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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 4252 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 33 of 99 05 February 2014 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well I use different courses to fix specific deficiencies in my learning, so when I list something as completed, it means I've learned what I was aiming to learn from the course, but doesn't necessarily mean I've mastered it to the same extent as someone using it as their primary learning source. I try to be open about my methods and goals in my descriptions so as to not cause any confusion. Firstly, I'm a primarily focused on passive learning, though I do little bits of active practice here and there. I typically use FSI as a way to learn grammar through usage, as I've found that the fastest way for me to pick up grammar points is by seeing a lot of sentences illustrating the same specific idea. With FSI Hungarian, I used Audacity to remove the pauses from the audio, and each day I shadowed a lesson with the pdf and only paused to skim the grammar explanations which I use mainly to see what points the lesson was teaching and in later passes to answer specific questions that I had after going through the drills. Certain transformations I would attempt to do ahead of the recording, but I didn't slow down or change my routine if I was unable to make them all. I did the course in a series of waves doing each lessons a total of 3 times, using the following pattern. Day 1 - Lesson 1 Day 2 - Lesson 1 Day 3 - Lesson 2 Day 4 - Lesson 1 Day 5 - Lesson 2 Day 6 - Lesson 3 Day 7 - Lesson 2 Day 8 - Lesson 3 Day 9 - Lesson 4 ...etc I found that my first time shadowing I would get the gist of the grammar points and usually have a lot of questions of certain instances that I didn't fully understand. The second pass I answered most of my questions and had a much more solid understanding of the grammar. The third pass was mostly review to make sure I still understood the grammar points after some time had passed, and occasionally I would pick up some extra nuance that escaped me the first time. My only requirement for progressing forward was that I understood all the grammar points at play, and that I didn't feel overwhelmed and confused by subsequent lessons.
For Assimil, I use the exact same audio for alternate language bases of the course, so I'm not aware of any differences between bases. I haven't noticed any large differences in quality of translation in different languages, though it is sometimes interesting how a very simple sentence in one language will require a much longer and more complex sentence in another to convey the same meaning. Also occasionally when a word doesn't have a suitable exact translation between one language and another, it's usually very illuminating of both languages when the courses include a note with 2-4 possible synonyms for the word to try to hone in on its variations of usage. Edited by YnEoS on 05 February 2014 at 3:14pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4252 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 34 of 99 07 February 2014 at 3:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've noticed my German development has some gaps in certain areas even though overall I think it's my language with the most cemented knowledge and active abilities. For instance even though I feel pretty comfortable with verb forms and cases because we drilled them so much in high school, there's certain basic vocabulary that we barely covered, if at all.
I'd like to start using my German more without devoting much extra time to studying it specifically, so I'm going to try to balance out my Assimil studies and do some more stuff from a German base instead of doing mostly everything in French base. For a warm up I'm going to do a second wave of French Without Toil in the German base, Französisch Ohne Mühe. I felt pretty comfortable with the difficulty of the course on completion, but there's doubtless content I could use reviewing on, and I've always regretted that I didn't study it more seriously for the beginning part of the course. Originally I didn't think it worth the time to review, but I think doing so with a German base will make it more valuable. Plus I think it will be a nice way to get used to some German grammatical terms, so they're no so unfamiliar when I start studying new languages from a German base. Edited by YnEoS on 07 February 2014 at 3:09pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 35 of 99 07 February 2014 at 6:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What about reading? You can read comfortably with a roll-over dictionary. You'll have to
abdicate literature in the beginning if that's your ultimate goal, but you might as well fill in those gaps thanks to seeing more frequently words much more often than they are presented at textbooks (the former present vocabulary in an artificial frequency for teahcing purposes). 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4252 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 36 of 99 07 February 2014 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's a good suggestion, and I'm probably a bit too attached to my textbooks. I think though when I start reading I would want to have more time to dedicate to it, and focus on it more intensely. At the moment most of my energy is going into my Russian and Hungarian study and I use Französisch Ohne Mühe as one of my quick relaxing activities for when I feel a bit worn out between my more intensive studying. I have most of the French dialogs memorized so it's really easy and quick for me to figure out any unknown German vocabulary. And I'm also getting some native material exposure from my Subs2SRS deck and my German for Reading course.
Once I finish doing my Hungarian and Russian drills, hopefully within the next 2 months, I plan on incorporating much more reading into my routine. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 37 of 99 07 February 2014 at 8:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It is important to organize reading materials as a transition from Assimil. When I start
reading, after having finished this Assimil stage, I usually take no more than 2 pages at once. I usually start from a translated work for which I've got a translation or the original in English/French/Spanish/Portuguese, so it ends up being just a sequel from Assimil that I've arranged myself. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4252 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 38 of 99 07 February 2014 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I was thinking of stepping up my Anki Subs2SRS decks as my main daily routine once the Assimil courses finish up, and using reading for more of a free form study in my extra time in whatever areas I'm interested in focusing on. Though I do already have some reading materials set up for when I'm ready to start using them.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4252 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 39 of 99 08 February 2014 at 2:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Been a bit frustrated with the slow progress in my Hungarian studies this past week or so. I think I'm in need of more intensive practice, as Assimil's "literal" translations are no where literal enough for Hungarian so often I have to spend time decoding the sentence. And in cases where I'm not familiar with a decent amount of the Hungarian vocab/grammar sometimes the translation can be useless.
I've been pondering ways I can change up my routine without adding any additional tasks. For a while I even considered going back to a straight vocab Anki deck instead of Subs2SRS. At the moment I've decided to limit my Hungarian Subs2SRS deck to only 3 new cards a day, but I'm also going to look up every unknown word and figure out it's roots and post-positions to create my own hyper-literal translations. It will probably be a slow process, but I think in the long run it will allow me to figure out unknown words more intuitively. Edited by YnEoS on 08 February 2014 at 2:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tollpatchig Senior Member United States Joined 4005 days ago 161 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Maltese | Message 40 of 99 08 February 2014 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If you find yourself frustrated, maybe you should take some
of your language load off. Hungarian requires a lot of your time and effort. You seem to be most interested in French and Hungarian. Maybe you devote yourself to just the two. I know when I was trying to split attention between more than one language I wound up not progressing in any, so I decided to focus on my favorite and demote the others to hit list and come back when German goals are met. Its just a suggestion. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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