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Assimil Experiment Group Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4703 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 289 of 344 11 March 2013 at 7:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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O Novo Francês Sem Esforço - Leçons 29-35:
This block was the hardest to remember so far. It makes sense, since we're going further on the book, but since I did it for a long time, I kept forgetting the new words from previous lessons. Anyway, it created some doubts like: when should I use "lequel"/"laquelle" or just "quel"? The revision lesson was very easy, showing the superlative and comparative, nothing hard. There were many funny lessons, but I feel that I'll have to review all of them to fix better some of the vocabulary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Noorina Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie Saudi Arabia Joined 4309 days ago 14 posts - 16 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)*, Arabic (Gulf)*, Japanese, English Studies: French, Korean | Message 290 of 344 12 March 2013 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Assimil
Passive 53 active 4 wow... I tried to listen to a french story -fairy tales for kids - on my smart phone ( while reading it ) I could understand a lot!!! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5369 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 291 of 344 13 March 2013 at 1:31am | IP Logged | ||
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VICTORY!!!
Well, it's a passive victory. I finished the passive wave! Since I'm at lesson 37 of the active wave, I've pretty much still got 1/3 of the work left. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4877 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 292 of 344 15 March 2013 at 2:30am | IP Logged | ||
A big thing would be to acknowledge up front that: - Some sections will take longer than 30" a day - The active wave will definitely take longer than 5" a day - You will likely want supplementary material Based on this and other Assimil I've done, it really helps to work through a grammar- oriented course (such as FSI, or Teach Yourself) at the same time. I wish there was a stronger link between the dialogues and the exercises. Both the Spanish and Ancient Greek would introduce new vocabulary and grammar in the exercises. I also like Assimil's listening / reading method a lot, although I think that was more effective for me with French and Spanish, and not so much with Greek. I think you really need to adopt the standard approach to non-European languages. Edit: Assimil definitely stays in my repertoire when I am doing serious language study. For my wanderlust languages, though, I'd probably only use it for the Romance or Germanic tongues. Edited by kanewai on 15 March 2013 at 10:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JSBR_C Newbie United States Joined 4303 days ago 19 posts - 38 votes Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 293 of 344 19 March 2013 at 1:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Chinese With Ease
Passive: 100 Active: 51 Feels good to be nearly done with passive. I'll be done by the end of this week. My library has Teach Yourself Chinese. As soon as my passive is done I'm going to move to that as I finish out my active. If I like how that goes I'll buy my own copy. Nothing much to report other than that. I continue to surprise myself at how well the active goes. I feel like I'm about to take a test when I do it. Kind of a pain. It's easier to just sit back and absorb passively. And I wonder how many I'll get wrong. I work through it and it's usually not too bad. Feels like it really is kind of "with ease". It goes easier than I expect it will. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5369 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 294 of 344 24 March 2013 at 5:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just a quick update on my Assimil Roumain: The passive wave having been finished, I'm now
at lesson 44 of the active wave. This means that I've done less than a lesson per day since my last update, but the main reason is that I've been doing other kinds of activities, such as correspondence with partners, which I find a lot more motivating than Assimil. Still, I find a mixture of both activities helpful. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JSBR_C Newbie United States Joined 4303 days ago 19 posts - 38 votes Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 295 of 344 29 March 2013 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Chinese With Ease
Passive: Done Active: 55 Took a bit longer to finish these last few passive lessons than I had planned. Some of my earlier new passive lessons didn't have a lot of new material, but these last two weeks were usually a more typical level of difficulty. 12-15 new words per. I just wasn't able to get through both a passive and an active lesson most days over the last two weeks. So now with passive done I shouldn't have any trouble doing a daily active lesson. I'd loaded new words into Anki so I plan to spend more time with Anki rather than rushing it as I have been doing. I'm working with Teach Yourself, which has been pretty much very easy for the first four chapters. I'm going to go a little easy on new vocabulary and try more to formulate sentences with the words I already now, then try this out with a language partner on italki. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Marishka Newbie United States Joined 5236 days ago 25 posts - 56 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French, Dutch | Message 296 of 344 31 March 2013 at 3:15am | IP Logged | ||
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Dutch With Ease
Active Wave: Lessons 64-70 I don't know if it's because so much of the vocabulary is being repeated or because the time limitations and stress of having to do two waves at once is behind me, but I had an easier time translating the dialogues in this set of lessons. I still made plenty of mistakes, but there was a definite improvement over the last set of lessons. That little bit of success and more time on my hands made me eager to once again try reading something other than my Assimil lessons. Reading the Dutch translation of A Moi Paris was such a positive experience that I decided to try reading something a little more ambitious. Fifty-one years ago I came home from school and noticed a package lying on the kitchen table. It was addressed to me, so I opened it. Inside the package was the latest selection from the Weekly Reader Children's Book Club. The title was The Tide in the Attic, a novel about a family who survived a terrible flood in the Netherlands. The family in the book was fictional, but the flood was all too real. That devastating flood covering 500,000 acres took place from the night of January 31 to February 1, 1953. 100,000 people were evacuated. 1,794 people lost their lives in the flood, and a lot of livestock also drowned--20,000 head of cattle, 2,300 horses, 1,400 sheep and 144,000 chickens. 3,810 houses and 450 farms were completely destroyed, and 4,000 houses and 1,000 farms were badly damaged. I lived far from the Netherlands, deep in the heart of Texas, but I was born in 1953, so that gave me a connection to the events that were described in the book. I remember thinking, "Oh, this happened the year I was born." This was the first book I ever read that dealt with a real-life tragedy, and was the first book that ever made me cry. I was on the edge of my seat as I read this story of a family who was trapped in their farmhouse by the rising waters. They had to spend the first night of the flood up in the loft of the house after the flood inundated their farm. The family brought upstairs with them their dog and cat, and also a young goat that had been accidentally left behind when the farmer had taken his other livestock to a nearby dike in an effort to keep them safe. The water climbed higher and higher until the loft was also flooded and the family had to climb onto a makeshift platform made of furniture and boxes. During the second night of the flood, they finally had no other option but to climb out onto the roof. But something went terribly wrong when they tried to lift the goat from the loft up to the roof. This is the part of the book that broke my heart: "When at last she had been pushed through the hole, she suddenly butted Jacob so hard that he had to let go for a moment. She kicked her hooves left and right and, before Jacob could catch hold of her again, she was slithering down the roof. "'Witje!' Kees screamed out. Sjaantje buried her head in her mother's lap and burst into tears. "'Hold on to her. Hold on!' Kees called out to Jacob as he anxiously watched Witje sliding down into the guttering and beyond and then hit the turbulent waters below. "Jacob reflected for a moment and then shook his head. No, he decided, there was nothing he could do now, much as he regretted it. Bob started to bark. Watching tensely, the five of them could see the poor creature disappearing under the waves. After a while she surfaced. She tried to open her mouth, but a wave covered her completely and she disappeared again. Then she came up once more and her eyes were wide open in panic. In his mind's eye, Kees could see her drowning just like the cow that morning. Witje's front hooves came up above the water for a moment, and then the swell sucked her away, past the sheds and out into the polder. "Now Kees began to sob helplessly. He was the son of a farmer and he had spent so many wonderful days with the farm animals, the horses and cows, the foals and calves, with the goats and with his dog. Over the years, he had grown to understand them and to love them all. And now, quite suddenly, his lovely little Witje had been taken from him so cruelly. "It was too much for Kees. Jacob put his arm round him and tried to comfort him but Kees went on sobbing--no longer a big boy, but an unhappy little child. "Mr. Wielemaker had meanwhile come up on the roof as well. Hearing Witje fall off, he had pulled himself up too quickly, and made the stack of boxes on which he had stood wobble precariously. When his weight was off it, the whole stack collapsed and toppled into the flooded loft. "Now they had no means of getting down again. There was nowhere else for them to go--except... Mr. Wielemaker dared not think the thought even to himself." It has been many decades since I last read The Tide in the Attic, but after I registered for the Assimil Experiment, I remembered it and thought it might be fun to read it again before beginning the experiment. When I opened the book, I was surprised to see that it had originally been published in Dutch under the title Een Helicopter daalde. Of course, I immediately set out to try to find a copy. I searched for the book at Bookfinders.com. Lo and behold, there was one copy of the book available from a bookstore in Amsterdam. I was on that 'buy' button like a toad on a june bug! Fast forward to the present. I just finished reading the first two chapters of this book. In Dutch. Wow. What an amazing experience. Een Helicopter daalde is on the same reading level as the Harry Potter books, but it holds my interest in a way that no Harry Potter book could, since it's a link to my childhood that evokes so many emotions. There have been times during the Assimil Experiment when I have felt discouraged and was pretty much hanging on by my fingernails, but being able to read this book in Dutch makes it all worthwhile. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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