CD Language Courses - Caxton/Carrousel/Medienproduktionen

[Speakeasy]

Not Really a Vintage Course of Lesser Renown
I suppose that I could have filed this review under the “Vintage Language Courses of Lesser Renown” discussion thread. Then again, as these courses are actually fairly recent and as they are immensely viable alternatives to other materials presently available, I thought that it would be of a greater service to the readers if I were set them apart under their own thread.

Caxton Editions / Carrousel Ltd / Mixing Medienproduktionen GmbH
The “Caxton Publishing Group Limited” was incorporated in the United Kingdom in May 1999 as a retailer of books, newspapers, stationery, et cetera in specialized stores. Very little supplementary information is available on this company and it was dissolved in November 2016. In 2002, “Caxton Editions”, an imprint of the former, published a new series of entry-level, home-study language courses entitled “CD Language Course” under licence from "Carrousel MD", Paris, France. I could not locate any information on the latter company.

CD Language Courses
Although the Caxton/Carrousel’s “CD Language Course” series originated with the Paris-based publisher, it seems that they were published in an English base only, for the home-study of French, German, and Spanish. As is rather common for European publishers of home-study language courses, the Spanish of Spain was emphasized in the latter course. The names of the authors, the editors, and any of their collaborators are absent from the course manuals. Although the courses are out-of-print, new/used copies are still available on the Internet. Note carefully that the courses are often linked to the publisher "Caxton", or to the publisher "Carrousel", or to no one at all.

Caxton-Carrousel CD Language Courses image.JPG

Materials
The hard-shell plastic packing includes (a) a soft-covered course manual, measuring 5-1/2” x 8-1/4”, of some 200 pages in length, and (b) audio recordings on four CDs for a total duration of approximately 4 hours. I have appended an image of the three courses that I recently purchased.

Course Description and Review
All three course manuals have a standardised approach. The target language is presented in twelve lessons built around common themes: Introduction, Greetings and Encounters, Travelling by Train, Telephoning, Dining Out, Banking and Postal Services, Hotel Reservations, Excursions by Car, Going to the Theatre or the Cinema, Medical Services, Shopping, and Festivals and Traditions. Although the themes vary somewhat amongst the different L2 courses, they all represent commonplace situations. The lesson contents are delivered through the presentation of a dialogue, inclusive of a few short exercise sets. The accompanying notes, which focus on the grammatical issues deployed in the dialogues, are amongst the most limpid that I have ever encountered amongst the numerous home-study language courses that I have in my collection.

The audio recordings were prepared with the assistance of voice-trained native speakers of the target language, one male and one female. While their delivery was consistently clear and well-articulated, their cadence was somewhat slower than that of normal conversational speed amongst native speakers; that is, something around the speed that one encounters in the second-half of a standard Assimil course. Generous pauses were inserted after each complete utterance, including those of the dialogues, for practice purposes.

I suspect that a CEFR “A1-A2” level could be achieved with these materials. While that might not seem like much of an achievement, by way of comparison, I found these courses substantially superior to the offerings from Teach Yourself, Routledge Colloquial and Hugo Three Months, and that they are just as effective as Assimil for the equivalent material covered. It is no secret that the market for good quality, low-priced, home-study language courses for French, German, and Spanish continues to be saturated. These courses are great, they really are! But, so are many others that are out-of-print. So then, I would recommend these courses: (a) to anyone who wishes to develop a solid A1-A2 level of skill in one of these languages or, more realistically, given the over-abundance of competing materials, (b) to anyone who has just finished the Pimsleur I-II-III programme and who would like to review the material that they have just covered and who would also like to expand upon it.

Amazon Customer Reviews & Confusion as to “Which” Series
The reviews on Amazon range from 5 stars to 1 star. I found that the highly positive reviewers’ comments best reflected the value of these courses, that the less positive reviewers’ comments may have been born out of unrealistic expectations, and that the majority of the negative reviewer’s comments to be expressions of frustration that the purchaser had received the course manual only, in absence of the CDs, whereas the latter were clearly an essential part of these courses.

I would point out that there seems to be substantial confusion concerning the identity of the Caxton/Carrousel “CD Language Course” series, on the Amazon website, where both vendors and customers conflate the individual language courses in the series and misidentify the series as being the “CD Intensive Language Course” that was published by Naumann & Göbel Verlagsgesellschaft. A similar confusion and misidentification seems to exist on Amazon’s website for the latter course and I strongly suspect that by ordering one, you just might receive the other!

Missing Audio CDs
As noted above, some Amazon Customers have posted negative reviews of these courses by reason of their having received delivery of the course manual in absence of the CDs. Should anyone purchase a course from either the “CD Language Course” series or the “CD Intensive Language Course” series and should the CDs be missing, you might find encouragement in the thought that I have complete copies of both series for French, German, and Spanish and that I would be receptive to pleas for assistance ... who ya gonna call?

Update: CD Language Courses by Mixing Medienproduktionen
Recently, while searching for older language-learning materials, I came across several courses, in English, French, and German bases, for which the English title would be “CD Language Courses” plus the name of the target language, published by Mixing Medienproduktionen GmbH, of Germany. As shown below, the cover artwork differs from that of the Caxton-Carrousel series. Nevertheless, my accumulating experiences with one-off language courses led me to suspected that this series might be a copy, and perhaps the original, of the forenamed series. As these courses are offered at “give away” prices on the Internet, I decided to purchase one. Well, as I had surmised, putting the cover artwork aside, the content of these courses (audio recordings, texts, page numbering) are an exact copy of the Caxton-Carrousel series that I initially reviewed. I readily appreciate that none of you are likely to plunk down a small portion of your hard-earned wages with the thought of acquiring one of these rapidly-disappearing gems. Still, I thought that adding this information to the historical record just might be useful to someone should they ever come across these courses. There is, of course, the remote possibility that this news might provoke another obsessive collector of older language-learning materials into placing an order, simply to add an edition having different artwork to his collection. Wer weiss?

CD Language Courses (Different Publishers) 1.JPG

EDITED:
Tinkering.

[aravinda]

Thank you, Speakeasy for this post and many other posts that keep us informed about your finds. As I am always curious about different language courses/methods I do really enjoy reading them. I think this is the first time I heard about CD Language Courses. What's more, I was rather surprised to read your very positive assessment of these courses. How come I didn't know about them so long?
(Now, see what you have done! I am searching the eBay to buy a couple of these courses just for the pleasure of examining them closely.)
Keep up the good work! (And I will not buy any other language courses that I am not going to use, err, maybe just a few, once in a while)

[Speakeasy]

Hello, Aravinda. Thank you very much for your encouraging words. I gained considerable insight into the availability of the better quality language-learning materials, including some very interesting vintage courses, on the HTLAL and on this forum. With the view of contributing to the archives, I began posting my own reviews of some lesser-known materials and it seems to have become something of an obsession! Most people simply ignore these harmless posts and that’s just fine by me, should they be of some minor assistance to anyone, so much the better.

[jeff_lindqvist]

Just saying that in case you'd ever visit one of the Polyglot Gatherings to give a lecture on vintage courses, I'd be in the audience.

[Speakeasy]

Jeff, thank you for the encouragement! We could hold the sub-conference in a phone-booth, providing we could find one of these vintage artefacts...

[Glarus Girl]

Most people simply ignore these harmless posts and that’s just fine by me, should they be of some minor assistance to anyone, so much the better.

I like reading your posts on the different courses - I think I've bought two you've mentioned before. As bargains can be had on used courses I think you're doing learners a great favour and I do appreciate it!

[Seneca]

Speakeasy,
You may recall a couple of months ago when I was trying to get the book for the "Spanish CD Intensive Language Course" and was sent the wrong book. Seeing the photo at the bottom of your post, I just realized that the book I was sent is for this Caxton-Carrousel CD course! I was one of the ones who got done in by the confusing Amazon post, haha.

I am in a language learning timeout for a few months due to travel/career stuff going on currently. But I am very curious since you have seen both courses with audio for both.

If they were a similar price and equally available, which course would you recommend between this Caxton-Carrousel course or the XXXX CD Intensive Language Courses?

They strike me as rather similar! But I am unsure if it is just due to the book size/order confusion or if it goes deeper.

edit: typos

[dgc1970]

Jeff, thank you for the encouragement! We could hold the sub-conference in a phone-booth, providing we could find one of these vintage artefacts...

It would be cool to convert some old phone booths into bookshelves for your vintage courses.

[Speakeasy]

Hello, Seneca. Yes, I recall both our open and private discussions. If I remember correctly, you had placed an order on Amazon for the Spanish "CD Intensive Language Course" by Naumann & Göbel Verlagsgesellschaft, but received a copy of the "CD Language Course" by Caxton-Carrousel, without the CDs and, as I had had better luck with my purchases, we worked together to resolve your problem. By the way, we have an opportunity to resolve your original problem, should you so wish. You know how to reach me.

It seems to me that these two products have been poorly coded on Amazon, but I seriously doubt that anyone is going to take the time to correct the problems: both of these courses are out-of-print, inventories are most likely dwindling, and the monetary value for fixing the problems, either to Amazon or to their Sellers, is (in appearance) so marginal that the situation will likely endure. Nevertheless, should someone place an order and not receive the product as (incorrectly) itemised by Amazon, they will be dissatisfied and may very well return it to the Seller for reimbursement. Since the publishers no longer exist, the Seller will not be able to recover his purchase cost, he will have to eat the back-and-forth delivery costs, and he will be substantially out-of-pocket. Everybody loses!

I find your question concerning which of the two courses I would recommend extremely difficult to answer. I believe that most independent language-learners would be quite satisfied with either series. While there would be a risk of covering the same ground twice without much gain, given the very low prices for these materials, I would be tempted to suggest that they purchase both of them. Still, if I absolutely had to chose, I would vote for the "CD Language Course" by Caxton-Carrousel because (1) the exercise sets are slightly more numerous and (2) the accompanying notes are much better. But really, either one does the trick!

I will reiterate a comment that I made above. As I was "the lucky one" who managed to purchase the French, German, and Spanish courses of both series, inclusive of the audio CDs, and as I consider both of them very well-conceived, I noted that "I would be receptive to pleas for assistance" should someone receive one of these courses without the CDs. Call it community service!

EDITED:
Tinkering.

[Speakeasy]

It would be cool to convert some old phone booths into bookshelves for your vintage courses.

A suggestion that causes me to speculate on how the Serpent induced Eve to taste the Forbidden Fruit in the Garden of Eden: "Go on, you know you want to! What harm could it possibly do? And, besides, who'll know besides the two of us?"

While I have not yet suffered the Wrath of God, my obsessive collecting of vintage language-learning materials has caused me to have a few run-ins with my wife: "Get thee behind me Satan!"