I'm a satisfied customer of Random House's _Advanced Russian_ and
_Italian Beyond the Basics_. Both of those are serious books that can
take a motivated student a long way. Unfortunately, those series are
now out of print, replaced by this "Complete
French/Spanish/Italian/etc" series. Judging from _Complete French_,
which arrived today, the new series is seriously dumbed-down.
Let's jump right into the last unit of the "advanced" book. Here's
some of the new vocabulary: tete, oeil, nez, bouche, main, jambe,
antibiotique, aiguille, malade. Now for some "advanced" grammar:
reflexive verbs. "Ils se regardent." "Jennifer et Carol se voient de
temps en temps." "Pour etre en bonne sante, il faut suivre un bon
regime."
You get the idea.
The CDs, meanwhile, are 50% silence. Of the other 50%, half is
English. Of the remainder that is French, about a third is isolated
words, a third is one- or two-word grammar constructions. You'll
listen to tracks that go "eux...them...me...me..." Actual running
conversations in French are thus the remaining third of a
half of a half. There are about three conversations in the entire
"advanced" CD set (three CDs -- three conversations!?). Compare that
to the twenty conversations that came in earlier editions (and those
conversations were three times as long, besides being more interesting
and using more sophisticated vocabulary and syntax). You're trained
to always be translating to and from English -- exactly the opposite
of what you should be doing.
Random House's Living Language used to be a serious series and a great
value. Unfortunately, the whole enterprise seems to be following so
much else on a march toward some kind of Idiocracy future. Snap up the older
editions, while you still can, used (here or -- where you'll find even
more of a selection -- on Ebay).
(amazon.com: 220 people found this helpful)
