There are about as many language learning products as there are icecream flavours. And just like icecream, some are delicious and some should just be avoided like the sweet perfume of durian. To make life a little less roulette-like, I’ll give you a list of some of the products I have personally used with some of their key features.
Assimil: A dialogue-based course from France. Everything is contained in one sleek book; target language on the left, translation on the right. It’s light on grammar and that’s how I like it. The audio is of a high quality, although a little slow and as a result needs some editing. The dialogues themselves are light-hearted and often a little humourous, which makes studying even less of a chore. The downside to Assimil? Not a wide collection of languages unless you have reading knowledge of French, Spanish or German. I usually buy several books at a time direct from Assimil to save on shipping costs and I’ve had them sent to both Australia and Korea with no problems.
Linguaphone: A dialogue-based course from the United Kingdom. There are usually 3 books – the course book in your target language, a handbook in English and vocabulary book. Some courses also have a dedicated exercise book. Depending on the age of the course there are between 4-6 tapes of good quality audio that is often close to native speed from the outset in some courses. Linguaphone is actually my favourite overall, although I can’t really express why. Older is better (circa 1970′s being my number one choice).. I wouldn’t buy a new Linguaphone course.
Foreign Service Institute: Drill-based course that was produced by the US Government for training diplomats and the like. Very heavy with the drills – substitution drill, grammar drill, variation drill, level drill, response drill. Dream of a drill and it’s in here. The courses focus on spoken language and the audio is extensive. However, due to the age of the courses the actual quality is dubious at times. I will also note that the speed is perhaps too fast from the beginning for many students but I don’t see speed as a negative. The best thing about FSI? There are quite a number of languages represented and they are all in the public domain, so free of charge.
Yale University Press: These are basically FSI courses that were produced for languages FSI doesn’t appear to have public domain releases for. Identical structure and quality. I’m currently using the “Beginning Japanese” series as part of my study and finding them very useful.
Barron’s Mastering Series: These are basically FSI courses that have been repackaged. Content and quality is 99% identical. Do yourself a favour and just download the FSI version for free.
Michel Thomas Method: A verbal course divided into two levels; Foundation and Advanced. There are also vocabulary extension courses for several languages. The courses are good at getting you speaking, show you how to use cognates to enhance your vocabulary and expose you to many of the major grammatical structures. During the lessons you are “joined” with two other learners, so you hear their mistakes and struggles. This can be a little annoying at times but it does have positives as you are aware of why they make the specific mistakes. The major downsides to Michel Thomas are that you aren’t always exposed to native pronunciation and some of the courses produced after Michel Thomas passed away just don’t have the true Michel Thomas feel in passion and quality of teaching. It’s available in quite a few libraries these days.
Pimsleur Method: A verbal course divided into three levels of 30 lessons each. Taking advantage of graduated recall you are constantly prompted to say things in your target language. What they teach is effective and you generally have a good retention rate. The two major drawbacks for me are: over-priced and too dry (i.e. boring). Also, if you do go ahead and buy it, shop around – the Pimsleur website is not the cheapest. Maybe even try the library first.
Coming soon:
- Teach Yourself
- Colloquial
- Hugo
- Ultimate
- Korean: Ganada, Yonsei.
- Japanese: Genki, Japanese for Busy People
- English for Korean-speakers: Hackers Series
- plus more as we go through our shelves 
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[...] the first Self-Study Materials overview we covered the big names of Assimil, Linguaphone, FSI, etc. This time we’ll go over [...]