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Teach Yourself Complete Estonian [Audio CD]
Complete Irish is a comprehensive book and audio language course that takes you from beginner to intermediate level.The new edition of this successful course has been fully revised and is packed with new learning features to give you the language, practice and skills to communicate with confidence.-21 learning units plus pronunciation section and word glossary-Teaches the key skills - reading, writing, listening and speaking-Learn to learn - tips and skills on how to be a better language learner-Insights - learn about the Irish language and the people who speak it-Outcomes-based learning - focus your studies with clear aims-Authentic listening activities - everyday conversations give you a flavour of real spoken Irish-Test Yourself - see and track your own progress-Maps from A1 to B2 of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for languagesThis pack includes a book and two CDs of audio material.Rely on Teach Yourself, trusted by language learners for over 75 years.
Unknown Binding
First published August 27, 2010
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About the author
Diarmuid Ó Sé
8 books3 followers Diarmuid Ó Sé is an Irish teacher at University College Dublin
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 12, 2015
Possibly the worst self-taught language course I've ever come across. I am currently still on chapter 3, and I have already found:
- multiple spelling mistakes - I would not be bothered if these mistakes were in the English explanations, but it DOES irritate me that these are found in the Irish words that this book is supposed to be teaching. Missing accents and missing letters are a big deal in a language that has a grammar that depends on mutations.
- missing information on practice exercises - For example, exercise 5 in chapter 3 requires that you fill in the ages of a pictured family. Problem is that the ages are nowhere to be found, and the answer key has very specific numbers written down. In other cases, the answer key has different words altogether that do not correspond to the exercise it is supposed to answer.
- missing audio - Irish is a very hard language phonetically, especially when it comes to how one reads aloud written text, therefore the audio is essential. So one would have thought that the audio would be given high importance. Nope. Some sections only include some of the words in the printed book (the country list, for example), others have missing parts of sentences (the first sentence in the comprehension exercise for chapter 2, which misses an important piece of information that is required to answer the following questions), and other important omissions.
- missing grammatical explanations - this one take the cake. For example, chapter 3, exercise 6 requires you to join a noun with a name to produce something like "Paul's mother". Problem is that nowhere in this chapter, or the preceding chapters, does it say how this is done, and I had to go through the answer key to get an idea of what's happening and then had to refer to one of the appendices to get a summary of the grammatical process involved.
All in all, a terrible book. I will continue working on it only because it cost me a fortune and I have already spent a considerable amount of time on it which I'm not willing to throw away.
In short: AVOID!
- multiple spelling mistakes - I would not be bothered if these mistakes were in the English explanations, but it DOES irritate me that these are found in the Irish words that this book is supposed to be teaching. Missing accents and missing letters are a big deal in a language that has a grammar that depends on mutations.
- missing information on practice exercises - For example, exercise 5 in chapter 3 requires that you fill in the ages of a pictured family. Problem is that the ages are nowhere to be found, and the answer key has very specific numbers written down. In other cases, the answer key has different words altogether that do not correspond to the exercise it is supposed to answer.
- missing audio - Irish is a very hard language phonetically, especially when it comes to how one reads aloud written text, therefore the audio is essential. So one would have thought that the audio would be given high importance. Nope. Some sections only include some of the words in the printed book (the country list, for example), others have missing parts of sentences (the first sentence in the comprehension exercise for chapter 2, which misses an important piece of information that is required to answer the following questions), and other important omissions.
- missing grammatical explanations - this one take the cake. For example, chapter 3, exercise 6 requires you to join a noun with a name to produce something like "Paul's mother". Problem is that nowhere in this chapter, or the preceding chapters, does it say how this is done, and I had to go through the answer key to get an idea of what's happening and then had to refer to one of the appendices to get a summary of the grammatical process involved.
All in all, a terrible book. I will continue working on it only because it cost me a fortune and I have already spent a considerable amount of time on it which I'm not willing to throw away.
In short: AVOID!
April 4, 2013
First, this book exists in several incarnations in the Teach Yourself series. If the author is Diarmuid Ó Sé then the substance of the book and audio recordings are the same. So, this newer "Complete Irish" is the same content as the 90's era "Teach Yourself Irish" by Ó Sé. Save a few bucks and buy a used copy of the old book and find the audio online.
Second, the generally positive ratings this book (in all its forms) has received on Goodreads must be from casual, inexperienced language learners. It has a very disorganized grammar presentation, haphazard vocabulary and pronunciation assistance, and incomplete glossary. As just one example, the recording of the months of the year from Chapter 6 only includes 10 months!
If this was the only book on the planet for learning Irish, I could use it. Since I own better materials, I'm moving on. Perhaps I'll come back to it just for the easy Irish reading material after I complete a decent course (Progress in Irish and Buntus Cainte for instance).
Before I began studying this, I typed up the entire Irish-English glossary for importing into my flashcard program.
Second, the generally positive ratings this book (in all its forms) has received on Goodreads must be from casual, inexperienced language learners. It has a very disorganized grammar presentation, haphazard vocabulary and pronunciation assistance, and incomplete glossary. As just one example, the recording of the months of the year from Chapter 6 only includes 10 months!
If this was the only book on the planet for learning Irish, I could use it. Since I own better materials, I'm moving on. Perhaps I'll come back to it just for the easy Irish reading material after I complete a decent course (Progress in Irish and Buntus Cainte for instance).
Before I began studying this, I typed up the entire Irish-English glossary for importing into my flashcard program.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews