Foreign Language Courses « Third Language Blog

Getting good quality teaching and resources

The information I am going to share is an honest account of what I have tried over the past year and my opinions are just that. . opinions. I will share my likes and dislikes, what works for me and what doesn't. This is a personal experience, I am not an expert but if you share my ambition of learning to communicate in a third, foreign language, then maybe we can help each other along the way.

Getting good quality teaching and resources is vital to success: encouraged by an influential book by Harry Ferber I now view language acquisition as a military campaign, I need to use my resources efficiently to overcome all resistance, I need to capture vocabulary and not let it escape. I need to wear down the opposition by attacking daily and not allowing it time to regroup. I need to learn the predictable tricks that the new language will play on me and be ready for them (this means learning grammar). Like any military campaign good quality intelligence is vital.

26 January 2010

Where have all the Spanish Classes Gone

I’m getting started on the L140 Open University course, one of the suggestions is that students arrange some conversation practice with native Spanish speakers. No problem you might think. I put out lots of feelers but so far I haven’t found anyone to practice with, so I started looking for conversation classes.

According to Wikipedia, Spanish [...]

1 October 2009

Open University L194 Portales

My Open University course L194 “Portales” has officially finished. I have to wait until February next year before L140 “En [...]

14 September 2009

Pimsleur Spanish – 3 parts and Spanish Plus

This is an enormous course, each part consists of 30 half hour lessons and the Spanish Plus gives another 10 half hour lessons. This is the one I listen to when I am ironing or doing similar mind-numbing tasks. There is enough thinking time between challenge and response that I rarely need to use the [...]

13 September 2009

Michel Thomas Language Courses

Foundation Spanish Course – 8CDs and review 2CDs

This was my introduction to Spanish. From the first lesson Michel hypnotises you into relaxing and playing at learning Spanish and within minutes you are constructing sentences like “what is your opinion of the current political and social situation in Spain?”, he builds confidence and teaches grammar painlessly.

13 September 2009

Linguaphone all Talk

Linguaphone all talk – 8CDs

This one didn’t work for me. It seemed rather old fashioned presenting a list of vocabulary then a little bit of narrative and a few test questions with lots of irritating “uplifting” musical breaks. There is some good vocabulary in there but I would find it tedious to listen to over [...]

19 August 2009

Hugo Spanish in 3 months, book, tapes and CDs

Hugo Spanish in 3 Months

I have a soft spot for Hugo Spanish, at least for the book. I don’t find the recordings very helpful my advice is to save money and just buy the book, you can pick it up and even in a few minutes [...]

14 August 2009

Open University Spanish Course L194

Open University

The Open University (OU) has been the backbone of my strategy this year. I am following the entry level Spanish course L194 Portales. I chose this course because I wanted some structure to my study and having studied French L120 a few years ago I knew roughly what to expect.

The course arrived [...]

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