Things you love or hate in language textbooks

[Ser]

So, what things do you like seeing or would you like to see in a textbook? What do you hate seeing in textbooks? Let's imagine that it isn't a textbook meant for general use by high-school/college students or by adults with tourist-y purposes that a publisher these days would actually be willing to sell, but a book tailored to our needs (whether they might be learning a language for real, or just a passing thing).

Here's some ideas off the top of my head:

1. The usual: a detailed description of pronunciation using IPA, that includes a fair description of allophones, even across words.

2. Some discussion about stress. Any good English textbook should have something to say about "hót dóg" versus "hótdog", about "I lóve you" and "I gáve it to yóu", about "thánk you" (which you can reply to with a "thánk yóu").

3. Swear words, formation of insults and general vulgarities (and how to use them, of course, not only longggg lists of words and expressions as some books on slang do, e.g. Eveline Chao's Niubi! The Real Chinese You Were Never Taught in School).

4. Fillers (equivalents to "uhhhh", "y'know", "like", etc.). Textbooks sadly almost never include these, in spite of how useful they could be to any learner!

5. A serious discussion about handwriting, with real-world examples intended to be understood by other native speakers, not just tables in some official elementary/primary school calligraphic style. Typical differences between men's and women's handwriting would be nice too. In fact, in the case of Chinese, common handwriting abbreviations should probably be taught alongside the Sòng/Míng style.

6. Texting abbreviations (which are useful for SMS, facebook, YouTube, online forums, graffiti, even ads).

7. Paragraphs of text, with the same idea/theme, accompanied by a few glosses below for new vocabulary. Xephyr, who gave me this idea, says that too often textbooks depend on exercises of floating, context-less sentences.




I don't know what to think about some other things though:

甲. I asked this same question years ago in another forum, and somebody told me it'd be a good idea to give some general treatment of word order at the beginning, at least as something you can refer to. (Specifically, that user was frustrated by the great amount of adverbs and other adjuncts/modifiers he was being taught in his Spanish class, all of which he didn't know how to put in a sentence.)

乙. What do you guys think about those cultural notes you often find? Do you find them alright and interesting? Tedious?

丙. What about vocabulary lists? I guess they're just ok to introduce vocabulary, though sometimes they can be so excessively long... that by the time you reach the end, you get the impression you already forgot everything at the beginning. Another thing: a couple Latin textbooks I've seen included long descriptions (some 4-6 lines) on what they meant, what do you guys think? Or are vocab lists a bad idea at all, and all vocabulary should be introduced in sentences or something once you get the past the first baby steps?


I tried to see if there was a thread for this for an hour, but I couldn't find any. Viktor77 posted something with a similar title, but he was only concerned about teaching pronunciation.

Some keywords (might be useful for somebody trying to find this thread years later?): language learning book worst best teaching method features

[Gulliver]

1. The usual: a detailed description of pronunciation using IPA, that includes a fair description of allophones, even across words.

I both agree and disagree in equal measure. IPA is just not useful for many people, because it's another thing that has to be learned. If the manner of transcribing sounds is well-defined and consistent, that will do just fine. That said, as I can deal with IPA, I find it quite helpful.

3. Swear words, formation of insults and general vulgarities (and how to use them, of course, not only longggg lists of words and expressions as some books on slang do, e.g. Eveline Chao's Niubi! The Real Chinese You Were Never Taught in School).

I once did a class on swear words when I was teaching and had the students pair up and write slanderous vileness about one another. It was fun! It was a fairly unique class, though, as they were basically a big group of friends.

5. A serious discussion about handwriting, with real-world examples intended to be understood by other native speakers, not just tables in some official elementary/primary school calligraphic style.

Specifically, numbers. Letters can be got from the context. I've had to heavily modify how I wrote numbers because of English 7 looking like French and German 1 and English 4 looking like French and German 9.

I really like it when textbooks have a semi-continuous story. Teach Yourself Norwegian has a good little story going of a couple meeting in a pub, talking about beer, her meeting his family, them breaking up and then her going travelling on her motorbike. It's silly but it's fun and covers the topics of introductions, food, family members, travel, dates, times etc mixed with a sort of comedy drama about their relationship. Lots of textbooks have boring stories, but the fact that this one started in a pub set a good tone for the rest of the story.

[Astraios]

I really like it when textbooks have a semi-continuous story. Teach Yourself Norwegian has a good little story going of a couple meeting in a pub, talking about beer, her meeting his family, them breaking up and then her going travelling on her motorbike. It's silly but it's fun and covers the topics of introductions, food, family members, travel, dates, times etc mixed with a sort of comedy drama about their relationship. Lots of textbooks have boring stories, but the fact that this one started in a pub set a good tone for the rest of the story.

Aurrera! (Basque) has something like that, but its made even more fun/silly by the fact that the characters are all witches and vampires and werewolves and prostitutes. So there's all sorts of useful sentences like "Did you poison that woman?" and "Will you clean your coffin tonight?" and "That prostitute is exposing herself on the beach."

[Skomakar'n]

1. The usual: a detailed description of pronunciation using IPA, that includes a fair description of allophones, even across words.

I both agree and disagree in equal measure. IPA is just not useful for many people, because it's another thing that has to be learned. If the manner of transcribing sounds is well-defined and consistent, that will do just fine. That said, as I can deal with IPA, I find it quite helpful.

Why not just put both a description and the actual IPA? The ones who can read IPA will read the IPA and those who can not will read the description. Everyone's happy. It's not like [d] takes up a lot of space to the side of the sentence.

[Jipí]

1. The usual: a detailed description of pronunciation using IPA, that includes a fair description of allophones, even across words.

English textbook: Had it. That's how I learnt IPA!
French textbook: Not included, except if the spelling wasn't completely clear, IIRC.

2. Some discussion about stress. Any good English textbook should have something to say about "hót dóg" versus "hótdog", about "I lóve you" and "I gáve it to yóu", about "thánk you" (which you can reply to with a "thánk yóu").

English textbook: Not discussed.
French textbook: Not discussed.

3. Swear words, formation of insults and general vulgarities (and how to use them, of course, not only longggg lists of words and expressions as some books on slang do, e.g. Eveline Chao's Niubi! The Real Chinese You Were Never Taught in School).

English textbook: Not discussed. Teacher said it's inadequate for foreigners to swear anyway.
French textbook: Not discussed.

4. Fillers (equivalents to "uhhhh", "y'know", "like", etc.). Textbooks sadly almost never include these, in spite of how useful they could be to any learner!

English textbook: Not discussed. But nevermind, English speakers go "uuuuuh" just as well.
French textbook: Not discussed. But nevermind, French speakers go "eeeeeeuuuuuh" just as well. A lot.

5. A serious discussion about handwriting, with real-world examples intended to be understood by other native speakers, not just tables in some official elementary/primary school calligraphic style.

English: Not an issue, uses Latin alphabet.
French: Not an issue, uses Latin alphabet.

6. Texting abbreviations (which are useful for SMS, facebook, YouTube, online forums, graffiti, even ads).

English textbook: Not discussed. But the textbooks we had were published in the early 90s.
French textbook: Not discussed. But the textbooks we had were published in the late 80s, when I had just learnt to use the potty/toilet. We were allowed to keep them because we were the last ones to use them.

7. Paragraphs of text, with the same idea/theme, accompanied by a few glosses below for new vocabulary.

English textbook: Had it.
French textbook: Had it. Also had a lot of exercises that required writing example sentences for pages on end to hammer sentence patterns into your brain the hard way, though.

[finlay]

1. The usual: a detailed description of pronunciation using IPA, that includes a fair description of allophones, even across words.

I both agree and disagree in equal measure. IPA is just not useful for many people, because it's another thing that has to be learned. If the manner of transcribing sounds is well-defined and consistent, that will do just fine. That said, as I can deal with IPA, I find it quite helpful.

Non-IPA transcriptions are usually enough to make me throw a book down in disgust... I know that not many people know it, but by using your own makeshift transcription, you're making everyone learn a new way of transcribing, whereas if you use IPA, those of use who know it already don't have to learn something new, and those who don't know it can learn it and then have a new transferable skill. There's honestly no excuse.

(To be fair, the ones that I hate the most are the ones that transcribe /i/ as 'ee', ie an English-based pronunciation guide. i've seen really awful ones for things like Japanese, which will transcribe /ai/ as "ah-ee"... uh, no. That said, "oh" as a transcription of /oː/ in Japanese is still quite widespread, but I had to tell one of my students off once for writing "Ohizumi" for 大泉 /oːizumi/, basically because it looks like it should be /ohizumi/. One of my students spells his surname as "Ohkawa", whereas I would spell it "Okawa", or "Ōkawa" at a pinch.)

Fillers are actually quite a big one for Japanese people learning English and vice versa, because they're very different from European style /əːːː/. There's nothing like an interjection of "etone~" to make a Japanese person's English seem disfluent. Conversely, I find that using Japanese style fillers like that or "ano.." or "nanka" helps me put my mind into a Japanese frame.

Handwriting can also be an issue – Japanese people's handwriting is generally very neat, but the way they write numbers is sometimes difficult to read, especially, and they have this bad habit of writing the cross stroke of t and f, or the dot of i and j, first. (I have at least two students who have gotten over these problems, but their handwriting has literally become unintelligible just because they write with a lazy cursive, so basically the opposite problem).

[Gulliver]

5. A serious discussion about handwriting, with real-world examples intended to be understood by other native speakers, not just tables in some official elementary/primary school calligraphic style.

English: Not an issue, uses Latin alphabet.
French: Not an issue, uses Latin alphabet.

Are you joking? French and English handwriting differs enormously. I had serious problems with French and German handwriting for a while.

English schoolchildren are taught something like this:


French schoolchildren are taught something more like this:


m, n and r were fairly problematic, especially as the left-most like/starter point quite often starts at the bottom, so it looks like an n is an m and and an m has three bumps. The loopy-ness is also confusing, and several of the letters join differently. I remember doing an exercise in French cursive at school, and thinking "what is this bullshit?". I'm sure the French correspondingly think we write like simpleton halfwits.

[Legion]

French schoolchildren are taught something more like this:

Certainly not.




More like this.

[Ser]

Does nobody have to say about the three topics I specifically asked opinions about!??? (The ones I numbered with Chinese heavenly stems.)

甲. I asked this same question years ago in another forum, and somebody told me it'd be a good idea to give some general treatment of word order at the beginning, at least as something you can refer to. (Specifically, that user was frustrated by how all sorts of adverbs and other adjuncts/modifiers he was being taught about Spanish, yet he had no clue on where to put them in a sentence.)

乙. What do you guys think about those cultural notes you often find? Do you find them alright and interesting? Tedious?

丙. What about vocabulary lists? I guess they're just ok to introduce vocabulary, though sometimes they can be so excessively long... that by the time you reach the end, you get the impression you already forgot everything at the beginning. Another thing: a couple Latin textbooks I've seen included long descriptions (some 4-6 lines) on what they meant, what do you guys think? Or are vocab lists a bad idea at all, and all vocabulary should be introduced in sentences or something once you get the past the first baby steps?

1. The usual: a detailed description of pronunciation using IPA, that includes a fair description of allophones, even across words.

I both agree and disagree in equal measure. IPA is just not useful for many people, because it's another thing that has to be learned.

I made this thread with ZBBers in mind, not the general public. See first paragraph:

Let's imagine that it isn't a textbook meant for general use by high-school/college students or by adults with tourist-y purposes that a publisher these days would actually be willing to sell

I really like it when textbooks have a semi-continuous story. Teach Yourself Norwegian has a good little story going of a couple meeting in a pub, talking about beer, her meeting his family, them breaking up and then her going travelling on her motorbike. It's silly but it's fun and covers the topics of introductions, food, family members, travel, dates, times etc mixed with a sort of comedy drama about their relationship. Lots of textbooks have boring stories, but the fact that this one started in a pub set a good tone for the rest of the story.

I've heard other ZBBers liking this before. I like your description of it as "comedy drama".

Handwriting can also be an issue – Japanese people's handwriting is generally very neat, but the way they write numbers is sometimes difficult to read, especially, and they have this bad habit of writing the cross stroke of t and f, or the dot of i and j, first. (I have at least two students who have gotten over these problems, but their handwriting has literally become unintelligible just because they write with a lazy cursive, so basically the opposite problem).

lol.

As for printing (not cursive, where yes, English (and Spanish) handwriting does write the horizontal stroke afterwards), I guess it's common to write a printing <t> with the vertical line first downward, and then the horizontal line rightward, but I mean, as far as I know it isn't standard, and you see quite a bit of variation among native speakers. I write my <t> like your Japanese speakers (though not my <f>, which a write with an upward vertical stroke first, followed by the horizontal line). It's not like they taught me anything but elementary cursive in school, I started using when I was 13 just because my classmates also largely used printing.

I don't think that the order of strokes can make your printing illegible as long as the result looks good. Here in Canada, I once had a TA for an English course who, in fact, wrote all of <q t p d f h j k l b> with an upward stroke first, followed by the rest. But the result looked alright.

5. A serious discussion about handwriting, with real-world examples intended to be understood by other native speakers, not just tables in some official elementary/primary school calligraphic style.

English: Not an issue, uses Latin alphabet.
French: Not an issue, uses Latin alphabet.

Are you joking? French and English handwriting differs enormously. I had serious problems with French and German handwriting for a while.

French schoolchildren are taught something more like this:
http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/pengu ... papier.jpg

BAAAHAHAAHAHAHA

You know that's AMERICAN elementary school cursive, right? (There's even an "A+" at the corner—a symbol of the American (or at least an English-language) school system.)

[Qwynegold]

1. The usual: a detailed description of pronunciation using IPA, that includes a fair description of allophones, even across words.

OMG I fucking hate those fucktard transcription schemes some books make up. My English books had IPA though (or something very similar). We never had any transcription in Japanese, but it has a very easy phonology. Though I have learned some stuff on my own reading Wikipedia... :/

2. Some discussion about stress. Any good English textbook should have something to say about "hót dóg" versus "hótdog", about "I lóve you" and "I gáve it to yóu", about "thánk you" (which you can reply to with a "thánk yóu").

Of course that should be covered in the phonology section.

3. Swear words, formation of insults and general vulgarities (and how to use them, of course, not only longggg lists of words and expressions as some books on slang do, e.g. Eveline Chao's Niubi! The Real Chinese You Were Never Taught in School).

I don't know. I think you can learn those things from other sources than textbooks.

4. Fillers (equivalents to "uhhhh", "y'know", "like", etc.). Textbooks sadly almost never include these, in spite of how useful they could be to any learner!

My Japanese textbook included these.

5. A serious discussion about handwriting, with real-world examples intended to be understood by other native speakers, not just tables in some official elementary/primary school calligraphic style. Typical differences between men's and women's handwriting would be nice too. In fact, in the case of Chinese, common handwriting abbreviations should probably be taught alongside the Sòng/Míng style.

Yeah, those handwriting abbreviations of Chinese characters would be good to know.

6. Texting abbreviations (which are useful for SMS, facebook, YouTube, online forums, graffiti, even ads).

I don't know. :/ Same as with #3.

7. Paragraphs of text, with the same idea/theme, accompanied by a few glosses below for new vocabulary. Xephyr, who gave me this idea, says that too often textbooks depend on exercises of floating, context-less sentences.

Both my English and Japanese textbooks had continuous stories with the same recurring characters. I like that.

甲. I asked this same question years ago in another forum, and somebody told me it'd be a good idea to give some general treatment of word order at the beginning, at least as something you can refer to. (Specifically, that user was frustrated by how all sorts of adverbs and other adjuncts/modifiers he was being taught about Spanish, yet he had no clue on where to put them in a sentence.)

I haven't had this problem, except for in Cornish where you are supposed to learn the vocabulary of each lesson and do translations first before you get to know the grammar. What were they thinking?

乙. What do you guys think about those cultural notes you often find? Do you find them alright and interesting? Tedious?

Those are interesting. I think you should have some cultural background to the language you are studying.

丙. What about vocabulary lists? I guess they're just ok to introduce vocabulary, though sometimes they can be so excessively long... that by the time you reach the end, you get the impression you already forgot everything at the beginning. Another thing: a couple Latin textbooks I've seen included long descriptions (some 4-6 lines) on what they meant, what do you guys think? Or are vocab lists a bad idea at all, and all vocabulary should be introduced in sentences or something once you get the past the first baby steps?

I think there should be a vocabulary list to each lesson. That makes it easy to study and test yourself on glosses. I'm thinking that the translation of each word shouldn't be too long. That just makes them harder to memorize.

[Terra]

So, what things do you like seeing or would you like to see in a textbook? What do you hate seeing in textbooks? Let's imagine that it isn't a textbook meant for general use by high-school/college students or by adults with tourist-y purposes that a publisher these days would actually be willing to sell, but a book tailored to our needs (whether they might be learning a language for real, or just a passing thing).

In my experience, most textbooks are afraid of using examples, tables, and pictures. Language textbooks seem to use the first two more often than other kinds of textbooks. (Note that my experience is biased; Most of my experience is with math and computer science textbooks.)

An example where a picture would have helped: In my German textbook, I was learning the various prepositions. The book thought that it sufficed to simply provide a translation, without any context and without any pictures. Thus, one read confusing listings like "an: on, auf: on". Both "an" and "auf" map to English "on", but they're of course not interchangeable with eachother, and the distinction is never discussed. Only many chapters later did the textbook provide an extremely elucidating picture, a picture of a room with various objects in it, and how the objects related to their surroundings via prepositions. Thus, one could see the difference between a picture hanging "an der Wand" and a vase sitting "auf dem Tisch".

Yes, the book did include the picture eventually, but it wasn't where it would've helped the most: When the various prepositions were first introduced.

Also, a book with examples like the vampire story might be cute, but not very useful. It reminds me of the classic proof for the dominoes on a checkerboard with two opposite corners removed that counts the number of red and black spaces in mathematics; It's very simple and elegant, but I've never used that technique for another problem, so it wasn't very useful.

[Astraios]

丙. What about vocabulary lists? I guess they're just ok to introduce vocabulary, though sometimes they can be so excessively long... that by the time you reach the end, you get the impression you already forgot everything at the beginning. Another thing: a couple Latin textbooks I've seen included long descriptions (some 4-6 lines) on what they meant, what do you guys think? Or are vocab lists a bad idea at all, and all vocabulary should be introduced in sentences or something once you get the past the first baby steps?

I hate them. Hate. All vocab should be introduced in context so you have at least some chance of getting the right answer yourself (which makes you remember it better). What do you need vocab lists for anyway, when like every textbook I've ever seen also has a glossary/dictionary section at the back? If you didn't get the word after seeing it used in a few example sentences, then just turn to the back of the book.

[marconatrix]

My response before reading anyone else's ...

1. The usual: a detailed description of pronunciation using IPA, that includes a fair description of allophones, even across words.

Yes! Yes! Yes! Why isn't basic IPA taught in school? Why are books for English speakers scared stiff of using IPA. Explanations in terms of English are always confusing since it's never entirely clear what variety of English is being used. And who speaks RP now anyway?

2. Some discussion about stress. Any good English textbook should have something to say about "hót dóg" versus "hótdog", about "I lóve you" and "I gáve it to yóu", about "thánk you" (which you can reply to with a "thánk yóu").

Not to mention tone/intonation in languages where like stress in English it is only occasionally important. For instance my book on Somali tells me that tone alone distinguishes whether inan means 'boy' or 'girl', but makes no attempt to explain what that difference is.

3. Swear words, formation of insults and general vulgarities (and how to use them)

Yes, in principle. But it rather depends on the target culture. It seems that in Latin countries profanities are part of normal speech (a Spanish commentator remarked on the way they are absent from otherwise realistic English TV soaps), whereas I'm sure in other cultures they're a complete no-no. OTOH, one dictionary compiled by missionaries took the line that the learner ought to know them, just so that they could be avoided.

4. Fillers (equivalents to "uhhhh", "y'know", "like", etc.). Textbooks sadly almost never include these, in spite of how useful they could be to any learner!

For any sort of realistic conversation you need to know how to stall while you decide on your real answer, otherwise someone else will jump in while you're standing there with your mouth open. Stuff like, "Well, it seems to me ..." "Probably, but then again ..." The art of keeping talking while saying nothing, just watch any politician of your choice In a one-to-one conversation all you really need is to be able to encourage the other person to keep talking to you, even if you barely understand them, "Really, do you think so ...", "Maybe, go on ...", the important thing is to say something and not switch to English.

5. A serious discussion about handwriting, with real-world examples intended to be understood by other native speakers, not just tables in some official elementary/primary school calligraphic style.

Does anyone use handwriting these days other than for notes to themselves? I can see how this is important where non-latin scripts are involved. Styles can change rapidly over a generation or two though.

6. Texting abbreviations (which are useful for SMS, facebook, YouTube, online forums, graffiti, even ads).

I guess you just figure these out from the context. Are they stable enough to be included in a text book? Will the whole thing be replaced by voicemail in a few years??

7. Paragraphs of text, with the same idea/theme, accompanied by a few glosses below for new vocabulary. Xephyr, who gave me this idea, says that too often textbooks depend on exercises of floating, context-less sentences.

Absolutely! The practise of using disembodied sentences probably goes back to the classics where grammar was being taught in parallel with the reading of actual texts. But real language is all about context, and with enough context you can often dispense with vocab lists, except as a fall-back. It's also probably better to cover all the common grammar fairly quickly if only in outline, rather than leaving the future tense until chapter 30 or whatever. Obviously rarely used forms can be left till later. I admit getting the balance of all this right is not easy, but some courses succeed better than others.

甲. I asked this same question years ago in another forum, and somebody told me it'd be a good idea to give some general treatment of word order at the beginning, at least as something you can refer to. (Specifically, that user was frustrated by how all sorts of adverbs and other adjuncts/modifiers he was being taught about Spanish, yet he had no clue on where to put them in a sentence.)

Depends a lot on the language, the differences may be quite subtle and therefore perhaps best learnt by example from lots of connected text. Pragmatics and all that ...

乙. What do you guys think about those cultural notes you often find? Do you find them alright and interesting? Tedious?

IMO often out of date and sometimes hillarious

丙. What about vocabulary lists? I guess they're just ok to introduce vocabulary, though sometimes they can be so excessively long... that by the time you reach the end, you get the impression you already forgot everything at the beginning. Another thing: a couple Latin textbooks I've seen included long descriptions (some 4-6 lines) on what they meant, what do you guys think? Or are vocab lists a bad idea at all, and all vocabulary should be introduced in sentences or something once you get the past the first baby steps?

Unless there are cheap basic dictionaries easily available, a comprehensive two-way vocab at the back of the book is essential. OTOH in these days of increasing online resources this may not be so much of an issue? How far should a textbook be self-contained??

[marconatrix]

My response before reading anyone else's ... whoops! Duplicate deleted.

[Buran]

1. The usual: a detailed description of pronunciation using IPA, that includes a fair description of allophones, even across words.

This would be a godsend. I hear a lot of "par-lays voos fran-says?" type pronunciations in my French class; it's ridiculous. An IPA comparison of French and English would at least make it clear to non-IPA reading people that the phonemes of French and English are not the same, and make it much easier for people familiar with IPA to immediately improve their pronunciation.

2. Some discussion about stress. Any good English textbook should have something to say about "hót dóg" versus "hótdog", about "I lóve you" and "I gáve it to yóu", about "thánk you" (which you can reply to with a "thánk yóu").
Again, this would be extremely helpful.

3. Swear words, formation of insults and general vulgarities (and how to use them, of course, not only longggg lists of words and expressions as some books on slang do, e.g. Eveline Chao's Niubi! The Real Chinese You Were Never Taught in School).

Not really as useful, and if I really need to call someone an obnoxious prick in another language, I can look it up elsewhere.

4. Fillers (equivalents to "uhhhh", "y'know", "like", etc.). Textbooks sadly almost never include these, in spite of how useful they could be to any learner!

Useful for languages where the filler isn't a variation of "uh".

5. A serious discussion about handwriting, with real-world examples intended to be understood by other native speakers, not just tables in some official elementary/primary school calligraphic style. Typical differences between men's and women's handwriting would be nice too. In fact, in the case of Chinese, common handwriting abbreviations should probably be taught alongside the Sòng/Míng style.

Definitely. Sometimes even I have trouble reading poorly written English. Incomprehensible handwriting isn't necessarily bad, either: my grandmother writes in beautiful cursive, but I can never read it.

6. Texting abbreviations (which are useful for SMS, facebook, YouTube, online forums, graffiti, even ads).

Possibly, although again, can be looked up elsewhere.

7. Paragraphs of text, with the same idea/theme, accompanied by a few glosses below for new vocabulary. Xephyr, who gave me this idea, says that too often textbooks depend on exercises of floating, context-less sentences.

Context is extremely important when it comes to learning anything. This would definitely help.

甲. I asked this same question years ago in another forum, and somebody told me it'd be a good idea to give some general treatment of word order at the beginning, at least as something you can refer to. (Specifically, that user was frustrated by how all sorts of adverbs and other adjuncts/modifiers he was being taught about Spanish, yet he had no clue on where to put them in a sentence.)

The way I'm taught French is absolutely infuriating. My teachers neglected to mention the SOV word order for pronominal objects, for one. Another example of stupidity: instead of just teaching my class the imperative and T-V distinction and then giving us the verb "donner" ("to give"), they taught us "this is how you ask someone to give you something. If you know the person well, use 'donnes". If you don't, use 'donnez'". We finally learned about the imperative six months later, and the T-V distinction next year. Ridiculous.

乙. What do you guys think about those cultural notes you often find? Do you find them alright and interesting? Tedious?

If I pick up a language textbook, I expect to learn about language, not culture.

丙. What about vocabulary lists? I guess they're just ok to introduce vocabulary, though sometimes they can be so excessively long... that by the time you reach the end, you get the impression you already forgot everything at the beginning. Another thing: a couple Latin textbooks I've seen included long descriptions (some 4-6 lines) on what they meant, what do you guys think? Or are vocab lists a bad idea at all, and all vocabulary should be introduced in sentences or something once you get the past the first baby steps?

These serve as a special point of frustration for me, especially since they're often so poorly organised.

[Gulliver]

You know that's AMERICAN elementary school cursive, right? (There's even an "A+" at the corner—a symbol of the American (or at least an English-language) school system.)

D'oh! Silly Google image search, and silly me.

This is possibly a better example:
http://ecole.charial.free.fr/accueil/jo ... 2/page.jpg
Notice the p's not closed at the bottom, the extra left-swoosh on the ms and n's and the open loop on the b's and h's. We aren't taught to write like that, so we rarely encounter it so it's not automatically readable.

Also: Americans learn cursive like that? Most Americans I know, like most British people, write like a drunken spider had trodden in ink then tried to rollerskate and tango at the same time.

[Terra]

Are they stable enough to be included in a text book?

Many are.

Will the whole thing be replaced by voicemail in a few years??

Absolutely not. Do I really need to count the ways in which voicemail/voice-commands are deficient?

[Ser]

I think there should be a vocabulary list to each lesson. That makes it easy to study and test yourself on glosses. I'm thinking that the translation of each word shouldn't be too long. That just makes them harder to memorize.

I'm not saying that such Latin books give long "translations" for words, but that they describe their usage. Here's an example from Keller and Russell's Learn to Read Latin, on the entry animus:

In the Vocabulary list:

• • [...]
    vīta, vītae f. life
    animus, animī m. (rational) soul, mind; spirit; in pl., strong feelings
    arma, armōrum n. pl. arms, weapons
    [...]

And then in the section of Vocabulary Notes:

• • animus, animī m. is the "(rational) soul" or "mind" of a human being. It is distinct from anima, which is the physical soul, that part of a human that would descend to the underworld. By comparison, Greek and English have one word, psychē and "soul" respectively, that is used for both. animus may also mean "heart" as the source of emotion and passion, or it may indicate a specific passion. in the plural, it often means "spirits" in the sense of "strong feelings," and in certain contexts "anger," "courage," or "pride." (Page 25.)

Also, a book with examples like the vampire story might be cute, but not very useful.

What are things that are "useful" in your opinion ...particularly for a ZBBer?

I hate them. Hate. All vocab should be introduced in context so you have at least some chance of getting the right answer yourself (which makes you remember it better). What do you need vocab lists for anyway, when like every textbook I've ever seen also has a glossary/dictionary section at the back? If you didn't get the word after seeing it used in a few example sentences, then just turn to the back of the book.

I dunno about that, I must say I haven't had a good experience with such books myself. What do you exactly have in mind for how to present new vocab? (Like what kind of context or style or what.)

For example, I once tried using Hans Ørberg's LINGVA LATINA series for Latin, and was greatly confused by him insisting that you guess what all words mean. One particularly hilarious (and sad) case: he presented an image of a some small city/town next to a river extending to the right, with some mountains in the background. The word oppidum appeared near the center, on the right side of the river (which was on the right side of the town). I had no idea if oppidum referred to the river, a river-close-to-a-town, a city, a town, or the whole picture (ie. a valley). I assumed it referred to a valley. (It actually means "town".)

I've never quite understood the use of paragraphs or dialogues at the beginning of a lesson in some courses either, followed by a list of glosses for all new words. Shouldn't they go the other way, the vocab list first and then the paragraphs? It's not like you can always guess the meanings of those words, since the paragraphs are often loaded with new words, having been consciously written that way in fact. I guess it could work best if it's like Portuguese for Spanish speakers—a situation where a learner will recognize tons of words he doesn't know anyway, but it won't for many other situations.

Yes, in principle. But it rather depends on the target culture. It seems that in Latin countries profanities are part of normal speech (a Spanish commentator remarked on the way they are absent from otherwise realistic English TV soaps), whereas I'm sure in other cultures they're a complete no-no.

I don't even think there's any culture that doesn't swear and that has no vulgarities though. If anything, what you mention would be the addition of more cultural notes on differences of what contexts vulgarities are particularly acceptable in. Though as for your example, I would add that English-speaking countries might just happen to have greater restrictions on what can go "on air" during afternoons and prime time (ideal times for soaps I believe) than Latin American countries, because otherwise English speakers used them quite a lot... America fuck yeah.

Does anyone use handwriting these days other than for notes to themselves? I can see how this is important where non-latin scripts are involved. Styles can change rapidly over a generation or two though.

Please read the rest of the paragraph: I'm not talking about official elementary/primary school cursive, but how native speakers actually write their language by hand.

Are they stable enough to be included in a text book? Will the whole thing be replaced by voicemail in a few years??

I don't think a textbook should be too constrained by a "what if the language changes a lot soon" kind of mentality—with today's technology we can easily edit books, costly re-pagination is a thing of the past. I'd like to think such abbreviations have been quite stable for a while, and even dictionaries have begun to include them, e.g. my copy of the Oxford Spanish Dictionary (a bilingual En.-Sp. Sp.-En. dictionary) has them, and so does Le Robert & Collins Senior Dictionnaire Français-Anglais Anglais-Français.

If there's one reason why voicemail won't probably take over SMSs is that SMSs are a lot more private. Think of all those adults and teenagers you commonly see texting while nobody else can tell what they're talking about.

[swear words and other vulgarities] Not really as useful, and if I really need to call someone an obnoxious prick in another language, I can look it up elsewhere.

[colloquial abbreviations] Possibly, although again, can be looked up elsewhere.

And that'd be where...? I can hardly think of any other place other than the wordreference forums. Or asking a friend of yours who knows the language well. A textbook could probably do better, *I think*.

Another example of stupidity: instead of just teaching my class the imperative and T-V distinction and then giving us the verb "donner" ("to give"), they taught us "this is how you ask someone to give you something. If you know the person well, use 'donnes". If you don't, use 'donnez'". We finally learned about the imperative six months later, and the T-V distinction next year.

Heh, the distinction isn't even about not knowing somebody, but about some sort of social hierarchy and context...

[vocab lists] These serve as a special point of frustration for me, especially since they're often so poorly organised.

How would you like them presented? Or if you hate lists at all, how would you present new words exactly?

Also: Americans learn cursive like that? Most Americans I know, like most British people, write like a drunken spider had trodden in ink then tried to rollerskate and tango at the same time.

Well, same thing. Brits don't want by hand as they're taught in elementary, neither do Americans. Hence why I mentioned the use of real examples of natives' handwriting.

[marconatrix]

甲. I asked this same question years ago in another forum, and somebody told me it'd be a good idea to give some general treatment of word order at the beginning, at least as something you can refer to. (Specifically, that user was frustrated by how all sorts of adverbs and other adjuncts/modifiers he was being taught about Spanish, yet he had no clue on where to put them in a sentence.)

I haven't had this problem, except for in Cornish where you are supposed to learn the vocabulary of each lesson and do translations first before you get to know the grammar. What were they thinking?

A little OT perhaps, but what book/material were you using? I'd be interested to see what I think of it.

[Astraios]

I dunno about that, I must say I haven't had a good experience with such books myself. What do you exactly have in mind for how to present new vocab? (Like what kind of context or style or what.)

Sentences where you already know the rest of the words.

"I live in a vaskwipst. There's only 100 people in my vaskwipst. The vaskwipst is 20 kilometres from the city. In the vaskwipst everybody sasamana's eating vegetables, but not me. I kiwipini eating vegetables. I kiwipini them because they aren't tasty. I don't kiwipini fruit, fruit is tasty. I sasamana fruit. Near my vaskwipst there was a very tall popolog. The popolog had tasty fruit. One day a man from the vaskwipst cut down the popolog. I kiwipinimi men that cut down popologs. So I told him to gagabugu a new popolog that will grow and have more tasty fruit. It's important to gagabugu new popologs after you cut one down."

It works for the very beginning too:

"Yoyo John aba. John Sabagada aba. Yoyi Mary aba. Mary wiwi Sabagada aba. John obo Mary Sabagadagi abagi. Yoyo Hokitokipoki aba. Hokitokipoki Sabagada giga aba. Hokitokipoki Banana aba. Yoyi Sikiwikiliki aba. Sikiwikiliki wiwi Banana aba. Hokitokipoki obo Sikiwikiliki Sabagadagi giga abagi. Bananagi abagi."

I've never quite understood the use of paragraphs or dialogues at the beginning of a lesson in some courses either, followed by a list of glosses for all new words. Shouldn't they go the other way, the vocab list first and then the paragraphs? It's not like you can always guess the meanings of those words, since the paragraphs are often loaded with new words, having been consciously written that way in fact. I guess it could work best if it's like Portuguese for Spanish speakers—a situation where a learner will recognize tons of words he doesn't know anyway, but it won't for many other situations.

Obviously it's no good if there's too many new words, but I'm not talking about putting tons of new ones.

[Haplogy]

"I live in a vaskwipst. There's only 100 people in my vaskwipst. The vaskwipst is 20 kilometres from the city. In the vaskwipst everybody sasamana's eating vegetables, but not me. I kiwipini eating vegetables. I kiwipini them because they aren't tasty. I don't kiwipini fruit, fruit is tasty. I sasamana fruit. Near my vaskwipst there was a very tall popolog. The popolog had tasty fruit. One day a man from the vaskwipst cut down the popolog. I kiwipinimi men that cut down popologs. So I told him to gagabugu a new popolog that will grow and have more tasty fruit. It's important to gagabugu new popologs after you cut one down."

vaskwipst - village
sasamana - to like
kiwipini - to dislike
popolog - tree
gagabugu - to plant
Pretty easy.

[theweevil]

4. Fillers (equivalents to "uhhhh", "y'know", "like", etc.). Textbooks sadly almost never include these, in spite of how useful they could be to any learner!

English textbook: Not discussed. But nevermind, English speakers go "uuuuuh" just as well.
French textbook: Not discussed. But nevermind, French speakers go "eeeeeeuuuuuh" just as well. A lot.

5. A serious discussion about handwriting, with real-world examples intended to be understood by other native speakers, not just tables in some official elementary/primary school calligraphic style.

English: Not an issue, uses Latin alphabet.
French: Not an issue, uses Latin alphabet.

4. I wish my textbook would've gone into more detail about: donc, alors, d'abord...those kinda things ( not sure if they qualify as fillers, though)


5. On that note, I can read french cursive, but not english Also cursive T in russian is like Pi with a 3rd leg and G is a backwards S. OI

[Xephyr]

丙. What about vocabulary lists? I guess they're just ok to introduce vocabulary, though sometimes they can be so excessively long... that by the time you reach the end, you get the impression you already forgot everything at the beginning. Another thing: a couple Latin textbooks I've seen included long descriptions (some 4-6 lines) on what they meant, what do you guys think? Or are vocab lists a bad idea at all, and all vocabulary should be introduced in sentences or something once you get the past the first baby steps?

I hate them. Hate. All vocab should be introduced in context so you have at least some chance of getting the right answer yourself (which makes you remember it better). What do you need vocab lists for anyway, when like every textbook I've ever seen also has a glossary/dictionary section at the back? If you didn't get the word after seeing it used in a few example sentences, then just turn to the back of the book.

It's relatively late into the language learning process before you know enough prerequisites to use context clues to figure out a new word-- ie, context clues are no help when the context is completely incomprehensible. And that's excluding the many cases when context doesn't help at all: "I went to the store and I bought a sklorf." Ok what's a sklorf? A music CD? A bottle of shampoo? A tire iron? A pet sugar glider?

Your "vaskwipst" example is artificial to me, because in my experience language textbooks never do it like that. They don't even try to give words in contexts where the meanings can be interpolated, because they expect you to just go to the back of the book and look it up in the glossary.

I hate it when the only vocab is given in the glossary at the back of the book-- because the tedium of going aaaaaall the way to the back eeeeevery time there's a new word that I can't determine by context (read: 99% of the time) kills my enthusiasm for the language faster than anything, period. It depends on the book, of course, but IMO there's just simply no excuse for not including all the new vocab for a chapter's readings somewhere in that chapter.

It works for the very beginning too:

"Yoyo John aba. John Sabagada aba. Yoyi Mary aba. Mary wiwi Sabagada aba. John obo Mary Sabagadagi abagi. Yoyo Hokitokipoki aba. Hokitokipoki Sabagada giga aba. Hokitokipoki Banana aba. Yoyi Sikiwikiliki aba. Sikiwikiliki wiwi Banana aba. Hokitokipoki obo Sikiwikiliki Sabagadagi giga abagi. Bananagi abagi."

Are you kidding me? I have no idea what that means-- I can't figure it out, and I imagine lots of prospective language-learnings wouldn't be able to either. Learning a language isn't supposed to be a fucking sudoku... if somebody made a textbook like that, I would probably want to kill them.

[Astraios]

It's relatively late into the language learning process before you know enough prerequisites to use context clues to figure out a new word-- ie, context clues are no help when the context is completely incomprehensible. And that's excluding the many cases when context doesn't help at all: "I went to the store and I bought a sklorf." Ok what's a sklorf? A music CD? A bottle of shampoo? A tire iron? A pet sugar glider?

That's why I gave more context in my example. So you read the first sentence of the paragraph and didn't understand 'sklorf', so why don't you carry on reading and find out: "The sklorf was pink and strawberry-flavour. I washed my hair with the strawberry sklorf." The context is only gonna be incomprehensible when you don't have enough about it.

Your "vaskwipst" example is artificial to me, because in my experience language textbooks never do it like that. They don't even try to give words in contexts where the meanings can be interpolated, because they expect you to just go to the back of the book and look it up in the glossary.

Yes, I know. The example was how I'd want a textbook to be like, obviously.

I hate it when the only vocab is given in the glossary at the back of the book-- because the tedium of going aaaaaall the way to the back eeeeevery time there's a new word that I can't determine by context (read: 99% of the time) kills my enthusiasm for the language faster than anything, period. It depends on the book, of course, but IMO there's just simply no excuse for not including all the new vocab for a chapter's readings somewhere in that chapter.

Again like I was trying to say, words should be given in better contexts than they are, and not given in totally contextless wordlists.

Are you kidding me? I have no idea what that means-- I can't figure it out, and I imagine lots of prospective language-learnings wouldn't be able to either. Learning a language isn't supposed to be a fucking sudoku... if somebody made a textbook like that, I would probably want to kill them.

Oh come on, that text is easy peasy. Just go through it methodically and it's obvious:

yoyo = ?
john = john
aba = ?
"this is john"?? because it's the simplest translation, it's the first introductory sentence in the book, so that kind of sentence is likely

john = john
sabagada = nationality?, adjective? (meaning obvious from the context, the book's title (Teach Yourself Sabagadanian), form unsure)
aba = ? - most likely a copula: if yoyo = this and yoyo can aba john, and john can aba sabagada (= sabagadanian), then probably aba = is
"john is sabagadanian"? quite probably

Now you.

[Legion]

Oh come on, that text is easy peasy. Just go through it methodically and it's obvious:

yoyo = ?
john = john
aba = ?
"this is john"?? because it's the simplest translation, it's the first introductory sentence in the book, so that kind of sentence is likely

No it isn't, in any fashion.

Learning doesn't have to be "fun", it doesn't have to be "interactive", it doesn't have to be "innovative", it doesn't have to be "a game". Learning has to be effective, and effective learning is hard and repetitive. What you propose is a load of crap and if you ever get involved with the creation of a language textbook, I'll hire a hitman to hunt you down. You're as bad as Viktor.