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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Very poor - sloppy, shoddy, constantly exasperating, 21 Feb 2008
I've been trying to use this course, but it is very poorly written, in fact in many ways it's terrible - a shoddy production. I have really struggled to learn from it, and have been constantly exasperated by its sloppiness.
The main faults are:
- Very badly explained grammar points - vague, sloppy, sometimes even wrong, and often incomplete, so that the learner is left bewildered
- Grammar items mentioned as if they're already know, when they haven't been introduced before
- Vocabulary missing from the vocabulary lists for the lessons
- Vocabulary missing from both the vocabulary lists for the lessons and the glossaries at the end of the book
- The dialogues do not illustrate to a sufficient extent the new grammatical points introduced during the lesson. A very important new area of grammar may be introduced and then be represented only once in the dialogues for that unit. I often get the feeling that the dialogues 'miss the point' of the material introduced in each unit.
- On the CD, the dialogues are gabbled so fast that many passages are impossible (for a beginner, at least) to follow. I understand that listening material should reflect natural everyday speech, but here much of the material really is too fast for a beginner's course.
Here is a detailed list of issues with Units 1-5, to give you some idea of how bad this course is.
Unit 1
The words sari and ille are not in any vocabulary list in this lesson.
The dialogues on the CD are gabbled and almost incomprehensible. Very unhelpful for a beginner. The actors should have been asked to articulate the words more clearly at this early stage.
Unit 2
Dialogue 1 eeru is not in any vocabulary list in this lesson.
Dialogue 1 suffix -um (niingaLum - you too) is unexplained in the grammar or in any vocabulary list in this lesson.
The word sinimaa is not in any vocabulary list in this lesson and is left unexplained.
Dialogue 2 pooDu (set, put) is not in any vocabulary list in this lesson.
Dialogue 2 vikkidu is not in any vocabulary list in this lesson, in fact it's not even in the glossary at the back of the book.
The final ruubaa of Dialogue 2 is mis-spelt ruuba.
Dialogue 3 kuDu has already been introduced in Unit 1 and does not need to appear in the vocabulary list for this dialogue.
Dialogue 3 last line, what does adeyee mean? This word is unexplained. It becomes clear in later lessons that it's possibly adu (acc. ade) with glide vowel -y- and suffix -ee but at this stage the learner cannot know that.
p. 27 Present tense - very confusingly written, and the confusion is worsened by the italicised r in ukkaarudu in the examples. This is not a present tense suffix, so should not be italicised. It is part of the verb stem ukkaaru! The explanation of inanimate present tense forms is inadequate here. It's not clear from the information given in Units 1 and 2 whether all inanimate third person forms for -kkir- verbs have -kk- in the present tense, or whether this applies just to iru. It certainly seems untrue that 'The tense suffix is omitted in the third person neuter forms' (p. 27). The -r- is omitted, but the -kk- isn't, as the form aDikkidu in dialogue 3 shows. The -i- after the -kk- here is not explained, however, unless there is another (unstated) rule that the present tense suffix for third person neuter forms can be -kk- or -kki-. This whole section on the present tense is deeply unhelpful and should be rewritten from scratch, with the rules clearly laid out with clear (and correct!) examples.
p. 32 kuDukkaNum - this form is left unexplained. It is not introduced until Unit 3.
p. 33 Accusative case, 'An object noun that does not refer to a human being may not have this case suffix if it is not particularised'. What does 'may not have' mean here? Does it mean 'it can sometimes happen that it does not have' or 'is not allowed to have'? Very confusing and unhelpful.
Why is the explanation of rippeer under the heading 'All'?
p. 35 Notes on iru 'be' - hopelessly confusing. In the first place, the locative has not been introduced anywhere so far, and is referred to here but not explained. The difference between -giTTe and -TTe is not explained here or anywhere else in the book. The locative suffix -le on ooTTalle is left unexplained until page 56, where, under the heading 'Location', only this ending (and not -giTTE or -TTe) is introduced as a locative suffix. On page 228 there are two lines of information about the locative, with the unhelpful rider 'usually'.
p. 36 Noun as 'adjective' in predicate. The explanations here are so opaque as to be useless. This section needs a complete rewrite.
In this unit the dialogues on the CD are articulated a little more clearly than in Unit 1 but some sections are still gabbled, in particular the words 'embadu ruuba kuDukkireen. poo.'.
Exercise 2 sentences 12 and 13: the model answers here include the neuter verb form 'poogum'. The -g- here is a great surprise and has not been taught so far. How can any student possibly be expected to come up with untaught material when trying to do an exercise?
Unit 3
p. 41 'Starting the day'. This paragraph tells us that two types of snack, doose and iDli, are mentioned in the dialogue. The word iDli is not mentioned in any dialogue.
p. 48 'The use of -Num to express need or obligation'. We are told that this suffix is added to the infinitive of the verb. The infinitive has not yet been taught! In fact the infinitive is not introduced until as late as Unit 7 (p. 105), though it is referred to also on pages 56, 69, 79, and 94 without having been previously explained. This is very very sloppy.
p. 49 why is the word for 'twenty' spelt irubadu here where elsewhere (and in the glossary at the back of the book) it's spelt iruvadu?
Unit 4
Dialogue 1 - the words erangu, seyreen are not in the vocabulary list.
p. 56 we are told to use the infinitive with muDiyum. The infinitive has not yet been introduced. It is not taught until p. 105.
p. 59, negative imperative. The instructions for forming the negative imperative are wrong. The endings are not added to the verb stem, they are added to the infinitive. This explains the rule (presented here) that -kkir-present verbs must add -kk- before the negative imperative ending. This is actually the -kk- of the inifinitive.
Dialogue 3 - the words inimee and nerappunga are not in the vocabulary list for this lesson, nor are they in the glossary at the back of the book.
Dialogue 3 line 1 - the final n of paNNaNum should be retroflex, not ordinary n.
p. 60 Exercises 10 and 12: in Exercise 10 kaalejule, in Exercise 12 kaalejle. Why the inconsistency? Why is this left unexplained?
Exercise 12 tongudu this verb form is unexplained and not listed in the glossary at the back of the book. In the answers to the exercise, is tongudu to be taken as an imperative, even though the word in brackets after it in the exercise '(hangs)' suggests a present tense? This is all very confusing and unhelpful.
Unit 5
We are told on p. 69 that to negate an action taking place in present or past time, ille is added to the infinitive. The infinitive has not yet been taught. It is not introduced until p. 105 in Unit 7. We are also told to add the suffix -laam to the infinitive on p. 71, and told to add -TTum to the infinitive on p. 79. It is extremely sloppy to expect us to use the infinitive before teaching us how it is formed.
Dialogue 2 - neettu, veLiye, perusaa and oNNum are not in the vocabulary list for this dialogue. The word perusaa is not even in the glossary at the end of the book! So its exact meaning is impossible to determine.
Dialogue 3 - aanaa is not in the vocabulary list for this lesson.
p. 79 'Subject in the dative'. This short paragraph is absolutely useless. It does not explain how teri, puri, piDi or mara are conjugated or used. Should we use the present tense? The future (habitual) tense? The past tense (for mara)? In the one example offered from Dialogue 3, the form of the verb piDikkidaa is left unexplained, it looks like a present tense with interrogative suffix, but in Exercise 10 sentence 5 the form used is pidikkum (NB: with the wrong type of d). The learner is left completely mystified here - is the present tense or the future (habitual) used with piDi? This really is not good enough. The feeble explanation here requires considerable expansion and many good examples if it is to be at all useful in explaining the use of dative subjects and the verbs which require them.
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