Content edited
@Imyirtseshem: "Strangely, there is a fear in language learning communities that one might learn outdated words and others like ‘wand’ and ‘magician’. After a few tens of thousands, what’s a handful?
You’ll notice I said supplement, not replace. It’s in addition to what you’re learning in the FSI course. What could be wrong with wanting to sound like a contemporary when speaking with natives?
Reading literature is another ball of wax.
R.
Content edited
I find that the average sentence structure in modern literature to be much simpler, and its language more direct, more “plain”. I attribute this to the fact that the literacy rate is much larger now than it ever used to be and that social status has less of an effect on literacy than in the past.
Content edited
Gotta take issue with the last part of your post, especially the bit about the program only being top grade “because it is well known.” Just because you weren’t able to take the lessons in and make good use of them doesn’t mean that others aren’t getting results. I’m not going to go on for too long for fear of being labelled a “shill” for Pimsleur, but it’s the only program I’ve come across that had me speaking full sentences and taking part in German conversations within the first few hours of taking the German 1 course. The way they do the intervals and repetitions help me comprehend and “lock in” what I was hearing, and I’m dyslexic, so it should be much harder for me than the average person to learn a language and new sentence structures when I’m behind par in regards to my own native toungue.
The only thing I don’t like about the course is that the lady pronounces some of the words slightly differently to some of the native German speakers that my sister has staying with her, but that might just be a regional thing.