Living Language: Foreign Language Learning Series Reviews

[bui501]

Excellent review, very objective.

[bradcasali]

In the older, pre-CD, Ultimate courses (German and Russian I can only speak for), the 'Learn-on-the-Go Recordings' DID have sentence examples when they introduced grammar concepts. It wasn't just the dialogues sans any of the material in the chapter. The Spoken World has this too.

[mashmusic11235]

I would like to point out that the 'Living Language Conversational' series was later re-issued in the 1990s as the 'Living Language [language] Revised & Updated' series (presumably with some changes made), and is currently being printed as the 'Living Language [language] Complete Course: The Basics' series (the books are slightly larger). I haven't had the opportunity to follow a particular course through all of its different incarnations with this series, but this is how it appears to me.

[wieserd]

english - foreign

would be better, instead of

foreign - english

[Hackerfromthe90s]

You are one of my favorite people on the subject of language. That's why I was suprised when I THOUGHT you said "Fucking the trend" on 4:35 XD

[CCQ75]

I couldn't agree with you more, they should record the dialogs and the readings without english the voices, i wonder why they keep doing that.

[Linguist1967]

What are some languages, that you haven't yet touched on, that you find tempting to learn?

[johntm93]

Dang prof, got a little serious there.

"Thank you very much for trying. Try harder! Thank you."

I love these videos and the "Languages of the world" videos

Keep making great videos!

[NV417]

i think this series is more like phrasebooks

[Soleado123]

Have you looked at The Ultimate Spanish Review and Practice - Mastering Spanish Grammar for Confident Communication and The Ultimate French Review and Practice? They are yellow. I have had them for a while, but haven't delved into them very deeply. I think for the price they are comprehensive. My discipline level has been too low to stick with them. I too enjoy looking at the instructional materials published in the '60s. Very good stuff there.

[ocergnairb]

I truly appreciate your interest in helping to explain resources; these videos are so helpful.

I have one question about the Japanese Living Language Course from the '50s/'60s -- if you're aware of it. Does it use Romanization or does it also use the native writing like this Hebrew manual? Any other information about it or other good Japanese resources would be very helpful.

Thank you again!

-Brian, an aspiring young language-learner

[syedyasirkamal]

Loved it .... Shukria! (Urdu)

[ChiaBrain]

If you'll pardon the slang:

Dude, you're my hero!

[espling]

Very interesting and thank you for the review. Might just try it if my economy allows for it.

[kronos77]

Thanks for the review. I visited the Living Language website and noticed they have online versions of the Ultimate course. I don't care for computer learning myself, but these seem to match the book/CD course exactly and you can download the audio as well.

[ProfASAr]

I wanted to make a point crystal clear, but I somehow mumbled the fact that:

with the oldest versions of this series, you got 180 minutes of useful audio;

with the revised editions, you get about 120-150 minutes of useful audio;

however, with the textually much more thorough Ultimate series, you only get 75 minutes of unadulterated dialog, despite the 8 CD/10 hour potential.