B2 Czech books, text book or otherwise

Discussion in 'General Language' started by Ctyri koruny, Oct 6, 2009.

  1. Ctyri koruny

    Ctyri koruny Well-Known Member

    Also known as Intermediate/Upper Int

    The only book I know for it is:

    Czech for Life
    http://www.nj.cz/czech_for_life.htm

    Do any more exist?

    Also everyone learning here who has read a real life Czech book, what ones did you read? How hard were they?


    I'm slowly ploughing my way through Paulo Coelho's Brida, I'm just starting B1 (i'm getting ahead of myself again, but i like to have everything planned) so it's difficult, but not as difficult as a lot of other books i flicked through, I think things that are translations from other languages are generally easier than something originally in Czech, so long as it's a modern book that is.
    Muj Medved Flora is probably the only Czech book I can understand without a dictionary, and i have lots of books for young children, they're just a lot harder than you might expect!


    [​IMG]

    It's a lovely book :)
     
  2. Ctyri koruny

    Ctyri koruny Well-Known Member

    I got Czech for Life, (B2) Communicative Czech "Intermediate"(B1) and something else while I was in Prauge. (who knows when I'll be there again.)

    I was disappointed to find my options even narrower than I had imagined for B1, Communicative Czech is a terrible series, I understand things less after I read their explanations than I did before.. but what choice did I have? Even the readings are amazingly boring and unmemorable.

    Anyway I found this book: http://www.czech-books.com/catalog/all/ ... example1-1

    which looks to me for C1/C2 (proficiency) students, I can understand most of Czech for Life, the jist at least, though I can't answer the questions about it. This I haven't a clue of, i can guess the topic of the readings, beyond that not a word. But of course I'm not someone to be judging levels ha ha!
     
  3. hribecek

    hribecek Well-Known Member

    The book I used and still use to check things I've forgotten is CHCETE JESTE LEPE MLUVIT CESKY 2.
    It's very thorough and you'll be at about C1 if you can learn 90% of the book. I think you have to be very motivated to get through it because the topics are a little dull at times but you seem to be so shouldn't be a problem.
    Includes CDs too.
     
  4. Ctyri koruny

    Ctyri koruny Well-Known Member

    I don't know.. I have the first book in that series but it seems to me to just be a phrase book. I've never managed to learn anything from it. It uses very old fashioned methodology and doesn't really fit in with my style of learning. It's okay if you're the type of person who can learn words from pictures and lists and repetition, but I need readings and exercises (all different types, not just drills) etc. Is the second book better than the first?
     
  5. hribecek

    hribecek Well-Known Member

    I can't remember the first book very well but the second book does have a lot of reading and I'd say it's definitely good for listening and pronunciation, it was for me anyway. You're right that there are a lot of lists etc. so in that way maybe you wouldn't like it.
    I only know that I only used those 2 books to learn Czech (have since seen a bit of step by step too) over the course of 2 years and by the end of them I was quite advanced (upper B2, lower C1 at least.
    I did do a lot of memorizing and repetition though from them, like you say.
    There are over 500 pages in the second one so between them the 2 books cover just about everything, albeit maybe in a too dull way for you.
     
  6. Ctyri koruny

    Ctyri koruny Well-Known Member

    Thanks for the tip though! I'm sure it will be helpful for other people reading this, there are a lot more lurkers on this forum than posters. ;)

    And maybe in the future I might need to go back to that book. Pavla tells me there are a lot of grammatical errors in Communicative Czech int. Word order and stuff like that. The type of stuff people with PHDs in Czech notice. hee hee

    Just out of curiosity, how many hours of study do you think it would take someone to get through that book?
     
  7. hribecek

    hribecek Well-Known Member

    Sorry 4k
    I never realised back in October that you had asked me a question about the book I was referring to.
    My answer to how many hours study it takes is 'a hell of a lot'. I've no idea how many to be honest but I studied very hard, maybe 1 or 2 hours every day for about 10 months maybe to get through it and I still refer to it now.
     
  8. Ctyri koruny

    Ctyri koruny Well-Known Member

    I used to study that much *sigh*

    i gotta figure out what was different this year. I feel sick thinking how well I'd be able to speak now if I had studied as much this year as last year, last year it was maybe 24 - 30 hours a week and this year I'm lucky if i manage 3.
     

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