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Travellers' questions that don't fit anywhere else This is an opportunity to ask any question, and post any notice you wish that doesn't fit into one of the other sections.
Photo by Marc Gibaud, Clouds on Tres Cerros and Mount Fitzroy, Argentinian Patagonia

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Photo by Marc Gibaud,
Clouds on Tres Cerros and
Mount Fitzroy, Argentinian Patagonia



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  #1  
Old 3 Nov 2011
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Quote:
Originally Posted by eightpot View Post
Have a look for night schools in your area - my local council fund a language school which runs courses in most languages - I did Arabic for a couple of years and it only cost around £110 a term. Was much more succesful than trying to learn from a CD.
I've been trying to find an Arabic class round my way for a while without much success - plenty of Euro languages but that's about it. You're right though about CDs, you do need more but they are good for getting you off the ground.

Our most successful attempt (my son, learning Mandarin) used the Michel Thomas discs to start with, until he had some limited ability but enough to start taking a class. After a year or so he then went to live / work in China (teaching English) and organised 1 to 1 tuition for himself in Mandarin. The discs got him started though and gave him enough confidence to sign up for a class.
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Old 3 Nov 2011
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As a sign of my age, I have some Pimsleur System French cassette tapes that I bought years ago which were purchased for the noble purpose of learning to speak with my girlfriend at the time. The approach seems to have been bypassed in popularity by the Rosetta Stone but is still fairly widely used.

I recently pulled them out again and low and behold, they still work.

Interestingly, I found out that the best system for using them involves...wait for it...using a Walkman.

No kidding, the tapes repeatedly prompt you for questions and when you are improving your skills it helps to stop the tape to give you time to retrieve words from memory. I also find it invaluable to stop and rewind and have the question repeated. Many times it is at such a fast speed that their words jumble together and if you don't listen to it a couple of times, you can't make the separate words out. The old cassette technology works surprising well for this.

So if you get really stuck, I can send you some tapes and an old Walkman to try it out. You can walk around town with it and the kids will you think you are really retro cool
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  #3  
Old 5 Nov 2011
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podcasts

There are a ton of free podcast you can download to your computer or IPOD of of I tunes! We are leaning Spanish. sara
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  #4  
Old 10 Nov 2011
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thanks for all your tips, sources and hints. Sara, what sort of podcasts? When I load the itunes shop, I don't know where to start!
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