Conversa-phone Language Courses

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Speakeasy
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Conversa-phone Language Courses

Postby Speakeasy » Fri Sep 22, 2017 8:45 pm

Notice to the Reader
The review below, more particularly of the Conversa-phone “Modern Method” course was based on my copy of the hastily-and-poorly-prepared reprint of the 1980’s. While I have left the original review unchanged, I have appended an updated recommendation and posted a follow-up comment. I have also re-sequenced my own posts in this discussion thread so as to insert a reply to Daristani's astute observations.

Conversa-phone Institute, Inc.
From the information that I have been able to gather from my searches of the Internet, it would appear that Conversa-phone Institute, Inc., was an American publishing house, located in New York State from 1911 through to 1996, the year in which the Conversa-phone trademark expired without renewal. The packaging of one of the language courses that I recently purchased states: “Conversa-phone is an original, short-cut method that will teach you German in your spare time. It is based on the life-long experience of Alfred Z. Owen, founder and former principal of the famous Universal Language Institute, which was founded 1911." The company’s products appear to have been home-study courses introducing the basics of several foreign languages as well as courses covering subjects as varied as arithmetic, typing, stenography, spelling, vocabulary expansion, dancing, singing, social studies, sex education, conversational skills, Morse Code and sundry others.

Foreign Language Courses
Although the company was active for a very long period, during which it had ample time to develop and market many different foreign language courses, the online shopping websites show offers for only a few different product lines. A possibility exists, moreover, that some of their language courses were no more than renamed and repackaged products. In this discussion thread, I will concentrate on the “Conversa-phone Round-The-World” and the “Conversa-phone The Modern Method” language courses, copies of which I recently added to my collection of vintage language-learning materials. The only previous discussion thread that I came across was on the How-To-Learn-Any-Language (HTLAL) language forum.

Anyone ever used Conversa-Phone? – HTLAL, May, 2015
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=40431&PN=5

While I appreciate having the information provided in the above thread, I cannot say whether or not that the article in the August, 1947 edition of Hispania actually refers to the products of Conversa-phone Institute, Inc. That is, given the possibility that other publishers may have used the “Conversaphone” name in the past and that the name in the article is not spelled exactly in the manner of the Trademark “Conversa-phone” (note the hyphenation), it is unclear to me which publisher or product the author was truly referring to. I am not trying to be fastidious over the spelling of the name; as both the author and the editors of Hispania should have known, trademarks are protected in law and, in such matters, correct spelling really does count.

Round-The-World Language Courses
Languages
From a review of the company’s promotional sheet and offers for new/used copies on the Internet, it seems that there were at least 35 languages available in this series: Afrikaans, Arabic, Cantonese-Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish Gaelic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Malay, Mandarin-Chinese, Modern Greek, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Yiddish. A separate series of English courses existed for speakers of French, German, Greek, Spanish, and a few other languages.

Materials
My copy of the “Conversa-phone Round-The-World German Language Record Course” contained one 12-inch x 33-1/3 LP vinyl record, one small (5-1/2” x 8-1/2”), slim pamphlet of 16 pages, and a foldable sheet promoting other Conversa-phone products. The album jacket identified the publisher as Conversa-phone Institute, Inc., © 1953, 1958, 1960 by Betty White and included the annotation “Successful teaching methods since 1911.”

Pamphlet (Phrase Book)
The 16-page pamphlet was a phrase book, containing sentences for use in predictable situations by travellers in a foreign land where the target language was spoken. The L1 phrases appeared first, in bold font, followed by the L2 translation, in regular font, below it. Although a few of the subject headings appeared to me a little bizarre (viz., Mister, You Need a Haircut), they covered standard, easily-recognisable situations such as: Arrival at Customs, Introducing Oneself, Registering at the Hotel, Dining Out, the Post Office, the Bank, Getting Around, and so forth. The last page of the pamphlet presented a “Sing-a-Long” section with words to some well-known L2 songs accompanied by L1 translations.

Recordings
The audio recordings were one-time-only repetitions of the L2 phrases appearing in the pamphlet, with very short pauses, delivered by native speakers at a conversational speed. The total duration of the 12-inch x 33-1/3 LP vinyl record was approximately 45 minutes.

Evaluation and Recommendation
Although the album that I purchased shows a copyright year as late as 1960, my sense of both the English and German phrases presented in the pamphlet is that they date from a prior era when the spoken language, or at least the style represented in many language courses, was in a particularly formal register, so much so that the phrases in the pamphlet appear stilted to me and, as a child of the fifties and sixties, would have appeared so at the time. I suspect that the German course dates from the 1930’s or perhaps even earlier. The audio recordings reinforce this impression. Taking into consideration the availability of competing phrase-book-style language materials in the 1960’s, this offering would have fallen short of the mark. For serious collectors only!

The Modern Method Language Courses
Languages
From a review of the company’s promotional sheet and offers for new/used copies on the Internet, it seems that the languages available in this series were: French, German, Greek, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Portuguese. There was a separate series of English courses for speakers of French, German, Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Materials
I have seen several offers of courses in this series wherein four 12-inch x 33-1/3 LP vinyl records were included. My copy of “Conversa-phone’s Modern Method German Course” contained two audio cassettes and two small (5-1/4” x 7”), rather slim course manuals.

Course Manuals & Teaching Method
The first of the two course manuals introduced the target language through 89 lessons of increasing difficulty comprising grammatical exercises, useful phrases, and very short dialogues. Although explanatory notes were not included, the second manual acted as a grammar supplement, keyed to some, but not all, of the lessons. The texts of the lessons materials were presented in columnar fashion (L1 and L2 side-by-side). A few pages of illustrations accompanied the texts. The manuals which were included in my 1986 edition of the course appear to be hastily-prepared, miniaturized reprints of books dating from the 1930’s or even earlier. Although instructions on how to use the materials were not included with course, it would have been clear to any adult that the approach to learning involved the imitation and memorization of the materials. Addendum: My review of the Conversa-phone “Modern Method” course was based on my copy of the hastily-and-poorly-prepared reprint of the 1980’s. I have recently ordered and received one of the packages from the 1960’s, containing the 33-1/3 rpm LP vinyl records and the original course booklets the quality of which meets that of Conversa-phone’s competitors’ products of the period. As an update to my original review, I would now advise collectors to avoid the reprints of these courses of the 1980’s and, should they be interested, to purchase the original editions in their place.

Recordings
The audio recordings follow the lesson materials of the first of the two course manuals (exercises, phrases, dialogues). The voice tracks represented the articulated speech of educated native speakers of German with delivery at a speed approaching that of normal conversations. The publisher took pride in mentioning that they had employed four native-speakers in the preparation of the audio recordings. As I am under the impression that these courses may have been produced in the 1930’s, I suppose that the presence of four different speakers was something of an unusual feature for low-priced home-study language courses for the period. Nevertheless, as for the Round-The-World series, I found that the audio recordings of this course reinforced my impression that they had been prepared at some time prior to the 1950’s, going as far back as the 1930’s.

Evaluation and Recommendation
The following has been copied from my evaluation of the Round-The-World series. Although the album that I purchased shows a copyright year as late as 1986, my sense of both the English and German phrases presented in the manuals is that they date from a prior era when the spoken language, or at least the style represented in many language courses, was in a particularly formal register, so much so that the phrases in the pamphlet appear stilted to me and, as a child of the fifties and sixties, would have appeared so at the time. I suspect that the German course dates from the 1930’s or perhaps even earlier. The audio recordings reinforce this impression. Taking into consideration the availability of competing phrase-book-style language materials in the 1980’s, this offering would have fallen short of the mark. For serious collectors only!

A FINAL WORD: GO BACK, IT'S A TRAP!
I should have known better.

IMAGES
I have appended images that I downloaded from offers on eBay.
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Last edited by Speakeasy on Fri Oct 13, 2017 1:40 am, edited 5 times in total.
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Daristani
Orange Belt
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Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2015 3:43 pm
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Re: Conversa-phone Language Courses

Postby Daristani » Sun Sep 24, 2017 11:27 pm

Speakeasy, your reviews of these older language-learning materials are always interesting to read; it's fascinating to see how many companies were involved in producing such materials, as well as, such as in this case, the variety of languages they produced materials for.

As for the Conversa-Phone materials, someone made the Swedish "course" available online at some point, and I downloaded it from somewhere, most likely "Uzbekistan". The Swedish materials were more extensive than the German materials you described. The Swedish version contained a a 96-page booklet that includes basic grammar and verb paradigms, etc., and a 16-page "test booklet" to measure your accomplishments, as well as accompanying audio. I've never used it, and so can't comment on its utility, but it seems to have been somewhat more ambitious than the German materials cited above. I would still probably rate it as less useful than other audio-accompanied materials available at the time, such as Linguaphone or Assimil, but it may have been cheaper as well.

In any event, I follow your "archaeological" efforts in this area with great interest, and hope that people who have such materials take appropriate steps to ensure that the audio is digitally preserved.
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Speakeasy
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Re: Conversa-phone Language Courses

Postby Speakeasy » Thu Oct 12, 2017 10:47 pm

Daristani, please excuse the belated reply. I greatly appreciate your comments on the Conversa-phone materials, particularly your point concerning the variety of languages for which this company had produced materials. I included your perspective in my subsequent reviews of vintage materials that covered a similarly-broad range of languages.

My review of the Conversa-phone “Modern Method” course was based on my copy of the hastily-and-poorly-prepared reprint of the 1980’s. I have recently ordered and received one of the packages from the 1960’s, containing the 33-1/3 rpm LP vinyl records and the original course booklets the quality of which meets that of Conversa-phone’s competitors’ products of the period. As an update to my original review, I would now advise collectors to avoid the reprints of these courses of the 1980’s and, should they be interested, to purchase the original editions in their place.

IMAGES
Avoid the poorly-prepared reprint from the 1980’s containing the audio cassettes
The original packages from the 1960’s, containing the 33-1/3 rpm LP vinyl records are far superior to the above.
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Speakeasy
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Re: Conversa-phone Language Courses

Postby Speakeasy » Thu Oct 12, 2017 10:53 pm

Deleted and Re-posted
I have deleted and re-posted the comments below so as to insert a reply to Daristani's astute observations.

Automated Learning, Inc. - different brand name?
I suspect that the Conversa-phone language courses were also published by Automated Learning Incorporated of New York, N.Y. Here is my reasoning:

While searching eBay for vintage language courses, I came across an offer for a Spanish course published by Automated Learning Incorporated in 1968 along with the name Alfred Z. Owen. The audio was furnished on two reel-to-reel magnetic tapes. I searched the internet for information this company and it would seem that they published numerous home-study courses (foreign languages, hypnotism, learning and memory techniques, sales techniques, weight-loss, et cetera) using the recording media of the period: vinyl records, reel-to-reel tapes, audio cassettes.

One of my searches turned up a copy of Automated Learning’s Hebrew cassette course on Discogs which, conveniently for me, presented a list of the lesson/track titles. The lesson title “Mister, You Need a Haircut” (see my original post) was, for me, an unmistakable clue that the Automated Learning course was a copy of the corresponding Conversa-phone “Round-The-World” course. The other titles, save for the references to the Hebrew language and Israel, resemble those of my copy of the Conversa-phone German course and they fall in the correct sequence. I would find it extremely difficult to believe that coincidence alone would account for a lesson in a separately-conceived language course being assigned the title “Mister, You Need a Haircut.” While it is of minor importance, the single audio cassette would have been of the same duration as the LP vinyl record included in the Conversa-phone “Round-The-World” series. Coming back to the Automated Learning Spanish course, the duration of the two reel-to-reel tapes would be equivalent of the two LP vinyl records which were included in the approximately two audio cassettes, which would have been the Conversa-phone “Modern World” series.

I conclude that the Automated Learning Incorporated foreign language courses were copies of the corresponding Conversa-phone courses.

IMAGE
Automated Learning Hebrew course track list, including the tell-tale “Mister, You Need A Haircut”
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