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Assimil x4 for Film Studies - TAC’14 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4247 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 81 of 99 02 April 2014 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks! Glad to hear you found it useful. Perhaps I'll start including courses completed again, though maybe with two separate categories for courses I only worked through once verses courses where I absorbed the majority of the content. Edited by YnEoS on 02 April 2014 at 11:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4247 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 82 of 99 05 April 2014 at 11:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Might not update right away next week, because I'll be taking a short trip to Chicago for a sci-fi movie marathon and to catch up with some friends. These will probably be my first days without language study in months, but the upside is I'll have 2 very long train trips to study on before and after. This is also coincidentally very well timed as I should be doing my last lesson of my most difficult Assimil course, Le Russe Sane Peine, on the day before I leave.
I'm sort of seeing this as a transition point in my studies, where I'll be moving away from a more regimented textbook based learning style towards more free form use of native materials. Of course I won't be finished with all my textbooks, I'll probably still be finishing up Assimil Hungarian and I have lots of intermediate textbooks to use, but textbook routine will hold a much smaller place in my studies. Up until now I've kept my Anki Subs2SRS reps fairly low, which is why I'm still on my first movie with most of my languages. Next week I'm going to start experimenting with greater amounts of reps and hopefully this is going to become my daily maintenance/slow expansion of my languages and then I'll spend any additional time I have working on other activities. This is kind of a big shift for me in terms of language learning, so I'm sure lots of this will change as I get more experience with native material study. Actually I've been moving through my routine a bit more quickly this week so I started doing a bit of L2->L3 L-R to help with the transition. Listening-Reading This Week -Le Petite Prince - French Audio, English Text -Le Petite Prince - French Audio, German Text -Le Petite Prince - French Audio, Russian Text Thoughts: Never read Le Petite Prince before, but it's a really great book and very useful for language study. I wanted to experiment with using similar methods I've been using with Assimil, getting familiar with repeated use of the same audio, and using it to understand the text in different translations. Overall I'm quite happy with the results so far. Since the translations I was using weren't very literal it was sometimes hard to follow the denser paragraphs, so I often paused the audio for some of these sections and skimmed through them quickly with a pop-up dictionary and then it became much easier and more productive to work through. Team Start French Intensive Study: French For Reading Chapter 10 lesson 71 Subs2SRS Films *Le Grand Jeu (Jacques Feyder, 1934) Thoughts & Extensive Studies: L-R Le Petite Prince made up most of my extensive french study this week. German Intensive Study: --- Subs2SRS Films *Der Kongreß Tanzt (Erik Charell, 1931) Thoughts & Extensive Studies: I decided to put aside German for Reading book for a while, because there was too much unfamiliar vocabulary. I think the course works better for checking grammar comprehension than is does for picking up new words. So I'll return to it later when my vocabulary is bigger. I have to admit I'm not really sure what to do with my German studies, though it's a bit of a lower priority language for me, which is perhaps why I haven't been willing to put the time into it that I need to. For now I'll just keep up my Subs2SRS routine and try to involve it in my L2->L3 studies and see how that goes. Team Катюша Russian Intensive Study: Assimil Le Russe Lesson 84, Le Russe sans Peine Lesson 95, Perfectionnement Russe Lesson 14 Subs2SRS Films: *Строгий юноша (Абрам Роом, 1934) Thoughts & Extensive Studies: Le Russe sans Peine lessons have been getting much easier as I approach the end. Perfectionnement Russe has been a challenge but enjoyable course to use. My first attempts at doing R-L with Russian have been encouraging and I'm looking forward to doing more. Russian is probably going to be my main focus for a while, along with French. Team *jäŋe / *ledús Hungarian Intensive Study: --- Subs2SRS: *János Vitéz (Marcell Jankovics, 1973) Thoughts & Extensive Studies: I stopped bothering with my intensive wave of Assimil Hungarian, because it was moving too slow for my level of Hungarian. Since I understood a lot of most of the dialogs I found it more productive to do semi-intensive shadowing where, I work through the text and then if a lesson is a bit I've had some difficulties using this course for learning grammar, now that I've worked passed a lot of those problems, it's actually much easier to use for vocabulary acquisition. Now that I'm shadowing larger sections of it at once, I'm realizing that a lot of vocabulary is re-used quite often, and any new words are quickly reinforced in new contexts. At the moment I would say I've cleared most of my knowledge gaps with lessons up to 49, and I get the gist of the lessons up to 73 (Out of a total 85). Going to be focusing very heavily on finishing this course over the next week or two. Experiments and Wanderlust Romanian Intensive Study: --- Subs2SRS: *La 'Moara cu noroc' (Victor Iliu, 1955) Thoughts & Extensive Studies: Still on hold, still anticipating picking it back up when my routine thins down. With my other languages I could start comfortably using Sub2SRS before finishing my Assimil courses, so I may experiment with more casual Assimil shadowing and perhaps some L-R and R-L to try and bring myself up to that level, and then see how far I get using primarily Subs2SRS. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4247 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 83 of 99 10 April 2014 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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One quick update before my trip
L-R Log The Little Prince - French Audio, Hungarian Text (~2hours) The Little Prince - Russian Audio, French Text (~2hours) The Duel - Russian Audio, English Text (~4.5 hours) I started incorporating some Russian audio into my L-R and what a revelation it seems to be. Lots of obscure words I'd barely encountered I now see repeated everywhere, and it's really useful to hear common vocabulary inflected in many different ways. Also picking up new vocabulary as well. I'm starting now to re-think my attitudes towards the listening from the beginning philosophy. I thought before having Assimil audio and using Anki Subs2SRS would be enough, but now I'm starting to think some earlier L-R might be a lot more useful. I had a pretty easy time moving through Assimil courses with French, and understood most of Using French just from hearing the audio without the English translation. Originally I attributed this between the transparency between French and English, but I also did L-R with The Three Musketeers in French and went through all the French in Action videos and audio. And now I'm wondering if that also played a significant role in my French development. Anyways, I plan on doing a huge amount of L-R with Russian audio on the train now, so I hope to report back soon and see how much of a difference that makes with the difficulty of the intermediate Assimil Russian course. Edited by YnEoS on 10 April 2014 at 8:59pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4247 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 84 of 99 11 April 2014 at 1:03am | IP Logged | ||
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Well I completely forgot the main reason I was updating my log in the first place today. I finished Assimil Le Russe Sans Peine!!! Freedom at last!! I wouldn't say I've completely absorbed the course, but I think eventually it gets to a point where there's not enough unknown vocab to justify too much review. I'll probably revisit it in the future though.
Currently doing scriptorium with 0 Assimil courses now, going to focus more on L-R for a while, though I'll still finish working through my current Assimil courses and probably review my old ones from time to time. Edited by YnEoS on 11 April 2014 at 3:19am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5159 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 85 of 99 11 April 2014 at 7:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome to the free world! I can understand your feeling.
I must admit I made a much dirtier and vaguer use of Assimil Russian (any editions). At first I really believed that working through all 3 editions in a light way would be enough for me to assimilate anything. It didn't help the fact the long notes would distract me by forcing me to memorize declensions and vocabulary - that is, to do exactly the opposite of assimilating. I think I really believed I'd learn enough from the first one - the old without toil. When I tried the others, I was already fed up with the format to be able to actually force memorization upon something I could recognize vaguely as familiar but couldn't remember anything else from. Now with Russe 90 I have the chance to fix it, for the 4th time - yet I find this book way better than Assimil, just like I found it better for Chinese, too. Only that in the case of Chinese it is more complete and in the case of Russian it has shorter lessons, but, all in all, it goes on in a much saner pace than any of the Assimil volumes. I still haven't got Assimil Perfectionnement Russe, but when I do, I will study from it (still have 84 lessons at Méthode 90 to go, though). Yet I have to say that Assimil lived a sort of an identity crises with its Russian materials, and this since the early edition. I believe you are going to have much more visible results once you start L-Ring native materials. It is the natural sequel to Assimil, only that you don't have to waste time with some of the constraints of the Assimil method (the outrageous number of notes in the case of Russian, for example). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4247 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 86 of 99 17 April 2014 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yea, I think I also expected to get more cross talk out of using multiple Assimil courses simultaneously, but I think the vocabulary can vary so widely, especially towards the later lessons, that there ends up being very little synergies between them, so you can't really rely on the other courses for reviewing forgotten vocab.
I'll have to give Methode 90 a try sometime, especially when I start learning Mandarin Chinese ~10 years from now or however long it takes me to reach basic proficiency in Cantonese. I probably won't look into the Russian course til I finish up the intermediate Assimil and see where I'm at then. I am tempted to give their German course a try though, since some reviews claim it as their strongest, and my German studies could use a bit more order. ------------------------------------------------------------ I'll be doing my statistical update on Saturday as usual, and I'm thinking of a new layout to better suit my recent changes in study methods. Still I have some new thoughts coming back from my trip and I think it's better to type them out now rather than try to remember everything. L-R with Russian on the train was productive, but a bit of a disappointment because of some failures with the materials. I did about 12 hours of L-R Бесы [Demons] by Достоевский [Dostoyevsky], but I had trouble keeping track of all the characters and the overall narrative and eventually it felt like I was just looking at words and not reading a story so I decided to try something else. I was hoping I could get through Белая гвардия [The White Guard] by Михаи́л Булга́ков [Mikhail Bulgakov], but after a few hours my audio seemed to stop corresponding to the text I was reading so I had to give up on that as well. I did work through Candide by Voltaire with French Audio and English text, though. I know before I left for my trip I was eager to be done with Assimil and scriptorium and to move predominantly into listening reading, but I think I just needed a short break from the rigid schedule. Now that I've worked through a number of Assimil courses and there aren't so many different generations to work through for each language, I think some continued scriptorium on the few remaining courses will continue to be beneficial in addition to my L-R studies. For Russian, though I've made some good progress with Perfectionnement Russe and would say I've absorbed many of the earlier lessons, but for now I think I'm going to put it aside for a bit and focus on finishing up it's predecessor Le Russe. The last few lessons of Le Russe get quite long and there's lots of new vocab, and I noticed it was taking away the amount of time I was spending focusing on Perfectionnement Russe. Since there aren't many lessons left of Le Russe I'm going to focus on learning them well with scriptorium and shadowing and then start working through Perfectionnement Russe so I can make sure I have thoroughly worked through all the content. With Hungarian shadowing has worked pretty well, but the last 35 lessons have remained a bit tricky, so I think I'm going to start around lesson 50 and do scriptorium + shadowing to finish the course up. I'm still not feeling like committing much work to German, but I may try and finish working through the 1st generation Assimil course German Without Toil without scriptorium and then perhaps try and move onto a more regular routine with the intermediate courses. French I'll continue with my previous routine. I originally meant to start doing Romanian after I got back from my trip, but I think I want to limit my Assimil to a few courses for the time being, so I'm going to put Romanian aside until at least I get a better grounding in Hungarian. Hoping to pick it up later this year though. Edited by YnEoS on 17 April 2014 at 8:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4247 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 87 of 99 19 April 2014 at 7:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Feeling pretty happy about my routine, now focusing on just 1 course in each language, and the rest of the time I have for study is going into Subs2SRS and L-R. I think I've figure out a new posting format to cover my studies better, this ones going to be a bit more flexible and descriptive than past ones, and I'm not necessarily going to have the same categories for each language. The primary difference is I'll now list Courses Absorbed vs Courses Worked Through. Absorbed means that I reviewed and made sure I absorbed the majority of the content, though I might not have learned it 100% inside and out. Course worked through means I went through it and didn't try to learn everything, just trying to get whatever content stuck with me.
Not sure exactly how to handle my L-R yet, but my inclination is to just post it when I do it and leave it at that rather than building some huge list of everything I've read. For Russian I'll soon start tracking how many pages I do over the next 20 months, for the Super Challenge, but I think I would get bogged down trying to keep stats on all my languages. Eventually I want to stop logging all my activity for my languages and simply get back to my film studies and simply use languages as needed. But since I've been documenting my Assimil and L2->L3 experiments so far and don't want to leave everything unfinished, I think it makes sense to use Russian as a case study and document my progress until I hit basic proficiency. With my other languages I might be less rigorous about logging my activity and just try to give a general sense of how progress feels. Onto the metrics, going to re-list the L-R that I mentioned in my last post. L-R Log The Possessed - Russian Audio, English Text (given up after ~12 hours) The White Guard - Russian Audio, English Text (given up after ~2 hours) Candide - French Audio, English Text (3 hours) Team Start French Courses Absorbed: Pimsleur I,II,III,Plus, Michel Thomas Basic Course, Assimil French Without Toil Courses Worked Through: Michel Thomas Advanced Course, French In Action, Assimil Using French, FSI Basic Course I Subs2SRS Films -Le Grand Jeu (Jacques Feyder, 1934) Current Study: French For Reading Chapter 11 lesson 77 Thoughts: Yay French! German Background: 5 years of public schooling Courses Absorbed: Assimil New German with Ease Subs2SRS Films -Der Kongreß Tanzt (Erik Charell, 1931) Current Study: Methode 90 Allemand Lesson 3 Thoughts: So far I haven't really been taking German studies very seriously, and I realize I need to really work through a solid course inside in out to feel like my German skills have been completely reactivated. Since Expugnator was enthusiastic about the Methode 90 course, I decided to read up on it a bit. Since most reviews seem to mention that the German Methode 90 course is the best overall, and since none of the Assimil Germans are particularly exceptional, I figured this would be the ideal way to try the course out. So I'm planning on working quite hard on this course and hopefully after this I'll be comfortable enough to work through the intermediate Asssimil courses and German for Reading. Team Катюша Russian Courses Absorbed: Pimsleur I,II, Michel Thomas Basic Course, Le Russe Sans Peine Courses Worked Through: Pimsleur III, Madrigal's An Invitation to Russian Subs2SRS Films: -Строгий юноша (Абрам Роом, 1934) Current Study: Assimil Le Russe Lesson 91 Thoughts: As mentioned before I decided to stop diviing my time between the basic and intermediate 3rd generation Assimils, going to focus on absorbing the remaining basic course lessons before returning back to the intermediate Assimil. Team *jäŋe / *ledús Hungarian Courses Absorbed: Pimsleur I Courses Worked Through: FSI Basic Course I Subs2SRS: -János Vitéz (Marcell Jankovics, 1973) Current Study: Assimil Ungarisch ohne Mühe Lesson 49 Thoughts: Focusing heavily on finishing up the Assimil course once and for all. I've wasted wayyyy too much time working through it with insufficiently light study methods. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5159 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 88 of 99 19 April 2014 at 11:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Funny that I "convinced" you on using Méthode 90 but I won't use it for German myself,
for which I used almost exclusively conversational courses like Assimil and the ones from Deutsche Welle. I don't think I've 'absorbed' any of my courses, so I admire your dedication. I'd rather separate my courses between 'went through' and 'skimmed through'. Trying to reach a B1 at four languages, I'm also going through this moment of letting go textbooks and focusing on native materials. I thought this would never happen for languages such as Chinese, but it eventually will. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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