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lebateleur) wrote2021-01-04 12:45 pm
lebateleur) wrote2021-01-04 12:45 pm
Entry tags:
Language Roundup: December 28 - January 3
Language Learning
Mango Indonesian: Chapter 1: Units 1-3
Being the next Mango course on my list now that I’ve wrapped up Mango Korean. It’s early days in the first chapter, but so far the course has done a good job of introducing various greetings at different levels of formality, which is a smart choice.
But.
For once. Just for once, I’d like to encounter a course or language textbook that does not assume the Default MaleTM student, that features example conversations with or between women, that uses feminine forms and speech patterns in the main lesson while treating their masculine equivalents as an afterthought.*
*These points apply to Mango Japanese, below, as well as pretty much every other textbook or course I’ve used.
Mango Japanese: Chapter 2: Units 8-10 + R/L, Chapter 1 review, Chapter 3: Units 1-3
Again, I’m struck by how much better written this course is than its Korean counterpart. The grammar explanations are fuller and more frequent, and the course wisely includes particles in all the forms it teaches.
Mango Korean: Chapter 10: Units 9-?, Chapter 1-9 reviews, Placement test
I finished! All 10 chapters, in order, plus their review units and the ‘placement test’ at the end. I found the course useful for drilling basic compound verbs of giving and receiving at the polite and humble registers, expressing prohibitions, the sentence-finial particle ‘네’, and basic embedded quotations.
There’s a lot about it that isn’t great, such that I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone hoping to learn the language from scratch. The course:
And then, you get things like this, which encapsulates the course’s weaknesses in a nutshell. The unit on the word (and) includes the following example sentence: 이 건 엿이고, 저 건 떡이죠?(This is taffy and that is is a rice cake). Then comes this slide:
Why? Why do this? If you’re going to teach beginners a word that can be obscene in certain contexts, how about also teaching them what those contexts are so that they can avoid inadvertently offending anyone? Or better yet , teach them another word that isn’t obscene in any context. I'm hard pressed to think of any situation in which a beginner wouldn't need to use the word for taffy “sparingly.” I’m hard pressed to think of a situation in which a beginner would need to use the word for taffy at all.
Just, ugh.
Podcast Gaelgagh: 77-83
Last week’s episodes really drilled down on the first- and second-person constructions for “do/don’t like” and “do/don’t prefer,” which was a smart choice as there are several moving parts to each that are easy to confuse. The instructor simultaneously reintroduced verb tenses, additional constructions, and vocabulary the podcast hadn’t touched on for dozens of episodes, for a really useful review.
しっかり学ぶ韓国語―文法と練習問題: Units 1-4
From the Japanese publisher Beru, to whose offerings I lowe most of my Korean ability. Because my goal this year is to continue to work systematically through the language resources I own, I’m starting this one from the beginning and can unsurprisingly blast through the early chapters. That said, I’m pleased to discover that I can easily distinguish 에and 애, which I couldn’t do for years, but have some trouble distinguishing the consonants ㄱ and ㄲ when they’re attached to vowels other than in the practice questions.
これで以上です。
Mango Indonesian: Chapter 1: Units 1-3
Being the next Mango course on my list now that I’ve wrapped up Mango Korean. It’s early days in the first chapter, but so far the course has done a good job of introducing various greetings at different levels of formality, which is a smart choice.
But.
For once. Just for once, I’d like to encounter a course or language textbook that does not assume the Default MaleTM student, that features example conversations with or between women, that uses feminine forms and speech patterns in the main lesson while treating their masculine equivalents as an afterthought.*
*These points apply to Mango Japanese, below, as well as pretty much every other textbook or course I’ve used.
Mango Japanese: Chapter 2: Units 8-10 + R/L, Chapter 1 review, Chapter 3: Units 1-3
Again, I’m struck by how much better written this course is than its Korean counterpart. The grammar explanations are fuller and more frequent, and the course wisely includes particles in all the forms it teaches.
Mango Korean: Chapter 10: Units 9-?, Chapter 1-9 reviews, Placement test
I finished! All 10 chapters, in order, plus their review units and the ‘placement test’ at the end. I found the course useful for drilling basic compound verbs of giving and receiving at the polite and humble registers, expressing prohibitions, the sentence-finial particle ‘네’, and basic embedded quotations.
There’s a lot about it that isn’t great, such that I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone hoping to learn the language from scratch. The course:
- Assumes ability to read hangeul
- Provides paltry grammar explanations
- Features example sentences and constructions that seemingly contradict one another due to the paltry grammar explanations
- Inconsistently uses/omits particles
- Makes mistakes in the lesson review sections
- Asks questions in the review/test sections with multiple correct answers, but only accepts one
And then, you get things like this, which encapsulates the course’s weaknesses in a nutshell. The unit on the word (and) includes the following example sentence: 이 건 엿이고, 저 건 떡이죠?(This is taffy and that is is a rice cake). Then comes this slide:
Why? Why do this? If you’re going to teach beginners a word that can be obscene in certain contexts, how about also teaching them what those contexts are so that they can avoid inadvertently offending anyone? Or better yet , teach them another word that isn’t obscene in any context. I'm hard pressed to think of any situation in which a beginner wouldn't need to use the word for taffy “sparingly.” I’m hard pressed to think of a situation in which a beginner would need to use the word for taffy at all.
Just, ugh.
Podcast Gaelgagh: 77-83
Last week’s episodes really drilled down on the first- and second-person constructions for “do/don’t like” and “do/don’t prefer,” which was a smart choice as there are several moving parts to each that are easy to confuse. The instructor simultaneously reintroduced verb tenses, additional constructions, and vocabulary the podcast hadn’t touched on for dozens of episodes, for a really useful review.
しっかり学ぶ韓国語―文法と練習問題: Units 1-4
From the Japanese publisher Beru, to whose offerings I lowe most of my Korean ability. Because my goal this year is to continue to work systematically through the language resources I own, I’m starting this one from the beginning and can unsurprisingly blast through the early chapters. That said, I’m pleased to discover that I can easily distinguish 에and 애, which I couldn’t do for years, but have some trouble distinguishing the consonants ㄱ and ㄲ when they’re attached to vowels other than in the practice questions.
これで以上です。