Parrot Time Magazine

The Thinking of Speaking
Issue #2 March / April 2013
Language Learning Methods
Books

Books

by Erik Zidowecki
March / April 2013 |  asd

No matter what you are using to help you in learning a language, you are most likely going to pick up a book during the process. There are a number of types of books you may use, and among those, the quality will vary greatly.

Textbooks


If you are studying by taking a course with other people or even having a personal tutor, you are probably going to be using a textbook. Textbooks are usually the most formal types of books you could use because they are designed to be used by teachers in a professional capacity. They are also usually considered to be the most boring, since it is their job to present you with the information. It is the role of the teacher to explain further what they are telling you and make it interesting.

Textbooks are broken into many lessons with each lesson divided further into rules, examples, and exercises. A teacher would go over the lesson with the students during the class, work some of the examples with them, then assign them some of the exercises to be done by the students outside the classroom. These exercises might be collected later and graded by the teacher, adding to the overall grade for each student for the language course.

Textbooks are also usually very expensive, compared to other learning books, because a student is forced to buy specific books for a course and can't choose a cheaper one. Everyone uses the same textbook for the course.

Self-study

While studying a language, you are most probably going to pick up some kind of book or printed material to aid you.

The most common kind of book used for self-study is a "teach yourself" book. These books are aimed at the individual reader and will try to make the content easy and interesting, since it now has to be both the teacher and the source of information. The method the books uses will vary between series. Some may focus on teaching by using conversations, another by using readings, and others might focus entirely on grammar as the primary format. In general, these books will offer rules, examples and exercises, like a textbook does, but in a more entertaining and informal way. We will look at a few of these common series.

Teach Yourself

One of the most common and most successful series is the Teach Yourself one. The name is sometimes confusing, since people refer to the entire kind of book as "teach yourself", so the title is often shortened to "TY". These books have been around for decades. The modern variety are large paperbacks and may have accompanying grammar books and dictionaries. They may also have an audio aspect in the form of cassettes or CDs.

The common format for these lessons is to start with a conversation along with vocabulary for the newest words and phrases used in the dialogue. Some simple questions might be asked for the reader to make them think about what they read. The lesson will then give grammar explanations of some parts of the conversation, followed by another conversation or some exercises. The answers to the exercises are given in the back of the book. There may also be a reading to help the learner practice their new vocabulary and grammar understanding.

These books are popular for their simple approach using situations backed up by grammar rules. The books also will usually contain simple line drawings to represent some things. They are a good size for travel as well, being larger than "pocket size" but not the burden of a full-sized textbook.

Made Simple Books

The Made Simple series is like a teach yourself / textbook hybrid. These books are paperback and textbook sized, but thinner than a normal textbook. They are titled with the name of the language, like "Italian Made Simple", but there are Made Simple books for many other subjects.

The language branch of these books are similar to the Teach Yourself series in their method, using a conversation or reading followed by vocabulary, grammar explanations and exercises. However, they present the material flatly, without really trying to engage the reader. They could probably be considered the "lite" version of a textbook, being much cheaper, which makes them popular among students who want the textbook approach without the textbook price.

Berlitz

Berlitz is one of the big names in languages, providing products such as teach yourself books, audio courses, full classroom courses, software and phrasebooks. It is their phrasebooks which are perhaps the best known product, being both very concise as well as colourful.

The Berlitz self-teaching books focus more on vocabulary and phrase learning, giving only a few grammar rules and questions. They also have a small dictionary in the back. This format is used because the Berlitz line of products are aimed mainly at the travel aspect of languages. They are the books you would pick up when you are planning to travel to another country and want to learn enough to get around, not necessarily to become fluent.

Living Language

If you are using a grammar book as your main source of self-study, then a dictionary becomes essential.

The Living Language series is essentially a grammar guide with phrases and audio. The normal setup is to have one book being the "conversational manual", which teaches the grammar and phrases and another book being the "common usage dictionary". Cassettes or CDs are likely to come with these to provide the student with an audio to go along with the readings. The books also contain exercises. These books are probably the thinnest among the series discussed here, perhaps relying more on the audio to help guide the student, although one might wonder which is supposed to be supplementing the other. Living Language also produces online courses and apps.

"Promising" Books

There is a variety of self-study books I called "promising books". These are the kind that claim you will learn a language within a given amount of time or in a certain way. Such titles are Hindustani in Three Months, German in 32 Lessons and Japanese in 10 Minutes A Day. These books are promising the reader they will reach their goal (whatever that may be) within a given amount of time as long as they adhere to the methods given. The major problem with this approach is that it almost certainly will damage your self-esteem. While you may start using one of these books believing it will do just as it promises you, when you fail to master the language in the given time, you will feel like you have failed. These titles are made specifically to sell the book, not to teach you the language.

These books will use all kinds of methods of presenting the material, often claiming they have found a "new" and "advanced" method that will allow you to succeed as they promise. They are also the books you are most likely to see being ridiculed in the media by expanding what is to be learned while minimizing the time given, such as "Mastering Ancient Tibetan in 39 Seconds".

Phrasebooks


Young woman studying a phrasebook while traveling.

Believe it or not, phrasebooks are often used as self-study books because they present the reader with the essentials they will need for basic things while traveling as well as providing them with some pronunciation guides and vocabulary. For many, that is all they are trying to achieve in the language, not requiring full fluency. If they are going to be staying in another country for a long period of time, these books can provide the bridge to a natural immersion that they can't get from any book

For these reasons, some of the series we mentioned above, like Berlitz and Living Language, focus much more on learning phrases than grammar. There are also a large number of books that sound like they will be self-study books but are actually basic phrasebooks, and they are often not even good phrasebooks.

Italian in a Nutshell sounds like a it would be a good course book, but it is really a thin paperback which gives a pronunciation guide to the alphabet, a paragraph on sentence structure, then vocabulary and phrases for many situations. Pronunciation guides accompany all the phrases. At the end, there is some grammar, focusing mainly on forming verbs, then a short dictionary. It is pocket sized and obviously made for travellers.

Let's Study Japanese is a basic phrasebook with simple line drawings. There is no attempt to teach you grammar or even the alphabet, since everything is romanized. It has some "exercises" which are just phrases with blanks, no answers. At the end is a very small dictionary which is basically useless.

Just Enough Serbo-Croat is little better. It is all just phrases and vocabulary lists with basic pronunciation guides. At the end are eight pages of "Notes on the language".

Say It In Dutch is the same as the Just Enough books, except without the final pages of notes. Out of all of these books, only this one tells you it is a phrasebook. The others want to leave you with the impression that they will actually be teaching you something.

If you are wanting to get a phrasebook for learning or as a refresher, you are probably going to get the most out of the Berlitz series. They are the among the most compact and concise, providing the reader with colour coded sections, a large variety of phrases (usually having pronunciation guides) and vocabulary lists.

Grammar Books


For the really hardcore language learners (those who spend a lot of time studying various languages), a grammar book might be the best method to learn the language. These books won't waste the readers time with long explanations and extensive dialogues. They will present the grammar of the language in a concise manner, giving perhaps a few examples. They also won't spend any time explaining what a noun or an adjective is, or what is meant by a verb tense. These are reference books only.

Dictionaries

No matter what kind of self-study book you are going to use, a multilingual dictionary is always a book you should pick up. The best ones are divided into two parts, with one part having the words listed in the readers native language, the second with them listed in the new language, so that one can easily find the meaning of new words they encountered while also being able to find a new word they need. If you are using a grammar book as your main source of self-study, then a dictionary becomes essential.


Three different versions of Langenscheidt dictionaries.

Just like the teach yourself books, there are a wide variety of dictionary series to choose from. Perhaps the most popular is the Langenscheidt series, produced in Germany. These are very small but thick, usually with plastic covers, and the most modern ones are in a noticeable bright yellow, but you can find older ones in a variety of darker colors. They are designed for travel, although there are larger, hardcover versions.

Even if the book you use has a small dictionary in the back, the advantages of having a separate dictionary can not be overstated, as you will always encounter new words in your studying.

Readers

Some learners find that reading in their new language is the most beneficial way of picking up the grammar and vocabulary. It is closer to an immersion style of learning than most of the other books mentioned here, although there are a few course books that are also written entirely in the new language.

A learner could pick up a novel or set of short stories in their new language and try to absorb the language that way, although this is usually done when the learner has already been studying the language for a while, since otherwise it requires a lot of looking up words in a dictionary. Such a book is often called a "Reader" for obvious reasons.

Dual-Language Books

An alternative to a Reader is a Dual-Language book. As the name implies, it has the content written in two languages, either in opposite columns on each page or on opposite pages. These greatly reduces the need for looking up new words and is therefore less disruptive to the flow of reading.

These books might be collections of poetry, short stories, or entire novels. They are likely to contain some notes on particular parts of the text, for example explaining a particular idiom, since languages rarely translate word-for-word. These notes become even more important if the source text is from an older source.

Comic Books


Japanese Manga books

While this may sound odd, comic books, sometimes called "graphic novels", can be a good source of study material. First of all, they are mostly dialogue in a story setting, which makes them useful for learning speech patterns. They are, by nature, visual, which aids in explaining what is being said (there is a reason that comic books are often the first books a child reads). The nature of the stories given will also give an insight into cultural patterns and references.

The comic book format of Japanese Manga is often used to help learn Japanese. There was even a magazine called Mangajin during the 1990s that specifically used comics to teach Japanese.

Of courses, there are some drawbacks to using comic books. They are likely to be using many idioms and slang which may be confusing. Also, depending on the type, not all the words will be easily translatable. For example, how does one translate "web-slingers" or "kryptonite" from a superhero comic?

Magazines and Newspapers


While not really books, magazines and newspapers can be very helpful in learning a new language. They are usually straight forward in the writing, not using many idioms or slang references, and are relative to daily events. Also, since they are produced on a regular basis (newspapers normally once a day or week, magazines once a month), new content is available often. They are also very cheap to buy, if you can get them locally, as well as being very easy to find online for most major languages for free.

While studying a language, you are most probably going to pick up some kind of book or printed material to aid you. What kind of book you choose will largely be based upon your preferred method of learning as well as your time constraints and eventual fluency goals. I hope this article has helped provide you with some ideas on which will be best for you.

Language Learning Methods - Books
Writer: Erik Zidowecki
Images:
fastfood: Bookshelf
Jonathan C. Haynes: Woman reading phrasebook
cohdra: Open dictionary
shinjaejun: Japanese Manga Books
clarita: News rack
Petey: Bookstore, Langenscheidt dictionaries

All images are Copyright - CC BY-SA (Creative Commons Share Alike) by their respective owners, except for Petey, which is Public Domain (PD) or unless otherwise noted.

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