There are significant differences between the methods favoured by the most well-known internet polyglots. For example they cannot agree on:
- how much grammar study is necessary
- whether accent practice is important
- whether to have a silent absorption period at the beginning or to speak from day one
- whether exposure to foreign TV (even with subtitles) or radio is worthwhile at all if you don't understand much
- whether the ultimate goal is a) to be mistaken for a native speaker or b) to be able to discuss academic subjects or c) to be able to read literature
- whether old materials or modern materials are the best
The only thing they have in common is that they all spend a LOT of time on languages, which is why I said that time spent is the most important factor of all; more important than method.
That being said, you are right to observe that polyglots tend to dislike Pimsleur. Pimsleur is inefficient time-wise, because it only teaches 5-6 words per 30 minute lesson. For comparison: Pod101 generally teaches 10-12 words per 15 minute lesson. Michel Thomas also uses a faster pace, though harder to compare because Michel Thomas focuses almost entirely on grammar / neat expressions that you can plug words into. The only polyglots I heard recommend Pimsleur said that they like to use a few lessons of it in the beginning in order to develop their accent and comfort level in a new language. Michel Thomas has more fans among polyglots, but not as many as Assimil. I definitely wouldn't put him in the same category as Pimsleur.
Assimil is popular because there's a lot of meat to eat: almost every one of their books contains 100 lessons and claims to lead you up to B2 (upper intermediate) level. Whether it's really B2 is debated on polyglot forums, but there's no doubt that Assimil courses cover a whole lot more words and grammar and idioms than most other courses which leave you well within beginner territory (or tourist territory). Also, Assimil neatly straddles the divide between older-is-better and newer-is-better polyglots: many of the older-is-better crowd like Assimil's "without toil" courses dating back to the 50s and 60s, while a good share of the modernists like the new Assimil courses. The courses have adapted a bit over time.
Apart from Assimil, polyglots also tend to use Teach Yourself or Colloquial or Langenscheidt or any courses of the same structure, though you'll find less fanatics for these. The exact choice often depends not just on the brand but also the language you want to learn, because all the good publishers give their writers significant freedom in designing the courses, resulting in some that are much better than others. Even Assimil has a few fluke courses that even Assimil fans won't touch.
Then of course there are all the indie courses that only exist for one language - in my experience, these are usually very good, because there is no company trying to fit a one-size-fits-all approach on them. The internet in particular has many free non-branded language courses that are of exceptional quality (esp. if you're a modernist), usually created by universities or national radio stations. I wrote entire books about the abundance of high-quality free online language courses/materials.
Then there are people who don't use anything like a textbook. For example, they might start by studying a phrasebook and then learn anything else in conversation with a teacher. Or they use the Listening-Reading Method of reading literature in parallel texts with audio, right from the start. Steve Kaufman, the LingQ guy, also starts out by reading.
So one can't say that someone is a newbie just based on his favourite courses. Except if they're LiveMocha or Rosetta Stone. Rosetta Stone spends almost its entire budget on marketing, leaving little money to develop good courses, while also succeeding in convincing all non-learners that their courses are amazing. I can't count the number of times someone who hasn't learned any language in the past decade(s) has told me "Oh, you love learning languages? You should check out Rosetta Stone, they're really good!". LiveMocha was an attempt to create a free open-source clone of Rosetta Stone, using crowdsourcing, which unsurprisingly resulted in an even worse product than the original (too many cooks).
So there's really no one answer to this. If you have a particular polyglot in mind, google him and you should be able to find what his preferred method is.
No comments:
Post a Comment