I'm learning French and German indepently through self study. I'm somewhat lost as to where I should start. Which one of these language courses do you guys reccomend? Also, if you are familiar with any books, methods,etc..
FSI vs. Pimsleur vs. Assimil vs. Michel Thomas
Look up "How to learn any language" and I think you'll come upon an orange coloured site by a Swiss national. There is discussion about Assimil, FSI and Pimsleur there.
I am familiar with FSI method (intermediate level) and I think it is a GREAT course for the SERIOUS student. I'm also familiar with the defense dept. method. It's good as well.
Pimsleur is easy as pie, great for getting the accent. It's not so great if you need to read and write your target language imo. It seems as if it was developed for men who want to date women in the target language. LOL! Go to the Pimsleur site and listen for free to the first lesson (thirty minutes) of the languages you want to learn. You'll be able to feel if this method works for you.
Michel Thomas is interesting, that's for sure. I've only looked at his advanced class. I think the method is the same for all levels. He teaches a small class and it is as if you are also a student. He was not a native speaker of many of the languages he taught, but he is a good teacher.
Since I don't know what your native language is, I can't tell which would be better for you.
Have fun!
I am familiar with FSI method (intermediate level) and I think it is a GREAT course for the SERIOUS student. I'm also familiar with the defense dept. method. It's good as well.
Pimsleur is easy as pie, great for getting the accent. It's not so great if you need to read and write your target language imo. It seems as if it was developed for men who want to date women in the target language. LOL! Go to the Pimsleur site and listen for free to the first lesson (thirty minutes) of the languages you want to learn. You'll be able to feel if this method works for you.
Michel Thomas is interesting, that's for sure. I've only looked at his advanced class. I think the method is the same for all levels. He teaches a small class and it is as if you are also a student. He was not a native speaker of many of the languages he taught, but he is a good teacher.
Since I don't know what your native language is, I can't tell which would be better for you.
Have fun!
Having tried three of those methods, I'll give you my two cents worth:
I don't like FSI. It's the old grind-it-out, drill method from the sixties. There are obviously people who like it, but I find it boring, and less than effective.
Pimsleur is okay in the sense in that it almost forces you to learn something, and not too painfully. The problem is that, after hours of recordings, what you learn is very little. (Same for Rosetta Stone software, although it's a little better, but also similarly expensive.) You also have to put up with a ton of English on the recordings. Pimsleur also forces you to speak early on, which is the same problem for most classes and methods. As the antimoon folks and most successful learners know, understanding before producting is much more effective, especially for pronunciation.
I really like Assimil. Their courses have several (sometimes 100!) short dialogues, and NO English on the recordings. They expect you to understand before you start producing. The book has the complete transcript and translations (often with literal translations), and very little useless explanations or exercises. Yes, you do have to work through them, but if you do, you'll learn a lot. The Ultimate French and Ultimate German from Living Language are also not bad. (Much better than their old courses.)
I don't know about Michel Thomas, but I can add a few others. Try Transparent Language software. (Learn German Now!, Learn French Now!) Four separate sections (two are video stories), each with complete recording, transcript, and translations. You can play it straight through, and repeat a word or phrase as many times as you like. Again, like Assimil, you have to be self-motivated to do it, but you can learn a lot.
Finally, for French and German, I highly recommend French in Action and Fokus Deutsch. If you can't get local PBS broadcasts, or get the tapes from a library, no matter: both courses (and others) are available for free from their website!: http://www.learner.org/resources/browse.html?discipline=3&grade=0&imageField2.x=11&imageField2.y=13 If you have a fast Internet connection, you can watch all the videos. The Fokus Deutsch has the transcripts online, and you can buy the book with all the dialogues for French in Action. The latter may be the best language course I've seen: 52 half-hour programs with a fun story line. Even if you learn just the story-line (non-classroom-setting) section (the first 5 or 10 minutes of each episode), you would get almost 6 hours of normal speed, contemporary Parisian French.
Again, you have to work through any of these more than you are would with Pimsleur, which drags you along, but I think you'd learn a lot more. Self-motivation! (I know a number of people who learned Mandarin--hardly the easiest language--by listening to each dialogue in their recording over and over (20 to 50 times!) until they understood it completely. And after they had heard it so many times, they could often produce it by memory, which did wonders for their speaking.)
I don't like FSI. It's the old grind-it-out, drill method from the sixties. There are obviously people who like it, but I find it boring, and less than effective.
Pimsleur is okay in the sense in that it almost forces you to learn something, and not too painfully. The problem is that, after hours of recordings, what you learn is very little. (Same for Rosetta Stone software, although it's a little better, but also similarly expensive.) You also have to put up with a ton of English on the recordings. Pimsleur also forces you to speak early on, which is the same problem for most classes and methods. As the antimoon folks and most successful learners know, understanding before producting is much more effective, especially for pronunciation.
I really like Assimil. Their courses have several (sometimes 100!) short dialogues, and NO English on the recordings. They expect you to understand before you start producing. The book has the complete transcript and translations (often with literal translations), and very little useless explanations or exercises. Yes, you do have to work through them, but if you do, you'll learn a lot. The Ultimate French and Ultimate German from Living Language are also not bad. (Much better than their old courses.)
I don't know about Michel Thomas, but I can add a few others. Try Transparent Language software. (Learn German Now!, Learn French Now!) Four separate sections (two are video stories), each with complete recording, transcript, and translations. You can play it straight through, and repeat a word or phrase as many times as you like. Again, like Assimil, you have to be self-motivated to do it, but you can learn a lot.
Finally, for French and German, I highly recommend French in Action and Fokus Deutsch. If you can't get local PBS broadcasts, or get the tapes from a library, no matter: both courses (and others) are available for free from their website!: http://www.learner.org/resources/browse.html?discipline=3&grade=0&imageField2.x=11&imageField2.y=13 If you have a fast Internet connection, you can watch all the videos. The Fokus Deutsch has the transcripts online, and you can buy the book with all the dialogues for French in Action. The latter may be the best language course I've seen: 52 half-hour programs with a fun story line. Even if you learn just the story-line (non-classroom-setting) section (the first 5 or 10 minutes of each episode), you would get almost 6 hours of normal speed, contemporary Parisian French.
Again, you have to work through any of these more than you are would with Pimsleur, which drags you along, but I think you'd learn a lot more. Self-motivation! (I know a number of people who learned Mandarin--hardly the easiest language--by listening to each dialogue in their recording over and over (20 to 50 times!) until they understood it completely. And after they had heard it so many times, they could often produce it by memory, which did wonders for their speaking.)