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Assimil Experiment Group Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5373 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 217 of 344 01 February 2013 at 2:57pm | IP Logged | ||
If your goal is to only start speaking when you feel comfortable doing so, that's fine (although pushing yourself past your comfort zone is also a good idea), except that your initial statement was that you would NOT speak before you reached 800 hours. Those are two very different things. Sprachprofi has warned you, and I second her, that if this is your intent, you are doing yourself a disservice. As for that approach being more "natural", I can't see what's natural about it -- if you go back a short while in the grand history of mankind, when writing wasn't even invented, humans learned each other's languages by way of interaction. I can't imagine how one would expose him or herself to 800 hours without attempting to communicate in that kind of environment. I also can't think of any other activity you'd be learning by watching for 800 hours before trying it out at all. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5373 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 218 of 344 01 February 2013 at 3:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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To everyone working on the active phase, what kind of success ratio are you getting on your translations? On lessons 3 and 4, I've been getting about 10 errors (counting all words that aren't perfect) a lesson -- is that average? Do you review the initial lessons first or do you go straight to the translation? I've been doing the latter.
Also, are you finding mistakes in your respective Assimil books? I've been finding a few in the Romanian version I'm working from. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4680 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 219 of 344 01 February 2013 at 4:43pm | IP Logged | ||
I've been doing Assimil Italian (English base) basically in parallel with the "Assimil Challenge," btw. The book is filled with many, many errors. It still works, but every now and then the errors confuse me and slow me down trying to figure out what's going on. For Active Phase, trying for word-for-word perfection (which is what I do) isn't always a great "diagnostic," because the translations are not literal word-for-word translations, and often there are several possibilities. For example, in New French With Ease, there is a lesson with various colloquial expressions, and they randomly switch back and forth between using "vous" and "tu," and there's no way to guess which one they are using. There's certainly nothing wrong with not getting those exactly the same, for example. Of course, the Active Phase is not really supposed to be a diagnostic, but another phase of the learning process. WIth French I would review before translating, because I still needed the pronunciation help more than anything. I've focussed more on flawless recreation of the French original than on avoiding "cheating" by using the French text. No idea if that's ideal or not, but I feel like I learn the correct forms better that way than trying to produce them cold. So maybe I'm slowing down my activation but activating more accurately? But I also found that the first few lessons seemed REALLY hard to recreate well. Now that I'm in the 80s, they seem really EASY, even though the lessons are much longer and much more complicated. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| JSBR_C Newbie United States Joined 4307 days ago 19 posts - 38 votes Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 220 of 344 01 February 2013 at 10:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi. I'm late to the forum, only discovering this website recently, but since I recently started Assimil Chinese I thought I'd join. I started just after Christmas. This was a Christmas gift for me. I'm on lesson 50 today, just now starting the active wave.
It's going fine for me, but I did get a head start with Pimsleur. I spent the prior 4 months going through all 3 levels, which my library had. Here's how I use Assimil. I wake up in the morning and go run on the treadmill for 30 minutes. For the first 15 I listen to my lesson for the day without having read it, trying to understand what I can. The other 15 minutes I spend repeatedly listening to a few prior lessons. When my run is done I go to the book. I shadow it a bit. Read the English, glancing at the Chinese. Read the Chinese while listening. Back and forth until I feel I have a pretty good feel for it. That's how I start my day. Then I go to work and in the evening I have another study session. I start by going about 10 lessons back from the lesson I'm studying today. So today I'll go to lesson 40. I go to lesson 40 and listen and write out the Chinese. So I hit play and listen to a few words and write them out. I do that for the dialogue, then open the book and see how I did, fixing my errors. Then I just listen to the audio with the book in front of me for lessons 41 through 49, skipping the review lessons, trying to stick with the Chinese as much as possible while glancing over to the English as necessary. Finally I'm to my lesson for the day, lesson 50. I listen and read just as I've been doing for the earlier lessons. When the audio for lesson 50 is done I stop the audio and read the dialogue through and write out the new words. Sometimes I write phrases so I understand the words in context. I also read the notes and write out any new words/phrases found there. When that's done I take my list of new words and phrases over to the computer and load all new words into Anki. I do an Anki review from the words I've loaded previously. That's a typical day. Quite a bit more active than recommended by Assimil but it's not been a problem to study with this level of intensity so it's working out OK. Will it work? Not sure. I have never learned a second language. We'll see I guess. My attitude though as I am just now starting the active wave is I'm just not going to worry about it even if I'm terrible. If I make tons of mistakes, fine. I'll go back and do it all again if I have to and I expect it will get better. I just keep telling myself that so many Chinese have learned English and if they can do that I can learn Chinese. Edited by JSBR_C on 01 February 2013 at 10:32pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5339 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 221 of 344 02 February 2013 at 12:07am | IP Logged | ||
Il nuovo russo senza sforzo, Italian edition of Le Nouveau Russe sans peine Active wave: Week 1 (lessons 1-3): from a few typos to about 10 mistakes in each lesson. Week 1 (lessons 4-7): steadily more and more mistakes each lesson (way more than thirty). Week 2 (lessons 8-…): complete standstill. Frankly it’s easier to count how many words and expressions I get completely right rather than those I get wrong. Very depressing! I don’t review the lessons before trying the translation, I go straight into the latter. But I’ve added a second passive wave halfway between the “prescribed” waves. In this second passive wave I take more time to write down the texts and solve the exercises in writing (but without trying too hard to remember words or constructions on my own: if in doubt I simply look at the solutions). Apart from this review, in spare moments I also listen to random previous lessons to try and memorize as much of the dialogues as possible. And by the way, I’m in no position to notice whether there are mistakes in the text. Edited by Emme on 02 February 2013 at 12:08am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4699 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 222 of 344 02 February 2013 at 12:17am | IP Logged | ||
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I get a fair few errors in my translations back to Breton. Usually it's an insignificant
word I did not remember, occasionally it's a grammar error. Edited by tarvos on 02 February 2013 at 12:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5373 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 223 of 344 02 February 2013 at 12:59am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm starting to think reading the text of the early lessons first is a good idea.
I first wondered if the 50+ lessons were made so that they would offer a certain review and prepare you for the translation of the associated lessons, but I see that that's not the case. In other words, lesson 5 isn't going to be easier if I do lesson 53, 54 or 55: it's just testing if I remember lesson 5, which was a long time ago. I tried both ways: In lesson 5, I read the text once first, then made 3 mistakes. In lesson 6, I didn't read it and made 17 mistakes out of 65. Since these translations are still part of the learning process, I conclude that reading the dialogue once before doing the translation is a good idea, and that's what I'll be doing from now on. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4881 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 224 of 344 02 February 2013 at 1:27am | IP Logged | ||
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I've been taking a middle route to the active section: I read and listen, then try and
repeat it. For the exercises I try to do them orally, then I transcribe them, then I'll test myself again. I definitely focus more on getting the exercises right than the dialogues. Though I've noticed the difficulty of the exercises varies widely in the Assimil I've done. For Greek they're not even possible the first round - they introduce too many new words and concepts. I have a better chance the active wave. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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