Language Class Cons

People keep encouraging me to take a class instead of doing this on my own. I don’t want to.

One of the reasons I don’t want to is that classes go too slowly. Also, other people annoy me. Particularly people who don’t do their homework.

I will never forget that French course I took my junior year in college, where there was a couple practically making out in class every day. I would turn around in my seat to find that they had their hands on each other’s thighs—and often inner rather than outer. They were both very good-looking, I remember, but still, it wasn’t something I wanted to see during a morning language class. French was clearly not their main interest. 

One good thing about the new and improved version of Pimsleur versus the old version I had to shelve: in 30 lessons on the old Pimsleur CDs, I never learned the word “eat.” In the new and improved version, I learned it by lesson 5.

For me, “eat” is pretty fundamental.

A rather irksome difference between the old version and the new: I learned “or” as ulla on the old CDs, and now on the new ones I am being taught that it is pronounced ow for statements and wella for questions. Argh. Dialect differences, I guess—or perhaps differences and disagreements even within a particular dialect?

I bought my replacement Arabic lessons as a download from PimsleurAudio.com, which is a reseller and seems to have good prices. Still, I didn’t feel like buying it, and I can’t believe how much time I lost on that crappy old version. I should have listened to Kelly at Simon & Schuster when he told me to stop using it. I can’t say the process of getting the download from PimsleurAudio.com was totally free of frustrations, but it worked out okay. My contact there, confusingly, is also named Kelly, also a man.

I just spent an hour and a half searching for materials for the English class I am teaching tomorrow at the Arab American Association. Planning classes takes up a lot more of my time than I would like, which means less time for language study. In the future, I should perhaps stick to tutoring, which generally wouldn’t require this kind of preparation.

The glottal stops and some of the other Arabic sounds continue to be like vocal torture for me. Hard on my throat. I’m probably doing something terribly wrong.