Re: language resources on the web - this site, spanishnotes, eslpod, learn french by podcast, french in action, etc
Finding comprehensive, professionally designed and implemented language materials that are free on the web is rather an obsession with me. I have spent I lot of time poking around over a several year period.
I consider this site, www.textkitcom, to be excellent in many respects: good texts are available in the context of an informed support community of fellow learners and advanced practioners; and it is certiainly well designed and profressionally implemented as well as being free. For my purposes, however, it is not comprehensive because of the because of the fact that no audio materials are hosted here - nisi fallor. Overall I rate it A minus. For someone learning latin on the net, the lack of audio resources isn’t too bad because they can be had elsewhere. Hopefully, with time, more will appear. Hopefully, this site will one day be host to some.
Eslpod originally started out as an all free site for learners of English. There is no community to speak of but the lessons are truly first rate, each consisting of an audio portion with its own study guide. Later they started charging for the study guide. Nevertheless, at $10 for the study guide which gives you access to over 200 lessons, it is a good deal. The lessons are designed by professional linguists. Teachers get free access. I rate it an A minus also. The site is comprehnsive but not at the beginning levels. This is the major drawback of the site.
I was very excited about the referral I received on this board to the Spanish Notes site. It looks well designed with two series of podcasts at the intermediate and advanced levels. Each podcast, like eslpod, comes with its own study guide. You pay for a for me. I’ll do without. I give the site a tentative B. I have loaded some advanced lessons to me personal audio device that I’ll be listening to this week. I’ll give me opinion later (you can count on it!).
I was using the lessons on learnfrenchbypodcast.com. Like the two previously reviewed sites, each lesson comes with an audio file and a study guide. I found the site whenb it first opened up about 4 months ago. They are now up to 30 lessons and have followed the pattern of spanishnotes and eslpod. There is now a modest fee of $10 for all lesson guides. The folks producing the lessons are language teaching professionals and I by no means begrudge them making a buck. I knew it was too good to last Rating: A minus.
Soon I will be using the French in Action program that ggg referred us to. Everything seems to be free once I get my text book (the RIGHT book that is, the 1994 edition, was it?). I accept ggg’s evaluation that the lessons are great so I guess that would be an A for French in Aciton. However, I see a drawback from my point of view: the lessons are not portable. That is you can’t download the audio to a personal device for listening to on the commute or in the gym. For me, that is a serious disadvantage because as I am into multitasking and am not into spending over much time in front of the compu.
Putting aside French in Action, all three sites discussed are following the same model. I believe ESLPOD was the innovator and that the others piled on. It is a good model. Offer free lessons that are well designed and portable… then folks get hooked… then hit them up. This is all good… these sites are providing a service and have every right to be paid for their professional expertise.
Still, I wonder where the professional societies dedicated to the spread of this or that language are with regards to this emerging world of online instruction. Take for example the Alliance Francaise. They are specifically dedicated, so they say, to the furtherance of francofonie. Yet, even a group of this sort isn’t offering any freebies when they could easily do so at relatively little cost to themselves - or so it seems to me. The professional societies that teachers are organized into would also seem to be perfectly situated (given that they are dedicated to teaching) for offering what is lacking on the net: namely, FREE professionally designed and implemented, and PORTABLE language instruction programs. Dixi
Best
Kyneus