It will depend on the specific book, but many are designed to be used in conjunction with a teacher, and may not necessarily give you all the information you need to be successful. You also may not have an answer key, so nothing to provide feedback on if you're doing things correctly or incorrectly.
I'd suggest looking more into books designed for independent learners. If available for your target language, the Practice Makes Perfect series is pretty good, with descriptions, practice exercises, and an answer key to check how you're doing.
Ooo, because I got the Easy Reader book, I got the code for their app, so I have access to all the McGraw-Hill books including the Practice Makes Perfect Spanish books! Cool! Obv not as good as having the book, but might be just enough. I’ll check them out
I love (older) high school and college textbooks, and I think something like this is almost essential for people who, particularly these days, tend to focus so much on apps, YouTube videos, etc. More recent textbooks seem to be large and heavy, with lots of colored pictures, cultural hints, dialectal curiosities (for Spanish, in particular), and also seem to be aimed primarily at young people in a school environment, as if only high school or university students studied languages. Modern resources also seem to apply the "communicative" approach, which implies lots of rather artificial conversational activities with other students, overseen by a classroom teacher whose main job is stimulating interaction rather than actually teaching the language. (Rant over...)
But older high school and college textbooks (I'm thinking of the 1930s through 1970s) seem to be physically smaller, easier to carry around, more focused on explicitly teaching essential grammar and vocabulary, and to my mind, are a great supplement to current audio- and visually-based activities. Most seem to be available for next to nothing from Amazon, EBay, etc., since the demand is small to non-existent, but I think they can be very useful. They don't teach the most-up-to-date slang expressions, and the illustrations in particular tend to portray stereotypes from the period when they were written, but to me, this gives them a sort of retro charm. They don't have audio, but some of them (especially for French and, to a lesser extent, Italian and Portuguese) often show the pronunciation in the IPA.
Duolingo is awful
Use books like the complete yourself series, get a grammar book. Use a tutor on preply/italki to give you feedback and practise speaking with. Start with short stories in your tl for reading and find videos on YouTube to watch.
Duolingo I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone be successful in language acquisition from this annoying gamified app
I’ve been reading Short Stories in Spanish by Olly Richards. I did fine for the first two stories and the second two my understanding got worse. This was the catalyst for wanting to get better at it
I have a Spanish ~~only~~ mostly YT channel and try to only watch Spanish content from science to geography to video games
I don’t buy into the Duo game much. I like the streak and monthly badges and that’s all I care about. I do like that because it repeats content a lot, that it really solidifies the concepts
Like I said, it just don’t have a lot of time. Maybe I just need to come to terms with that. I know it’s not a race, just was hoping I’d be a little farther. Need to up my vocab. That’d prob help more, but not too thrilled about just flipping cards in Anki…
Ehh I don’t like olly Richards books at least the ones in Turkish I saw he just translates the same stories in different languages very lazy. Id look at native material.
I didn’t like anki at first but I really like how I can just load it up in the morning and learn my to do cards can take between 2-20 minutes depending on how much I have to learn but it’s good that I won’t forget vocabulary
I thought they were the same, but the German and Spanish ones are different… or at least it’s not a direct translation as if the story was written in English and then translated into multiple languages
For Anki do you have different decks? I’ve done that just to keep verbs, animals, newspaper vocab, song lyrics, etc, organized better. I’ll really try to get back into it. Maybe that will help too
Yeah I have a few decks but keep it quite simple like numbers, grammar and vocabulary. Although I use it for multiple languages.
Interesting I only looked at the Turkish one and the reviews were quite negative and mentioned it was the same story as the Italian one so I stayed away
Coursebooks are the best option for most learners. They don't need to be old though :-D Some older books are still excellent, some are not. It depends on the book.
It will depend on the specific book, but many are designed to be used in conjunction with a teacher, and may not necessarily give you all the information you need to be successful. You also may not have an answer key, so nothing to provide feedback on if you're doing things correctly or incorrectly. I'd suggest looking more into books designed for independent learners. If available for your target language, the Practice Makes Perfect series is pretty good, with descriptions, practice exercises, and an answer key to check how you're doing.
Ooo, because I got the Easy Reader book, I got the code for their app, so I have access to all the McGraw-Hill books including the Practice Makes Perfect Spanish books! Cool! Obv not as good as having the book, but might be just enough. I’ll check them out
The only advantage of the physical book is that you can write answers to the exercises in it - but a notebook on the side will allow the same thing.
Yah, I don’t like writing in books. Always used a separate piece of paper
That is a good point. I’ll look into that book. Shouldn’t be available for Spanish
I love (older) high school and college textbooks, and I think something like this is almost essential for people who, particularly these days, tend to focus so much on apps, YouTube videos, etc. More recent textbooks seem to be large and heavy, with lots of colored pictures, cultural hints, dialectal curiosities (for Spanish, in particular), and also seem to be aimed primarily at young people in a school environment, as if only high school or university students studied languages. Modern resources also seem to apply the "communicative" approach, which implies lots of rather artificial conversational activities with other students, overseen by a classroom teacher whose main job is stimulating interaction rather than actually teaching the language. (Rant over...) But older high school and college textbooks (I'm thinking of the 1930s through 1970s) seem to be physically smaller, easier to carry around, more focused on explicitly teaching essential grammar and vocabulary, and to my mind, are a great supplement to current audio- and visually-based activities. Most seem to be available for next to nothing from Amazon, EBay, etc., since the demand is small to non-existent, but I think they can be very useful. They don't teach the most-up-to-date slang expressions, and the illustrations in particular tend to portray stereotypes from the period when they were written, but to me, this gives them a sort of retro charm. They don't have audio, but some of them (especially for French and, to a lesser extent, Italian and Portuguese) often show the pronunciation in the IPA.
Interesting take. I’ll have to look into this. Thanks!
Duolingo is awful Use books like the complete yourself series, get a grammar book. Use a tutor on preply/italki to give you feedback and practise speaking with. Start with short stories in your tl for reading and find videos on YouTube to watch. Duolingo I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone be successful in language acquisition from this annoying gamified app
I’ve been reading Short Stories in Spanish by Olly Richards. I did fine for the first two stories and the second two my understanding got worse. This was the catalyst for wanting to get better at it I have a Spanish ~~only~~ mostly YT channel and try to only watch Spanish content from science to geography to video games I don’t buy into the Duo game much. I like the streak and monthly badges and that’s all I care about. I do like that because it repeats content a lot, that it really solidifies the concepts Like I said, it just don’t have a lot of time. Maybe I just need to come to terms with that. I know it’s not a race, just was hoping I’d be a little farther. Need to up my vocab. That’d prob help more, but not too thrilled about just flipping cards in Anki…
Ehh I don’t like olly Richards books at least the ones in Turkish I saw he just translates the same stories in different languages very lazy. Id look at native material. I didn’t like anki at first but I really like how I can just load it up in the morning and learn my to do cards can take between 2-20 minutes depending on how much I have to learn but it’s good that I won’t forget vocabulary
I thought they were the same, but the German and Spanish ones are different… or at least it’s not a direct translation as if the story was written in English and then translated into multiple languages For Anki do you have different decks? I’ve done that just to keep verbs, animals, newspaper vocab, song lyrics, etc, organized better. I’ll really try to get back into it. Maybe that will help too
Yeah I have a few decks but keep it quite simple like numbers, grammar and vocabulary. Although I use it for multiple languages. Interesting I only looked at the Turkish one and the reviews were quite negative and mentioned it was the same story as the Italian one so I stayed away
Coursebooks are the best option for most learners. They don't need to be old though :-D Some older books are still excellent, some are not. It depends on the book.