A language learners’ forum

limey75 wrote:What, no German?

There is something similar for German called Deutsch Perfekt if you are interested. I found it on Audible (each edition comes with a downloadable PDF), but there is a standalone website as well.

I have this publisher's Spanish book-CD product. As smallwhite noted above, not all the articles in the book have associated audio recordings, only about thirty or so. I don't read the articles. I just listen to the audio in my car.

The content sounds like short articles from a travel magazine--simple treatments of reasonably interesting topics, oriented towards tourists, and not too challenging. I have wondered if they were Spanish translations from English travel magazine articles, because they are generally very easy to understand if you have a B1 vocabulary.

Tomás wrote: ... I have wondered if they were Spanish translations from English travel magazine articles, because they are generally very easy to understand if you have a B1 vocabulary.

According to the publisher, the articles are written in the target language by university-educated native speakers (on a contractual basis). The articles are destined for publication in the Think Language magazines and they are not reprints from other sources. From my Email communications with the publisher, she sold a collection of the archived magazine articles and audio recordings, along with the corresponding copyrights, to McGraw-Hill for publication as the "Think and Read ..." series of book/CD packages. She was dismayed by McGraw-Hill's decision to include only a portion of the audio recordings on the CD, a matter over which she had no control. Nevertheless, as her publishing house is "linked" to these book/CD packages, she continues to field the complaints concerning this issue and others. As to the level of difficulty of the materials, I found that the articles were reasonably easy to understand once I had achieved a level of approximately A2 in Spanish and Italian; however, at this level, one still has a great deal of general vocabulary to absorb ... which is one of the goals of the audio magazines and the derivative books.

A quick update on the book+CD spin-off, not the original website+audio:

mhprofessional.com search results

A 2nd edition came out in 2012 for Spanish, and 2nd/3rd editions came out this year for French, Italian and Spanish.

Taken from my log, It thought I'd add this brief note as I feel their poor customer service warrants sharing.

Carmody wrote:Hi,
Could you please give me some examples of

The French learning magazines

I don't believe I know about them.

Here’s a link to a so-called guided tour of the other French learning magazine I subscribe to. It’s called Think French. It’s digital only (accompanying audio as well). They also have Think Spanish (which I receive as well) and Think Italian.
http://www.thinklanguage.com/tf_tour/think-french-magazine-tour/index.html

I much prefer Bien-dire as the quality is second to none and its nice to flick through a real magazine. However Think French is good for mobile devices/computers if you either have the moments to use portable digital devices where paper magazines aren’t with you, or you just prefer digital.

I initially found Think French customer service quite good, but lately it stinks. Multiple emails and still no replies, so they are either ignoring me (because they don’t like me asking them the legitimate question of why there was no July issue of the magazine -again poor form-) or they are very inattentive. I really don’t think much of their customer service at all. That aside, it’s ok, but not the 5 out of 5 overall I’d give Bien-dire.

Most grateful for the guidance.

Hello Peter, A fellow Think French member sent us the forum link with your remarks. We are a small business and take pride in our products and our customer service so the remarks were upsetting to read. We went through our emails and do not find any recent emails from you nor can we find a member with your last name. (we would quickly be able to look you up with your email address.)

We sent out emails in the summer notifying customers that there would not be a July issue due to circumstances out of our control and we added one month on to everyone's membership to make up for the missed July issue. As we had not heard a complaint/question from you about this until reading your comment here, we are only addressing it now and I am very sorry this issue went unresolved for you. Please email us and let us know if you have additional questions or comments. We hope to hear from you soon!

Thank you!
Kelly - Publisher

Eliza wrote:
There is a German publisher who maintains a very similar approach for German, English, Business English, French, Spanish and Italian:

http://www.spotlight-verlag.de/

You can find the German magazine "Deutsch perfekt" here: http://www.deutsch-perfekt.com/

The main difference seems to be the limited accompanying audio files (only up to three articles for the Deutsch Plus subscription). Deutsch Perfekt does only contain monolingual explications for vocabulary etc., so it is suitable for anyone with at least a basic understanding. The other magazines contain vocab lists and grammar explications in German.

The Goethe Institut's eLibrary has some of these.

I was just browsing the European Bookshop website, and they list a range of magazines from ELi.

https://www.elilanguagemagazines.com/

Many thanks; that's quite a resource.