Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

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aravinda
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Re: Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby aravinda » Thu Nov 15, 2018 1:55 am

I am not very tech-savvy, so I don't know what's happening but I can access the audio download page by doing a Google search with Safari like this. However, whenever I try to link that page for you it doesn't work.
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BalancingAct
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Re: Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby BalancingAct » Thu Nov 15, 2018 4:05 am

My Opera is very up to date. The last two updates were very close, within days. Something did not work after the second to last update so there was another one last week. Make sure you are on the latest version.
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neumanc
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Re: Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby neumanc » Thu Nov 15, 2018 9:17 am

BalancingAct wrote:My Opera is very up to date. The last two updates were very close, within days. Something did not work after the second to last update so there was another one last week. Make sure you are on the latest version.
Very strange, my Opera is up to date, too. However, I finally managed to download the files. How so? I used my mobile Opera app (Android) together with the Secure VPN app. Isn't this rediculous? It hasn't anything to do with geo-blocking, since I chose a German IP address while accessing the website from Germany. By the way, other browsers on my phone don't work, even with VPN. Seems to me a strange issue. There shouldn't be any hurdles on a publisher's website. Since I'm not the only one with this problem, it clearly has something to do with the website.
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PeterMollenburg
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Re: Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby PeterMollenburg » Thu Nov 15, 2018 12:03 pm

iguanamon wrote:When Blockbuster here closed several years ago, I took advantage of their going out of business sale to acquire several dvd's in Spanish and other languages. The plastic dust covers on the boxes have been and are being eaten by uv light, the tropical weather and time. I have disks that are no longer playable.


Yeah, I did the same when the local video (i.e. DVD) store closed down. My kids have amused themselves at times by messing around with the pile of French DVDs I bought at bargain prices. The disks and covers end up strewn throughout the house at times. I would never let that happen with my language courses or books, but I don't really care about these DVDs, however. I don't watch them. It's much easier to click a few buttons and select something online than to load a DVD (that probably won't work anymore). I was only thinking the other day, how VHS has almost completely disappeared. I hope paperbacks are here to stay :) alongside their digital counterparts.

aravinda wrote:I am not very tech-savvy, so I don't know what's happening but I can access the audio download page by doing a Google search with Safari like this. However, whenever I try to link that page for you it doesn't work.


I'm less tach-savvy than you, I believe, and I cannot even get that image to appear where I can potentially download the audio with the click of a button. I only seem to be able to get the the language-specific page (I'm interested in the Norwegian course) up (as opposed to the one you brought up with several languages and several buttons), but from within the Beginner's Norwegian page, no such button to click and download the audio appears. Anyway, great to see some smaller languages on focus here!
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aravinda
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Re: Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby aravinda » Thu Nov 15, 2018 9:40 pm

PeterMollenburg wrote:... I cannot even get that image to appear where I can potentially download the audio with the click of a button. I only seem to be able to get the the language-specific page (I'm interested in the Norwegian course) up (as opposed to the one you brought up with several languages and several buttons), but from within the Beginner's Norwegian page, no such button to click and download the audio appears. Anyway, great to see some smaller languages on focus here!

PM, you can find the audio of the Norwegian course lower down on the page I linked to. As far as I know, all the audio is availble only from that page.
In addition to the audio of an English course and a Spanish vocabulary course, the page has audio downloads for following languages:

Albanian
Serbian
Welsh
Yoruba
Ladino
Finnish
Norwegian
Basque
Korean (coming soon)

I’m not studying Norwegian but I just downloaded the two folders (CDs).
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dgc1970
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Re: Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby dgc1970 » Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:37 pm

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Speakeasy
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Re: Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby Speakeasy » Thu Jan 17, 2019 12:27 am

Hippocrene / Palgrave / MacMillan "Mastering" Series
Subsequent to the above discussions, I decided to add a couple of the “Mastering” courses to my own collection. As I do have any of the Hippocrene “Beginner’s” series courses to which I can compare my recently-acquired copies of the “Mastering” series, it is possible these two series are actually one-in-the-same. It does not help matters that anyone searching for copies of, for example, “Mastering German” by Antony Peck, “Mastering Arabic” by Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar, and similar works, will likely come across editions of these introductory self-instructional language guides published under any of the following:

MacMillan Mastering series
Palgrave Mastering series
Palgrave (MacMillan) Mastering series
Hippocrene Mastering series


Mastering Series
Although the British academic and trade publishers Palgrave and MacMillian were officially united under a common banner in 2002, according to Wikipedia, these companies had close ties going back to the middle-to-late 19th century. Since at least the 1950’s, and perhaps earlier, these publishers offered a series of what-I-would-describe-as self-instructional introductory guides on a broad range of academic subjects such as: accounting, astronomy, banking & finance, biology, business practices, chemistry, commerce, communications, economics, electronics, fashion, foreign languages, geography, grammar, history, human resources, information technology, law, literature, marketing, management, mathematics, manufacturing, physics, politics, programming computers, philosophy, psychology, sociology, social welfare, theology, world religions, and so forth.

Mastering (Language) series
One of these series published by Palgrave/MacMillian, at least from the early 1980’s, was “Mastering (Language)” some titles of which, but apparently not all of, were subsequently published by Hippocrene. Languages covered in the series included at least the following: Arabic, Chinese, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, and Spanish.

1 Mastering.JPG


Based on my own copies of the Mastering courses for German, Polish, Russian, and Spanish, there seems to have been fairly standardized components and presentations as follows: (a) a course book measuring 5-1/4 inches x 8-1/2 inches, of approximately 350 pages, (b) roughly 20 progressively more difficult lessons wherein the L2 was exposed in typical situations such as: arrival in the country, passing through customs, hotel accommodations, restaurants and cafés, shopping, sight-seeing, travel and transportation, renting a car or an apartment, visits to museums, medical and other emergencies, and the like, (c) lessons composed of two or three short dialogues, occasionally with some supplementary exercises, accompanied by a glossary and excellent notes on grammar and local customs (d) English translations of the dialogues in an appendix, (e) two audio cassettes of either 60 minutes or 90 minutes duration each. The audio recordings, with the exception of the Russian course, were prepared with the assistance of voice-trained professionals, male and female and at times more than one of each, whose delivery was clearly articulated and at a cadence on a par with conversation between native speakers. The level upon completion would approach CEFR A1 or perhaps just slightly less.

I was quite pleased in all respects with the German, Polish, and Spanish courses, but found that the audio recordings accompanying the Russian course did not meet commercial standards (only one reader, a female native-speaker, whose delivery was so monotonous and lifeless that it is difficult to believe that she was a professional). It did not help matters that the course manual did not contain an explanation of the Cyrillic alphabet or Russian pronunciation.

Mastering Advanced (Language) series / Mastering (Language) 2 series
All three publishers issued what-appear-to-have-been sequels to a few of their “Mastering” courses titled as “Mastering Advanced (Language)” or “Mastering (Language) 2” in which the authors of the preceding series do not seem to have been involved. Although I only a copy of “Mastering German 2” by E.J. Neather from this series in my collection, the Amazon “Look Inside” feature suggests that the two similarly-titled series were identical as to scope and intent. Languages covered by the series seem to have been limited to: Arabic, French, German, Italian, Spanish. As for the preceding series, there seems to have been fairly standardized components and presentations as follows: (a) a course book measuring 5-1/4 inches x 8-1/2 inches, of approximately 350 pages, (b) roughly 20 progressively more difficult lessons wherein the L2 was exposed as extracts from native-language classical and more recent literature, newspapers, magazines, advertisements, cover virtually many aspects of the target language’s culture. The level of the readings was in the CEFR A2-B1 range which, in my experience, suggests that the preceding series would have been insufficient preparation for these “apparent” sequels. These manuals also included a number of dialogues which, quite curiously, seemed-to-me to no more advanced than the CEFR A1. An audio cassette was separately available; however, regrettably, it contained only the recordings of the dialogues and not those of the readings. Nevertheless, the readings alone would have been a much-appreciated resource for a student at the lower-intermediate level.

2 Mastering Advanced.JPG


EDITED:
Typos.
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Last edited by Speakeasy on Thu Jan 17, 2019 2:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
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aravinda
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Re: Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby aravinda » Thu Jan 17, 2019 1:16 am

Some Arabic and Chinese (Mandarin) books in the series seem to be still in print as Palgrave Macmillan Master series.
The audio and transcripts for Mastering Chinese can be dowloded here.
And resources for Mastering Arabic Series here (not the audio unfortunately).
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xjtorerox
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Re: Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby xjtorerox » Mon Mar 25, 2019 8:14 pm

Hello,

I got the book "Mastering German" by Peck, but I don't have the audio files. Does anybody know where can I get them?

BR
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Re: Hippocrene beginner's series with online audio

Postby Speakeasy » Mon Mar 25, 2019 10:55 pm

A belated welcome to the forum, xjtorerox! I look forward to following your participation in numerous discussions on the forum. Now then, your profile indicates that you are a beginning student of German. While I found "Mastering German" by Anthony Peck to be well-conceived, given the broad availability of low-priced resources for the study of this language, most of which contain more materials than the former, I’m curious to know what prompted you to purchase an out-of-print CEFR A1 level course from the 1980’s for which the audio cassettes are now almost impossible to find. Was there something about the series that drew you to this particular publication? NOTE: I have accompanied these comments by a Private Message.

EDITED:
Tinkering
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