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How many Assimil active wave lessons/day? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5443 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 9 of 14 30 June 2012 at 8:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I know that feeling. When it becomes too difficult I just turn to another station or turn it off and do something else instead.
I'm not sure if it matters. I have both books, and I plan to do Using after WoT. If you do decide to do WoT, the first 50 lessons or so will probably be very easy for you, so you could do them really quick, or skip them altogether.
As far as I can see using French doesn't mention the active wave at all, so I'm not sure what we're supposed to do either. I guess you could do the active wave the same way as in New french with Ease, if you want to. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5522 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 14 30 June 2012 at 9:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I gave up around somewhere between lesson 10 and 20 of Using French, because I couldn't properly do one lesson a day (without taking over an hour), and I'd just done six straight months of Assimil. Instead, I started reading online newspapers, and a few months later I picked up a really interesting 450-page non-fiction book. I just needed a different structure at that point, though I kept up my daily study schedule. To make progress at the beginner levels, I think it helps to be very consistent. A daily Assimil lesson is perfect. But at the intermediate levels, I personally needed to fill in my weak points, which meant mixing up my study plans on a regular basis. That's not to say that you shouldn't keep doing Assimil (the two upper-level courses are great). But look for ways to broaden out and work on weak areas. Some possible ideas for after you finish New French With Ease. Some of these may help, some of them may not. Pick anything which sounds promising, and do it when the time feels right. 1) Flip through a copy of Essential French Grammar or another tiny, cheap grammar book, if you haven't already. You goal here is quickly firm up your implicit knowledge. You're looking for "Oh, so that's how that works!" and not "Oh, good grief, do I have to memorize all this?" 2) Try some writing over at lang-8. I wrote a couple of short paragraphs a day for 30 days (less than 100 words), and it did wonders for me. Just blather on about anything which amuses you, proofread it as best you can, and post it. Your goal here is to fix your grammar and spelling, and to lay the groundwork for speaking. 3) Read a fun book and mark any interesting vocabulary words (either on a sheet of paper, or maybe a faint underline with a mechnical pencil). Go back later, look some of them up, and make Anki cards. Your goal here is to pick up maybe 1,000 useful words that aren't in Assimil, which will give you a tremendous boost. Don't try to learn more than 10 Anki cards per day—it's tempting, but you'll pay horribly later on when the reviews pile up. And delete any cards which annoy you. Or if Anki doesn't do it for you, try out Iverson's word lists. 4) Reward yourself with a couple of French CDs that you really like, and listen to them endlessly. If you need ideas, either ask around here or go have fun over at LyricsTraining. 5) Look around for a good source of bandes dessinées—the French produce a huge variety of them, ranging from funny to awesome to heartbreakingly serious. They're shorter than regular books and they have pictures. If none of these do it for you, don't hesistate to try something else. :-)
Le Petit Prince is a great book. You should definitely try it. (I think there's a copy over at LingQ with an accompanying audiobook, if you're interested.) But even though it's short, there's some gnarly grammar that you don't need to worry about any time soon. Keep an eye out for the imparfait and the third person of the passé simple, but ignore the more esoteric literary tenses like the imparfait du subjonctive, which you'll almost never see elsewhere. And it's not cheating to re-read the English version first! The trick with native materials is to find something which is interesting and not too hard. I probably tried 5 books before ploughing through that 450-page monster. The others were too hard, too boring, or just not the right book for me at the time. As long as you're looking at French words and having fun, it's all good. Anyway, I hope some small piece of this helps you in a tiny way. Bon courage ! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4626 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 11 of 14 30 June 2012 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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tractor - Good point about the Using active wave. I may just have to make up my own starting/stopping points for it. Right now though, I personally think it would be better for me to skip WoT and just go to Using/Business while doing some reading and lang-8 then move on to movies asap because I have a large collection waiting to be watched. Also, I want to move on to Italian or Latin soon because I'm starting to get a thirst for something new in the mix along with French. (Is this what HTLAL means by wanderlust?)
emk - Wow, thank you for that advice. I couldn't even get anything like that out of my professor last semester. Well, I have my doubts about him because when I said I was going to self study along with the class, he said, "No don't bother. Just listen to the radio and read comics." This was a 101 class, mind you. This is why I love this website, thank you so much guys. :D Edited by sillygoose1 on 30 June 2012 at 11:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5555 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 12 of 14 01 July 2012 at 11:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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My experiences with Using are similar to emk's - there is just so much in it,
including idioms that you don't really find in any learning material that you a) really have to know your stuff from NFWE and b) you need to spend a good amount of time on the lessons (more than a day at times) to assimilate what's in it. This came as a shock to the system after NFWE. I am going through French Without Toil again on a daily basis and, having done it three years ago, it is remarkable what I don't remember - so these books need constant revision. Edited by Elexi on 01 July 2012 at 11:30am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| conroy Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5064 days ago 36 posts - 51 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 13 of 14 01 July 2012 at 1:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I felt the same about Using French, but would also add that I felt I got a lot out of it and that working through it was well worth the effort.
Another difference with Using French is that on the audio the pronounciation is less clear than on NFWE, which I think on an advanced course is a good thing, even if I missed the incredible Rs one of the women on NFWE had! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Enrico Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 3735 days ago 162 posts - 207 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Italian, Spanish, French | Message 14 of 14 27 August 2014 at 6:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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A quote from Spanish Without Toil:
If you are in a hurry, learn two lessons a day, by studying half an hour morning and evening, and in addition reading over during your spare time. Edited by Enrico on 27 August 2014 at 6:20pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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