Is it just me, or is anyone else starting to feel really sorry for the "Language Professors Hate Him!" guy? Like, that poor guy. He was probably just trying to make life better for the rest of us, and now he can't go to the cool parties without being spit on by the language professors.
Maybe I'm not being fair to both sides; maybe he really is a jerk and the language professors are right to hate him. Maybe we'd all hate him, given half a chance. But I'm just saying it's tugging at my heart-strings a bit.
Not my purse-strings, though. I have no idea what the ad is selling, to be honest.
16 comments:
Hippo birdy two ewe!
OMG BANG!!! I love that game!! But it is so complicated!! Definitely not internet feasible. It was hard enough to learn in person. Happy Birthday from a mostly lurker, Brin.
@Brin -
Bang. Also, happy birthday.
But see, we're just taking the advertiser's word that language professors actually hate him. Maybe they didn't! Maybe they would put their differences aside and go tubing or something. I think the ad just wants us to believe that he was hated, presumably because that implies that whatever system they're selling for learning languages actually works. Which I kind of doubt. But I do find it interesting that hatred is evidently the language of sales.
If the experts (all of them, apparently) in a field are pissed off at someone over a new idea, I figure it's more likely that the target of their ire is a scammer rather than that the experts are a bunch of jealous poopyheads. If they've put in the effort required to become professors in language, why wouldn't they be excited about a breakthrough in their field?
When the ad says the lessons are "free", what they really mean is "the first lesson is free, then we start charging your credit card every week/month".
As for him not being invited to all the cool parties, well, he's been dead for 36 years. So I doubt he cares much :-)
If you see that ad, they're probably trying to trick you into thinking their service can teach you a foreign language with virtually no time or effort required on your end.
In other words: if you care about language instruction, hatred is probably the right response.
Maybe it's just two particular language profs. I mean, in a whole department full of profs, surely a couple of them are jerks?
Happy birthday.
"Like, that poor guy. He was probably just trying to make life better for the rest of us, and now he can't go to the cool parties without being spit on by the language professors.
Maybe I'm not being fair to both sides; maybe he really is a jerk and the language professors are right to hate him. Maybe we'd all hate him, given half a chance. But I'm just saying it's tugging at my heart-strings a bit."
The worst part of all of it is that language professors have powerful friends. If you annoy the language professors you've gotta expect to walk in fear.
I haven't clicked, but I believe that the ads are for "The Pimsleur Approach" which should not be confused with the approach put forward by Pimsleur. Pimsleur has an official site which is not "The Pimsleur Approach".
Paul Pimsleur (who lived from 1927 to 1976) was a linguist amoung other things and his research into language acquisition eventually led to the Pimsleur Language Learning System, also known as the Pimsleur method, which focuses on four things:
1. Graduated Interval Recall
2. Principle of Anticipation
3. Core Vocabulary
4. Organic Learning
If you go to the official site they guarantee that within thirty lessons you'll be able to pass a test (designed by them, but I think it might very well be a legitimate test) at at least a novice level. It's generally advertised as a lesson a day. So depending on whether day means week day or day day that's a month or more to reach a novice level.
The Pimsleur Approach, the ones putting out the ads, say that you can learn a new language in just ten days. As near as I can tell they have no official connection to Pimsleur himself.
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Unrelated to that, if it were possible to teach a new language in ten days language professors wouldn't hate him, they'd love him. If they could skip all the damn learning stuff dive right into literature on the 11th day of class their jobs would be a lot more interesting.
Happy birthday.
As a former French teacher, I loathe and despise that ad. I'm all for language learning being easy, but it's usually not (exceptions being if you know a related language, and also that learning a third/fourth/fifth language is easier because you've already learned how to learn a language). But I harbor no ill will towards the dude in the ad itself; I feel bad for him that the ad is using him to peddle their product.
Honestly, that ad (on another site-- OMG it follows me everywhere!) made me go find an ad blocker again.
language professors hate him because he'll teach you how to learn a language in 10 days and once you know his method you won't need a language professor. or something. a few weeks back, i watched a 30 minute youtube video on it that managed to spend 30 minutes telling me that they were going to tell me how to learn a language in ten days without telling me how to learn a language in 10 days. i want those 30 minutes back.
I did learn a language in 2 weeks once, but that's only because I spoke another language in its family and so I had a leg up on cognates. But it was still a lot of work.
Hey, belated happy birthday, Brin! Whoooo!
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