CD Language Courses - Caxton/Carrousel/Medienproduktionen

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Speakeasy
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Re: Caxton/Carrousel CD Language Courses

Postby Speakeasy » Wed Nov 08, 2017 1:27 am

To Aravinda, dgc1970, Glarus Girl, jeff_lindqvist, Seneca and to all others, either in this discussion thread, or in other threads, or in their voting, or in their private messages, or merely in their private thoughts, I wish to express my sincere appreciation for your unexpected support.

Nevertheless, I would be remiss were I not to acknowledge the contributions of the literally hundreds of members of this forum and of the HTLAL which have served as a model for my own modest posts. Whenever I want to track something down, I often start by a search of the forums and, almost invariably, the matter has already been addressed in some depth.

Whilst preparing this comment, I consulted the Members List of this forum, which now exceeds 7,000, in the hopes of identifying a few of the "big hitters" of recommendations for language-learning materials. I started typing a list of names, but did not get past the letter "D" and, during the process, I realized that even a single contribution from a "small hitter" might very well have had just as much influence as a group of fifty or more contributions. Where would I start on the HTLAL, which had over 120,000 members? We are all doing "something" that "someone else" might find interesting, useful, entertaining, or even provocative, but it all causes us to pause and think a little.

Once again, thank you for your support and please rest assured everyone one of you (all of the members and all of the visitors) have mine in return.
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Speakeasy
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Re: CD Language Courses - Caxton/Carrousel/Medienproduktionen

Postby Speakeasy » Wed Apr 18, 2018 11:19 pm

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) is an exact copy of the Caxton-Carrousel series that I initially reviewed.
CD Language Courses (Different Publishers) 1.JPG

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?

EDITED:
Formatting.
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jesiflo
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Sep 10, 2018 9:55 am
Languages: English Spanish Portuguese

Re: CD Language Courses - Caxton/Carrousel/Medienproduktionen

Postby jesiflo » Mon Sep 10, 2018 10:18 am

Speakeasy wrote: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.


Hello! I'm so happy I found this post :) I need to learn French to get a visa and I have purchased this book but unfortunately it came without the CDs. I was wondering if anybody still has the audio files or how I could do to just order the CDs.

Thanks so much for your help!

Kind regards,
Jesica
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Speakeasy
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Re: CD Language Courses - Caxton/Carrousel/Medienproduktionen

Postby Speakeasy » Mon Sep 10, 2018 12:49 pm

Hello, jesiflo, welcome to the forum! I look forward to following your comments on many of the fascinating topics here. As to your present needs for language-learning materials, you might wish to review the list below:

French Resources,
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2914
The FSI/DLI courses are quite rigorous and they’re free!

As to the CD French Language course, from what I understand, the publisher no longer exists. You could buy another copy of this course on eBay or Amazon; however, as the publisher seems to have circulated numerous copies that did not contain the CDs, there is a possibility that your second/third/forth copies would not contain the CDs either. Although I donated my copy of this course to a local charity, before doing so, I converted the CDs to MP3 files which I -- inexplicably -- still have. I will send you a private message.
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jesiflo
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Sep 10, 2018 9:55 am
Languages: English Spanish Portuguese

Re: CD Language Courses - Caxton/Carrousel/Medienproduktionen

Postby jesiflo » Mon Sep 10, 2018 4:23 pm

I forgot to mention, I have no previous knowledge of French.
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jesiflo
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Sep 10, 2018 9:55 am
Languages: English Spanish Portuguese

Re: CD Language Courses - Caxton/Carrousel/Medienproduktionen

Postby jesiflo » Mon Sep 10, 2018 4:26 pm

I will keep you posted if I can manage to learn using this book. So far I have been unsuccessful with Duolingo and with Mooc. Thanks for your help!
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Faust
White Belt
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Re: CD Language Courses - Caxton/Carrousel/Medienproduktionen

Postby Faust » Tue Nov 09, 2021 1:09 am

Does anyone know if either of these courses is available to teach Italian from an English base?

"CD Intensive Language Course" by Naumann & Göbel Verlagsgesellschaft

"CD Language Course" by Caxton-Carrousel

There is an Italian course from a German base for the first:
https://www.amazon.com/Italienisch-CD-I ... 88668/ref=

I cannot seem to find an English base in either for Italian, and none of the other languages in an English base in either collection has a list of other works by ISBN.
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