design, and the notes, but also includes the annotation “Principles of programmed learning: Copyright 1967, Paul Pimsleur.” Although the small “Basic Guide” accompanying the cassettes includes similar advisories, there is no further mention of Pimsleur in the course notes. I listened to the first audio cassette and perused the accompanying guide …

The introduction to the sound track advises the user that Reader’s Digest is the holder of the copyright for the recordings; there is no mention of Paul Pimsleur. As the owner of the Pimsleur courses for all of the languages that I have studied, I confirm that the recordings and lesson plan clearly follow the “Pimsleur Method” in every respect. As it happens, I have three editions of the Pimsleur German I course published by Simon & Schuster; the recorded contents of the successive editions are very similar to one another. Interestingly, the recorded contents of the Reader’s Digest version differ completely from the Simon & Schuster version. Furthermore, based on my review of the first cassette and the accompanying guide book, I would say that the Reader’s Digest lesson plan progresses more quickly than the Simon & Schuster courses, which might require greater review of the individual lessons by the student.

Basic Guide
The “Basic Guide” which accompanies the Reader's Digest version is EXACTLY what Simon & Schuster SHOULD INCLUDE with their versions! Although quite compact, it contains all of the newly-introduced vocabulary per lesson. In contrast to the so-called “Reading Booklets” that accompany the Simon & Schuster versions, which make only scant reference to the audio lessons, the Reader’s Digest guide presents a transcript of the basic dialogues that are used in the audio lessons; this is a huge improvement over the Simon & Schuster versions!

Example Vocabularies and Selected Conversations.JPG

Finally, the guide book presents images and explanations of traffic signs that a traveler to Germany is likely to encounter, along with additional (unrecorded) vocabulary that would be useful for shoppers and those requiring emergency medical care.

As to the history of these courses, I could locate only the following information:

Wikipedia: Pimsleur Language Programs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pimsleur_Language_Programs
This article, the year of production, and the fact that Reader's Digest identify themselves as the holder of the copyrights to the recordings, the design, and the notes of these courses, suggest to me that Reader's Digest produced their own version under licence from SyberVision Systems.

HTLAL: Reader’s Digest Language Programs
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3059&PN=95
I came across the above discussion thread this morning, subsequent to receiving delivery of my materials ... not so clever of me!

Assessment
Putting aside tourist-guide aspects of the Reader's Digest "Basic Guide", this small, practical booklet contained a lesson-by-lesson glossary as well as a selection of conversations taken from each of the lessons, thereby providing very valuable, if not essential, support to the independent learner which was, in my opinion, an advantage of these courses over the subsequent Simon & Schuster versions. The Readers’ Digest versions progressed a little more quickly and terminated at a slightly higher level than did the subsequent Simon and Schuster versions. While this approach decreased the likelihood of the student becoming bored with the slow progress of the Pimsleur Method, it also meant that these versions were less intensive in their use of the spaced repetition of the materials and, as a result, the student would have had to review the Readers’ Digest versions in greater depth than those of Simon and Schuster. Finally (and this is something of a personal vexation of mine), the publisher decided to include a rather chintzy background soundtrack which was supposed to be reminiscent of the L2's (folksy) popular music. While some users might have appreciated this "cultural touch", I found it irritating. All-in-all, though, I would recommend Readers’ Digest versions to anyone wishing to begin their studies of French, German, Italian, or Spanish.

EDITED:
September, 2017:
(1) Title changed from "Reader's Digest At Home With ..." to "Reader’s Digest Language Courses: Variants"
(2) Selected photographs of the "At Home With French" course, two of which display information relative to "Pimsleur".
(3) Formatting, et cetera.

[jsega]

Hello and thank you for the review/detective work Speakeasy. Do you recommend continuing on with Pimsleur still after this? If so, should one start off at Level 1 still or skip to 2?

[Speakeasy]

Do you recommend continuing on with Pimsleur still after this? If so, should one start off at Level 1 still or skip to 2?

In my view, the Reader's Digest and Simon & Schuster versions of the "Pimsleur Method, Level 1" courses are different, but equivalent. Therefore, one could easily progress to Simon & Schuster's "Pimsleur Method, Level 2" upon completion of either of the former. There is another matter ...

At what point should one abandon the Pimsleur Program and move on to other language-learning materials?

I would preface my answer to this question by saying that I purchased the Levels 1 through 5 for each of Pimleur German, Spanish, and Italian. During the period that I was actively studying German, Spanish, and Italian, Simon & Schuster had released Levels 1, 2, 3 (and 3+), but had not yet published Levels 4 and 5. During the interval, I had moved on to other materials and had already achieved something approximating A2 for each of these languages. Nonetheless, fully aware of the fact that "I would not learn much" from Levels 4 and 5, I purchased them anyway. For me, the "experience" of returning to the Pimsleur Method was worth the additional financial expense as well as the investment of my very precious time. For some members of the Forum, the experience might be akin to watching Star Wars for the tenth time (or, in my case, akin to watching Blade Runner for the fourth time). So then, I enjoyed the experience; but what would I recommend?

I am about to commit a heresy here: I would recommend that an independent learner complete Pimsleur Levels 1 and 2 only and then move on to other materials. Why so? Because of the fatigue factor. Despite my generally positive experience with the Pimsleur Program, near the end Pimsleur Level 2, I began to feel the crushing weight of the hours that I had been devoting to the program for what-seemed-to-me, so little progress. As I entered Pimsleur Level 3, the feeling of being condemned to life-long servitude invaded me completely. Upon completion, I was just so darned relieved! Working with other materials (FSI/DLI, Assimil, Linguaphone, Living Language, and the like) prior to "returning" to the Pimsleur Method for Levels 4 and 5 provided me with a new perspective on the Pimsleur Program. I have come to the (debatable) conclusion that the "best return on investment" of one's TIME occurs during Levels 1 and 2, after which there is a "decreasing rate of return on investment" compared to that which can be enjoyed by working with other materials ... meiner Meinung nach, wie immer!

EDITED:
(1) September, 2017: Title changed. Refer to the original post.
(2) Formatting.

[Speakeasy]

Reader’s Digest Language Courses: Variants
I have changed the title of the original discussion thread so as to better reflect the fact that, beginning sometime in the 1960’s, Reader’s Digest published at least three separate series of language courses. I would not be at all surprised if this publisher had been active in this domain in their 1940's, if not earlier. The original post stands largely unchanged, save for a few minor modifications, including the addition of a couple of photographs of the Reader’s Digest “Pimsleur” series. I will be making two separate posts to this file that will introduce the additional series that I have recently discovered.

Reader’s Digest Language Courses: 1960's – 1970’s
Recently, during my one of my numerous searches for vintage language courses, I came across a series published by Reader’s Digest in the period from the 1960’s through the late 1970’s. As can be expected, whenever it is a question of vintage language-learning courses, tracking down information and locating physical copies have represented the usual challenges. First, in this case, the language-pair variants were issued under separate titles which are far from uniform when translated into the other languages, thereby complicating the search for additional variants (see the list below). Second, and not surprisingly, as I was not expressing an interest in purchasing any of Reader’s Digest currently-available products, my requests to the publisher for information on the series went unanswered. To date, I have located copies of the variants listed below, for which the language-pairs should be evident.

At Home With French*
Écouter, lire et parler l'allemand
Écouter, lire et parler l'anglais
Écouter, lire et parler l'espagnol
Englisch International. Erfolgreich mit System

Given the languages covered in the French-based series, along with the languages that one would normally expect to be covered by similar series of this sort, it is reasonable to conclude that the English-based “At Home With” and the German-based “Erfolgreich mit System” series covered additional languages; it is also quite possible that there was a separate series available from a Spanish base. I found it interesting that Reader’s Digest recycled the “At Home With*” title a couple of decades later with the publication of a completely new series as an authorized version of the Pimsleur Method (refer to the separate discussion at the beginning of this file).

Materials
Materials for the "Écouter, lire et parler l'allemand" course included four course-related manuals, plus a bilingual dictionary. The first manual served as a user guide and contained the texts of the initial pronunciation exercises, the glossary, and a very brief summary of grammatical terms. The second manual, in a fashion similar to that of the Linguaphone courses, contained all of the transcription, in the target language only, of the recorded lessons. The third manual contained a bilingual reproduction of the second manual along with cursory explanatory notes. The fourth manual was an extract of articles having appeared in the Reader’s Digest Selection series in the target language only. Although the manuals might appear large in the attached photographs, they are actually only slightly wider than the Assimil course books. The audio recordings were prepared on 26 vinyl LP 33-1/3 rpm records; later versions included audio cassettes. The materials were packaged in a very sturdy cloth-covered cardboard box. Note carefully, however, that the materials may have varied per individual course. That is, these could have had a greater or lesser number of vinyl records and/or course books.

Écouter, lire et parler l'allemand image.JPG

Audio Recordings
The first four LP records contained the audio portion of the initial pronunciation exercises. The following LP records contained the audio portion of the lesson materials, including those of the additional texts at the end of the course which were drawn from the classical literature of the target language. All-in-all, I estimate that the recordings totaled some 6-1/2 hours in duration. The sound quality of the LP vinyl records recordings on my copy of the German course was quite good. I also have a later copy of the French course where audio cassettes replaced the LP vinyl records. Although the cassettes have aged reasonably well, the sound is not as clear as the former (this was the case when both media were new). An advantage of acquiring a copy of the courses having the LP vinyl records is that the individual tracks and sides A and B serve as natural breaks when digitizing the audio whereas the audio cassette versions combine several LP records without distinction to the natural breaks. The speakers on the audio recordings are clearly voice-trained professionals. The cadence of the speech is exaggeratedly slow during the initial lessons, a point that is noted in the user guide. Although the cadence does increase somewhere around the middle of the course, to my mind, it never achieves the speed of a conversation between native speakers, not even in the final lessons, and it is delivered in a highly-articulated fashion that one rarely encounters in the real world.

General Approach
The course includes some 3,000 vocabulary items and introduces all of the major grammatical components of the target language. These elements are introduced through the presentation of predictable situational dialogues and short supplementary texts. The new vocabulary items are presented first, as was done in the Cortina language courses, followed by the dialogues. All of these materials were recorded. The final four chapters of the course included extracts from the target language’s classical literature accompanied by recordings. As noted above, the third manual contains the bilingual texts and the accompanying notes. It is expected that, on completion of the course, the student will have little difficulty working through the fourth manual which contains articles drawn from the Reader’s Digest Selection series of publications in the target language only. The overall level achieved on completion is somewhere in the A2+ to B1 range.

Evaluation and Recommendation
The physical materials are of excellent quality and this includes the two (minimally) used vintage copies that I recently purchased. The self-guided teaching approach was quite common for the period, it has stood the test of time, and it is both efficient and effective. At the time these courses were published, they would have represented a very good alternative to their competitors' materials. However, the European and North American marketplaces have been overcrowded with very fine self-study language courses for English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian since at least the 1950’s. It stands to reason that, despite their inherent virtues, not all of them would survive and this would be doubly the case for Reader’s Digest, a publisher which could easily concentrate on other activities should sales of their language courses not meet expectations. Nevertheless, these are truly very well-conceived courses. To whom would I recommend them? It would be foolish of me to recommend that someone who is just embarking on their language-learning purchase these courses over something much more current in terms of colloquial usage and in recording media such as Assimil. So then, once again, despite their quality, I would recommend that only serious aficionados of vintage language courses contemplate adding these excellent materials to their private collections.

EDITED:
(1) Two photos (NOT) appended. Hmm, now that's strange! Although I received no messages advising me that the photos were too large, in the wrong format, et cetera, the system has refused my four attempts at uploading them.
(2) Formatting.
(3) Additional, unsuccessful, attempts at attaching photos.
(4) One photo successfully appended. I won't "try my luck" with attempts at appending others.
(5) Revision to comments on "Materials."
(6) Alignment of the image with the corresponding text.

[Speakeasy]

Reader’s Digest Language Courses: 2000’s?
As a continuation of my explanation concerning my searches for vintage language courses, and my discovery of the series published by Reader’s Digest in the 1960’s and 1970’s, I happened upon an entirely different product on this publisher's website for their operations based out of Switzerland.

Maîtrisez l'anglais en 20 minutes par jour! / English in 20 Minutes a Day
Presumably an introductory English course from a French base. The image displayed on the publisher’s website shows an attaché-case-sized document holder and six CDs along with annotation that the course is available for download only. This suggests that a physical copy of the course once existed and that the contents, even though the recordings were on six CDs, were sufficiently voluminous to require such a container. Alternatively the possibility exists that the image was created for marketing purposes only and that a physical copy was never produced. I have inserted the link and the image below.

Reader's Digest English in 20 Minutes a Day image.JPG

Reader's Digest (Switzerland)
https://boutique-readersdigest.ch/Ma%EEtrisez-l%27anglais-en-20-minutes-par-jour%21.htm?websale8=rd-shop24.ch-Francais&pi=1-4143&ci=002-003

No Other Courses of this Type
The following is a complete rewrite of my initial comment concerning the possible existence of a series of courses of this type. In the anticipation of locating similar courses covering different languages, I searched the publisher’s website, but found none. I submitted requests to the publisher’s Customer Service Departments of their Switzerland and World-Wide operations in the hopes of gaining additional information on this course and on the possibility that it forms part of a collection. Following a delay of a little more than a week, I received a shortly-worded reply advising me that the course described above was unique; that is, there is no series.

EDITED:
(1) Formatting.
(2) Tinkering with the text.
(3) Insertion of: No Other Courses of this Type
(4) Alignment of the image with the corresponding text.

[kellyjstyle]

Ohmigosh I would give my eyeteeth for the transcripts of Pimsleur's Italian. Do you have them? THANKS in advance!!!