#defrancis

DeFrancis Chinese Reader audio. the books and audio don’t have English for the most part, but it’s like “graded listening” practice since it starts very simple and matches the book text reading, and introduces and integrates new words, and in general has the learner material benefit of being easy to follow. The audio isn’t great, but I did realize finally listening though it that the audio files do have some notes in them! Like audio file 1 goes over tones and tone pair drills, which I found useful. If you do use these Readers, or want easy background listening, these work well. I’ve been using them lately as background listening practice. It’s good for lots of comprehensible input that varies in difficulty. Again audio is Not great but it’s useable. http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=31539&PN=16&TPN=3

Bilinguis - this site has parallel texts in multiple languages which is nice. I’m currently using one of the parallel texts with audio (some have audio recordings). If you Did want to do listening reading method, these setups are ideal. If you want to read with an English parallel for help, also useful. I’ve used this site for French and chinese. It has several books and many languages. It has audio for some.

Bilinguis French Alice in wonderland (with audio): http://bilinguis.com/book/alice/fr/en/c1/

Bilinguis Japanese Alice in wonderland: http://bilinguis.com/book/alice/jp/en/

Bilinguis Chinese Alice in wonderland (simplified, traditional is also available): http://bilinguis.com/book/alice/zh/en/

Bilinguis Chinese Sherlock Holmes: http://bilinguis.com/book/baskerville/zh/en/

FSI courses - they’re free. I’ve been digging into how many words they contain and people seem to suggest the FSI French has 3000 vocab and takes you to B1-B2, the FSI Chinese has 2000-3000 vocab takes you to HSK 3 (if it’s that beginner material wise I’m sad ahh, even tho the vocab count suggests it would go further). There’s also a Japanese course, and many other (I do worry formality standards might make more of a difference in the Japanese course though.. whereas for chinese I know even in my 1930s textbooks a lot remains similar except for a few words, and you still might run into them if you read/watch a lot of things). Also heard complaints that the French course seems to contain very little tu usage despite in modern life tu being used quite often. That said, I’ve been listening to some of them and this is what I’ve been doing with the courses: I just press play on the audios, and progress through them. I do not look at or read the text. Mainly because I’m using them as simple comprehensible listening practice/drills I can do. These courses apparently sometimes have quite useful explanations in text. However as I’m using them, I am just using the audio material - like a replacement for pimsleur. Notes: the audio is not great, again useable though. The Chinese audio sounded a bit worse than DeFrancis audio, but I could still hear tones which is good enough for me. In particular I appreciated the tone drills. the Japanese one sounded fine (but I have clearer Japanese audio resources I use so this is more like reinforcement/drills than initial exposure - for initial pronunciation examples use any modern resource, I like Japaneseaudiolessons.com and Nukemarine’s LLJ memrise course audios and Genki). I haven’t heard the French yet. I heard these courses can feel miserable if you hate dry language, drills - so I can’t say how using a full course feels. But for drilling audio practice only? To me these feel the same as pimsleur except I feel I am sometimes covering more vocab per section than in pimsleur (which is pimsleurs weakest point to me - not enough vocab). I’ve only listened to a few Chinese audio lessons of FSI so far but things I do like about it - it mentions English translation in the audio enough you can listen to it without a book, it has a whole pronunciation section, tone pair drills, uses dialogue to introduce new info, and explains some grammar and usage points in the lesson (which some audio only resources do not do). When it presents vocab lists it also mentions the English translation so again you can rely on audio alone like me if desired. It reminds me of a combo of Genki opening dialogues, pimsleur drills, and then a little grammar explanation and word definitions. Dry as a textbook lol but useable. The benefit here over DeFrancis Reader audios, is the DeFrancis audios have very little English translation of the material so you either learned it already or you’re drowning unless you can recognize on your own the new words and guess them from context - so to learn NEW material you’d want the book or an outside resource. The audio is definitely book dependent or else it’s just practice for you. In contrast, the FSI audios seem to be useful even used on their own because they provide enough info.

FSI Chinese: https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/FSI/fsi-chinese-mandarin.html

FSI Basic French (a note there’s other French courses): https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/FSI/fsi-french-basic.html

FSI Japanese headstart: https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/FSI/fsi-japanese.html#

DLI Language Courses - also free online, also old with iffy audio. Also probably good for listening practice of easier materials and drilling. Downsides I noticed with the Chinese version: not a lot of English definitions in the audio so it may require a book to follow if you don’t already know the words, audio is also the worst quality of these resources (though Listening is doable if you desire to use them). Like DeFrancis audio these seem to teach new material best if you’re using the book in combo. I am guessing unlike the Defrancis books, the DLI books have more English explanations (DeFrancis Reader books are also mostly in chinese and you learn through context, they just have some word definitions and key things highlighted in each chapter before having you extensively read). I listened to the DLI chinese and probably won’t use it again since it doesn’t suit my needs, but I could see it being useful to someone. If using the books too (unlike me) then DLI is better for covering 500 hanzi, when the FSI Chinese course is entirely pinyin (with DeFrancis of course being best with a ton of Hanzi and words and extensive reading in Hanzi).

DLI Chinese Mandarin: https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/DLI/DLI-Chinese-Mandarin.html

Cours de Langue et de Civilisation Françaises by G. Mauger - 3 volumes seem to go to at least B2 which is nice. I found audio of it on YouTube and it’s exactly like what I was looking for. It teaches French in French, so similar to Français Par Le Method Nature book I like. In fact this textbook looks a lot like an “easier” version of the nature method textbooks (easier meaning it’s all in the target language with pictures and short dialogues, where as more intensive nature method textbooks would be Lingva Latina and Le Français Par Le Method Nature where it has some pictures but immediately dives into paragraphs and chapters of text in the language where the writing gives you context to learn most new words and grammar within these readings - it does not limit itself to small dialogues and necessary definitions to look up). When you look up the nature method style textbooks, you’ll find ones like this French one (and Poco a Poco for Spanish). And you’ll find more in depth ones occasionally like Lingva Latina. This textbook might go more in depth later though. What I do like about this as an audio resource: I found it on YouTube with the text in video, and it’s a good way to get some simple pronunciation with comprehensible input. The vocab ans way it presents itself matches up well with Le Français Par le Method Nature book, and the big weak spot I had with that book is NO audio to go with it. So seeing a presentation of similar material, with the same “English approximate pronunciation guide” under the words as the Method Nature book uses, is helping me get an idea how pronunciation corresponds to that guide. And just in general I need more clear basic textbook pronunciation drills and examples ToT. If you look up the book and or audio yourself, you may be able to find it as it’s old enough. I would say the audio is hard to use it completely on its own since this entire thing is in French. But that’s nice for listening. https://youtu.be/EN9UB64e02M

UPDATE SOMEONE HAS A REFERENCE PAGE OF COMPREHENSIBLE INPUT LANGUAGE MATERIALS! https://github.com/IvanovCosmin/awesome-natural-approach

Of particular note:

Français par le Method Nature AUDIO (Im so happy right now this is literally EXACTLY what I wanted! I didn’t think it existed): https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf8XN5kNFkhdIS7NMcdUdxibD1UyzNFTP

Poco à Poco Spanish audio (a simpler but nice nature method textbook for spanish - the text itself is on archive.org): https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf8XN5kNFkhe4D2BPBKaUb2JvDHuzAGPI

All audio available for free by Seton Hall University:

https://www.shu.edu/global-learning-center/chinese-audio-materials.cfm

Edit: I’m listening through some of these audio files for the Beginning Chinese Reader, and I’m at probably a higher level of chinese than the beginner audio is targeted toward. I’m finding them to be good listening comprehension practice, since I know for certain I can read/recognize all of the words being said. Also, the dialogue is apparently read once at a ‘natural’ speed, then once a bit slower with space to repeat afterward. I am not doing the shadowing part, but I find the slower repetition it does is very helpful.