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Ranking of Assimil courses | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Wilco Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6331 days ago 160 posts - 247 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Russian | Message 1 of 64 15 April 2011 at 4:45am | IP Logged |
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I think it is a well known fact among language learners that the different Assimil
courses are not equal in quality or depth. Independently of the "difficulty" of the target language, I found that some of their courses offer a much more deep understanding not only of the language itself (vocabulary, grammar, etc.) but also of the culture. I am looking to determine which course can be characterized as the "best": the one that offers the most complete and comprehensive learning experience. How would you rank the different Assimil courses you've taken? I am not looking for a random score, but only for a ranking, in declining order of quality. For example, in my case : 1. Russian with ease (Nouveau Russe sans peine) 2. German with ease (Nouvel Allemand sans peine) 3. Chinese with ease (Chinois sans peine) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6950 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 2 of 64 15 April 2011 at 5:37am | IP Logged |
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1. German with Ease
2. Spanish with Ease I'm not very far along in Spanish with Ease, but I hate the fact that some of the lessons (at least the early lessons) aren't stories or dialogues at all, just disjointed sentences meant to illustrate a grammar point. To me, this isn't "with Ease" at all, but just like grammar drills. I've actually had to skip a few because they're so boring! And flipping ahead, it seems that there are more dialogues later on, but they're not as humorous and charming as the German ones. I've been wondering if anyone who's gotten further along in the Spanish course feels the same way I do. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 64 15 April 2011 at 5:50am | IP Logged |
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Good: German, Italian, French, Dutch.
Ok: Persian, Polish, Japanese. Avoid: Esperanto, Arabic. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6143 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 4 of 64 15 April 2011 at 6:20am | IP Logged |
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I'm not sure about the comprehensiveness of the learning experience, but I'll order the ones I have enough experience with according to how much I liked working through them.
1. Dutch with Ease 2. Romanian with Ease (Le Roumain Sans Peine) 3. Persian with Ease (Le Persan Sans Peine) 4. Swedish with Ease (Le Suédois Sans Peine) 5. Japanese with Ease I wouldn't say that any of these are bad though, it's just that I didn't like the Japanese course as much as, say, the Romanian one. Note that the only one I have completed is Dutch with Ease, maybe because I enjoyed it so much. I've also used Assimil somewhat for Polish (Le Polonais Sans Peine), Swahili (Le Swahili Sans Peine), and Dutch again (La Pratique du Néerlandais) but haven't worked through them enough to make an accurate judgment on them. Edited by ellasevia on 15 April 2011 at 6:21am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ChiaBrain Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5809 days ago 402 posts - 512 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish* Studies: Portuguese, Italian, French Studies: German | Message 5 of 64 15 April 2011 at 6:26am | IP Logged |
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I remember reading a post of Professor Arguelles' saying that their "El Catalan Sin
Esfuerzo" (Catalan for Spanish Speaking People) was their best work. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5101 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 6 of 64 15 April 2011 at 12:41pm | IP Logged |
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I hope someone will grade French Without Toil. I haven't tried any others so I have nothing to compare it with.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6230 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 7 of 64 15 April 2011 at 1:05pm | IP Logged |
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I would bet you could set up a formal survey on surveymonkey.com (or a similar survey site) where people could
rank the Assimil courses and maybe give a weight to "comprehensiveness", humor/enjoyability, audio quality and general usefulness of the courses. Then the data would be in one place for everyone to see. My own experience: Assimil Hungarian with ease - good L' Nouveau L'Arabe sans Peine - fairly good Le Serbo-Croate sans peine - pretty bad 8 persons have voted this message useful | |
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6373 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 8 of 64 15 April 2011 at 1:52pm | IP Logged |
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1. Hungarian, Dutch, French, Spanish, German, Norvegien, Suédois, Danois, Portuguais, Italien 2. Chinese, Russe 3. Japanese --- 1=Excellent, 2=Good, 3=Fairly good --- I own Assimil: Hungarian, Dutch, French, Spanish, German, Chinese and Japanese. They are all great but the Japanese one is a little worse than the others due to too many boring irrelevant words for a beginner and the over stressed Japanese voices. But it's still usable and better than practically any other Japanese course out there. The best? I'm not sure. They are all pretty wonderful. The European language ones are definitely the best and quite comprehensive. On my computer I have older electronic copies of Assimil: le Norvegien, Suédois, Danois, Portuguais, Italien, and Russe. They all seem as good as my hard copies but the Russian one is a bit older and appears to cover less and go a bit slower. I think that's because it's considered a bit harder than the others languages. The only courses that compare are old linguaphone courses and this 1950's Japanese course I found in my university library. Five word books with word lists, five books full of L1 text lessons, three Kanji books, and an explanation book. Of course, no recordings. It's ridiculously comprehensive. It does seem to me that language courses were better in the past. Exception being we now have audio easily available. Edited by zerothinking on 15 April 2011 at 1:59pm 9 persons have voted this message useful |
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