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The trouble with language textbooks | ||
Tags: Usefulness | Textbooks | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| atamagaii Senior Member Anguilla Joined 5987 days ago 181 posts - 195 votes  Speaks: Apache* | Message 1 of 52 26 January 2008 at 8:57am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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I'll try to explain what I mean in my rather clumsy English.
The trouble with language textbooks: 1. The authors (or should I say the publishers) are driven by auri sacra fames, ie. they want to make money that's why the textbooks are prepared quickly and cheaply. a) they're boring (nothing interesting can be done quickly - unless you're quick-witted) b) they're not meant for intelligent people 2. They want to TEACH you, that's why they're TEACHER-centred, and the teacher is supposed to be cleverer than you are, they tell you, "Do this, this and this". Why you should do this "this" is not explained. 3. They tell you, "You are sure to learn the xYx-language" using MY textbook". What they really mean is: "Buy my textbook, whether you will learn anything or not I do not care, it would be better if you didn't, then you'll have to buy another one". 4. They want to TEACH you (instead of LETTING YOU LEARN) everything at once (speaking, reading, writing, grammar, vocabulary) right from the beginning ending up not teaching you anything properly. PRONUNCIATION (= phonemes, intonation, rythm, tones) is not mentioned at all. 5. What they really teach you: a) clumsy ways of studying b) some illusions c) an appalling number of pronunciation mistakes 6. EXPOSURE (texts, sentences, vocabulary) is minimal and very often NEGATIVE (too poor and artificial discourse for instance) 7. Usually they are not bilingual (ASSimil's ones are) 8. If they are recorded, there's no transcript (Pimsleur) 9. Grammar examples are not recorded A GOOD textbook should explain to you: 1. PRONUNCIATION 2. the overall STRUCTURE of the language in a logical and meaningful way: a few hundred carefully selected sentences with word-for-word translation and grammar codes alongside with correct natural sentences in your mother tongue 3. all exampels should be recorded by native speakers Here's an example, just to give you an idea: www.stultorum.pochta.ru\aaaa\V_Ai.rar I prepared it for my niece, a teenage girl, she's learning Japanese. As she's Polish, it's in Polish. There are links there to natural example sentences and explanations. A sample is here. (the sentences are in vertical columns, not displayed here). And only then: 4. should contain natural dialogues and texts with about 3 thousand basic words, all bilingual. L-R (or Listening-Reading). Edited by atamagaii on 29 January 2008 at 4:34am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| guilon Pentaglot Senior Member Spain Joined 5973 days ago 226 posts - 229 votes Speaks: Spanish*, PortugueseC2, FrenchC2, Italian, English | Message 2 of 52 26 January 2008 at 10:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Don't FSI methods fulfill more or less your expectations?
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6220 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 52 26 January 2008 at 11:30am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
FSI courses suffer from most of the 'troubles' or problems that atamagaii mentions. They also vary from language to language. Not all start with significant amounts of phonetic material. I have not seen any of them provide a good summary of structure (correct me if any do; I'm not deeply familiar with most FSI courses). They don't contain significant amounts of natural material. Pretty much the only thing FSI and atamagaii's description in this thread have in common is the use of native speakers, having some amount of sentences in the target language in a somewhat bilingual format, and in -some- FSI courses, explicit phonetic instruction. FSI may well have merits, but it's a very, very different way of going about language learning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| hobbitofny Senior Member United States Joined 6014 days ago 280 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 52 27 January 2008 at 8:00am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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I have only seen FSI FAST Russian. The introduction in FAST Russian refers to buying a copy of Brian Kemple's Essential Russian Grammar to supplement the course, for those wanting the structure.
FSI is a different way to learn. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6484 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 52 27 January 2008 at 10:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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I can hardly disagree with Atamagaii with anything in the post above. Personally I have only used textbooks as sources for easy texts for the last couple of languages I've learnt because of my dislike of their pedagogical methods and lousy content. If I could find sufficiently easy AND interesting texts anywhere else I would avoid them like the plague.
I would however like to add a few points about textbooks now that I have to live with them. The main point of textbooks must be the texts themselves. OK, why then speak to people like they are morons? Write some texts that contain real information instead of isolated sentences. Of course you have to use a restricted vocabulary and simple sentences structures, but a good author can write about pyramids and gardening and the holy grail and the fashion industry without getting complicated. If you have dialogs then please try to make the action be plausible and let the persons depicted act like intelligent beings. If the texts make you cringe then you will be less motivated to spend your precious time in their company. And don't use those stupid stupid drawings and mediocre photos - most of the time they add more to the price tag than to the information contained in a book. Use illustrations in cases where it is relevant, for instance to name the parts of a ship or to show a buildÃng style instead of describing it. If you have scenes that depict for instance buying train tickets and other practical actions then make sure that the description is accurate and that all the important vocabulary is covered. For instance you should teach the reader how to buy both single and return tickets while you are at it, even if the text becomes a little longer. If necessary put the extra information in a footnote, but don't omit it. With morphology it is best to give a fairly comprehensive overview first and then enter into the details in the following sections. Unfortunately the current fashion is to provide little snippets of informations here and there and then let let the students try to find all the pieces and combine them. This may be a reaction to old methods where you had to learn all the tables first and then the rest of the language, but the result has been utter confusion because the modern authors apparently fear giving you the complete picture. And finally: a good textbook system should have a word list for every section and a complete vocabulary at the end. In these it is better to give too much morphological information than too little. An advanced learner may not need to be told the past tense of a regular verb, but the beginner shouldn't be forced to look the word up in a dictionary or - even worse - leave with incomplete information. The purpose of a textbook is not to let the students solve riddles, but to pull and push them through the inital stages of language learning as fast as possible so that they can deal with the language as it is used 'out there' in the real world. PS: I can't enter the discussion about FSI and Pimsleur and certain other systems that are mentioned very often here because I haven't used those systems, but at my local library there are many shelf meters of other text books and I have skimmed a lot of them. And quite frankly, I didn't like much of what I saw. Edited by Iversen on 27 January 2008 at 11:24am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6431 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 6 of 52 27 January 2008 at 1:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Yes, siomettikiru's correct about this, but there's nothing to do. It's the way the world is... Unless you'd like to write your own textbooks, of course...
Like atamagaii says, they're trying to appeal to the average user.
I've seen books like this and the main complaint is "Why are they teaching me the word for 'midshipman'? I'm going to Italy in a month. I need to know the essentials here!"
Having never attempted it, I'm willing to give the authors the benefit of the doubt and say it's harder than it seems to make it sound natural. The books I have do a pretty good job of it.
Again, they're appealing to the lowest common denominator of their potential purchasers and/or users. There are many people who are afraid of books to begin with and if they open up a book and it's packed with text and doesn't look 'friendly' they'll put it right back on the shelf. Cartoons are friendly and non-threatening. Diagrams are not.
Again, probably harder than it seems at first. The books I have often try to get the important stuff in there, but then that makes more difficult their attempt to make the situation plausible and the people sound intelligent.
You've got it, except it's not the authors, I'd bet. It's the publishers. The people who need to keep the book marketable. People want their learning experiences to be painless nowadays and the publishers are all too willing to oblige. They know the statistics. How many different brands of beginner Spanish books are there? Now how many different brands of intermediate Spanish books are there? The proportion is so lopsided because very few people make it to the intermediate stages. All the money's in the beginner books.
I agree with this. It wouldn't seem to affect the marketability of the book all that much, either. In sum, it's $$$$$$$. Only academics have the means to write and publish books that speak to the fellow academician. Those that do are few and far between, however. And so it goes... Edited by apparition on 27 January 2008 at 1:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6456 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 7 of 52 27 January 2008 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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You find what sells. You find what people want.
It's all about market and earning money. By the way, I understand that editors and authors want public and earning money. Selling is their job and they try to do well their job. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| PolyglotNZ Pentaglot Groupie New ZealandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5985 days ago 71 posts - 91 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, German, Mandarin, Japanese Studies: Polish, Swedish, Hungarian, Russian | Message 8 of 52 27 January 2008 at 4:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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I personally prefer language textbooks that are written in the target language only. Sometimes I feel that there is far too much English on the
pages of some of my textbooks. The other textbooks I like are the ones that separate their content, i.e. the first X pages of a lesson are in the target language (i.e. dialogues or narratives), the next pages are for vocabulary and grammar and then exercises. Having everything recorded by native speakers at a normal speed is also very important. I find it annoying when they speak so slowly that the whole thing is just dumb. Having dialogues with pauses for repetition is also good, but this is something you can do with the pause button of your remote control. I also like the idea of having a textbook supplemented by a video component like Supisuomea or Hungarolingua. Edited by PolyglotNZ on 27 January 2008 at 4:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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