Simply amazing. Also, bad reviews can be explained.

Any additional comments?

---MY REVIEW---
I'm a student from Canada. I have to say, Kevin Flanigan is an amazing performer. You can tell how passionate and devoted to he is to the linguistic field just by listening to this book. I feel like he is my friend, rather than a professor.

The course itself is helpful, and I really loved all his anecdotal stories that allowed me to learn in an interesting way.

----NEGATIVE REVIEWS----
The negative reviews I see here are twofold. First is the kind that says 'learning too much vocabulary makes you seem so arrogant, what's the point omg'...well then don't learn it? It's like buying a history book THEN complaining that learning history is so useless. If you aren't like these silly people and have a strong desire for self-improvement, then I recommend this book.
The second kind: not the right format. These reviewers either want a bland list of vocab with their definitions (in which case you can find them for free online) or the spelling of the word (which can be found in the PDF ATTACHED yes there is one people).

So, hope that explains it. This is my first time giving a review and I feel like some reviews just don't do Prof Flanigan justice.

1,234 people found this helpful

This is the vocabulary builder you want.

I purchased this course as preparation for taking the Miller Analogies Test, Not only was it helpful, but Professor Flanigan made the course absolutely delightful. Great personal stories and excellent neumonic devices. I am looking forward to listening to it several more times.

66 people found this helpful

Can't say enough good things about this one...

This is a great title to have in your audible library because it is so versatile in terms of how it can be enjoyed...allow me to explain...

Some books tell a story or survey a topic in such a way that you really need to be paying attention from start to finish because if you don't, you'll struggle to keep up and that'll have a negative impact on your ability to enjoy it. Those are the kinds of titles I save for long car trips when I'm by myself. This course could easily be enjoyed if given that level of attention, but it's not at all necessary.

This is my favorite kind of background noise (for lack of a better term). you can have it playing...come in-and-out of different stages of paying attention and still occasionally pick up a thing or two for your vocabulary. Because of that, you could play the course over and over again without feeling like its getting old or repetitive.

I love playing this title when I'm winding down for the night. If I fall asleep, no big deal. It's way better than watching tv in bed.

But it's also perfect for the person who wants to make a deliberate study of the course. The instructor starts off by discussing how to set up a study notebook for the course and he stops along the way to point out things to write in your notebook and he even assigns homework. If you want to get a real course out of this title you won't be disappointed.

It's the best vocabulary book I've ever read. It's way better than the ones that go in alphabetical order or use SAT prep lists. This instructor groups the vocabulary words by concept and uses techniques that help you actually remember/retain the information.

I highly recommend.

389 people found this helpful

Engaging and Memorable, Highly Recommended

I really enjoyed this course. I have listened to many Great Courses and this is so far one of my favourites. I have also been working on my vocabulary in the past year via other audio courses and workbooks, but this has been the most efficacious.

The course begins by teaching various memory techniques for retaining new word meanings. This includes keeping a vocabulary notebook, making personal connections, sound connections, etymological breakdown, and categorization. My main problem is recall, and these are not new techniques, but I have been motivated to employ them to much success.

Lectures are organized by words of a certain category, such as words relating to phobias, words for describing good and bad speakers, words for describing language, toponyms and eponyms, and "grab bags" of miscellaneous words. Professor Flanigan keeps things entertaining by telling the history behind words and memorable personal stories about his friends and family to exemplify key words, ending each lecture with a quiz. He speaks confidently and clearly and is an excellent teacher.

Immediately after finishing this course, I found myself recognizing key words left and right, words that I previously would have only had a vague contextual understanding of and would have thus brushed past. This has been a real confidence booster.

The only downside is, as with all The Great Course audiobooks sold by audible, there is no guidebook. This is a complaint I see by many reviewers of The Great Courses, but if you check out the prices on The Teaching Company's (the makers of TGC) the website in which the guidebook is included, you will see that purchasing them via audible without the guidebook is actually a very good deal. The lack of guidebook is probably the reason audible can charge such a low price without it being a negative for The Teaching Company's overall sales. However, it would have been nice for audible or the Great Courses to at least provide a list of the words, as I had to write them down while listening. Ultimately, being forced to write them down was probably a good thing, as taking notes really helped me to remember the words. Although it did get tricky to confirm the spelling, especially with the more obscure words, but I did manage to find them all with a little googling.

I would also recommend "How To Build a Better Vocabulary" by Maxwell Nurnberg and Morris Rosenblum. I have been working through this in parallel with this course and the words are similar both in selection and difficulty. It's very nice to have learnt a word from one place and have it reinforced elsewhere.

335 people found this helpful

When I went to school they didn't teach this

I went to school in the late 70's through the 90's. Someone in the state of Indiana decided that between 1980 and 1985 they wouldn't teach phonetics therefore I struggle with sounding out worlds. Not after listening to this book! Yes, it's long and yes most of the words seem out of place. YET! The underlying knowledge has finally enabled me to understand words, pronounce them. and to be able to build on them! Well worth the money in all area's!

69 people found this helpful

Better than any GRE vocabulary guide

I learnt more words in 30 days than in a lifetime. Highly recommended for those who have hard time with words..

72 people found this helpful

Awesome Vocab Builder!

If you could sum up Building a Better Vocabulary in three words, what would they be?

This guy rocks!

What did you like best about this story?

I liked his stories relating words to everyday things and situations, and being that he is a military brat is also a plus.

What does Professor Kevin Flanigan bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

His character and telling of his personal life events made it fun.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Listen up maggots, time to learn some words!

Any additional comments?

I enjoyed the hell out of this.

36 people found this helpful

Promethean Vocabulary Course

This course really stands out. It absolutely crushes any other vocabulary learning text or audio book that I have seen. I actually purchased a couple of books and tried a couple of other audio books after finishing this course but they do not compare. It seems that many the books are for people with weak vocabularies, and most of the audio books are too dry. This book is for everybody.

The professor focuses on words that are compelling, yet that most educated people do not know or use. If you are not an expert in vocabulary, which you probably aren't if you are considering this course, then he will impress you with words like captious, treacle, argot, donnybrook, bumptious, malefactor you get the idea. He introduces words with stories, uses them in sentences (of course), and very importantly, explains nuances and differences between related words.

I will definitely be listening to this course again. It's fun to learn new words and impress one's spouse, especially when she has the better vocabulary. Almost every day I would concoct some new sentence trying to show off and it was painfully obvious, but it was fun, and it really helps to learn the words. I only wish that I written them down like he suggested.

Great couple of units on foreign words at the end.

29 people found this helpful

Good content, doesn't work well as an audiobook

Any additional comments?

First let me state that I've only listened to the first 5 lectures -- but that's enough to understand that this format is fundamentally flawed. Please read through the review before discrediting it.

I wanted to like this course, and I did get some good tips to learning vocabulary from the introduction. The content of the course itself is quite good, I feel. The problem lies in the fact that it fails to be a productive audiobook.

The biggest problem with the lecture is that, despite talking about the importance of spelling in the introduction, the lecturer doesn't spell out the words for you. He tells you to write each new word in a journal, but won't tell you how it is that you write them. Furthermore, he pronounces the words too casually -- when he introduces a target word he needs to say it slowly, clearly, and even hypercorrectly so that the listener can visualize the word in their mind. When listening to the course I found myself all too often memorizing definitions without being able to catch what the words that go with them are. For example, when he introduced the word "gadfly" I couldn't tell if it was "gazby," "gadby," or "gadfly" until he got to the etymology and said it was an actual insect. (Note that I am a native speaker of American English with no hearing problems.)

There is a pdf that goes with the course. It's a great pdf, actually. All the information in the course is quite conveniently summed up in it. I found myself previewing lessons in the pdf before listening to them because of the above problem. Then I stopped listening to the lectures altogether. The audiobook itself is reliant on the pdf. The pdf works well enough by itself. You're not missing out on much by not listening to the lectures. If the pdf was sold as a standalone ebook I'd probably buy it. However, this course does not benefit from the audiobook format whatsoever; in fact, it only detracts from it if you don't look at the pdf. It's a real shame because I feel like it could've worked had the narrator only spelled out each new word for you.

In addition, and this part is only nitpicking, but the lecturer stuttered quite often. The oration could have been much more professional.

I will not be finishing this audiobook because I highly doubt he's going to start spelling out words in later lectures. I plan to return the book, but it has inspired me to pursue vocabulary study by other means.

35 people found this helpful

Excellent

Nerd Alert! Very well written and narrated. Terrific concepts and strategies on improving and remembering vocabulary.

68 people found this helpful