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Criticised Assimil programs

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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes Post Reply
67 messages over 9 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 7 ... 8 9 Next >>
alang
Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 7211 days ago

563 posts - 757 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish

 
 Message 49 of 67
30 June 2014 at 10:42pm | IP Logged 

@newyorkeric,

Thanks for the review. I just saw a similar critique regarding the same type of errors
regarding the tone misprints on Amazon.com. Now I know what to expect and I will be
priming with something else, before using Assimil.

@Jeffers,

Thanks as well. I noticed I have four books from Peter Jones to learn Latin. The
Ancient Greek one looks like the newspaper cartoon like the Learn Latin book. I will
have an idea how the teaching approach is after I finish the Latin book first.

1 person has voted this message useful



Arnaud25
Diglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 3832 days ago

129 posts - 235 votes 
Speaks: French*, English
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 50 of 67
01 July 2014 at 4:19pm | IP Logged 
Assimil Perfectionnement Russe (french edition)

I've read the book entirely and I'm going to study it carefully a second time.
It's a good course, mainly focused on modern spoken russian (almost nothing on the classical russian culture or litterature: only one lesson on the history of Russia and a few things on the history of St-Peterburg, for exemple.). One of the speaker on the audio is very difficult to understand: he speaks quickly and swallows the words. The audio is rather fast, anyway.
One major drawback is that the first edition was not proofread correctly (it's the one dating from January 2014) and the book contains more than 50 mistakes or typos.
The majority of them are not very important and will be noticed only by native french people, but it's annoying anyway.
There are also a few mistakes in the grammar tables and notes, and that's a problem if you don't know perfectly your russian grammar: bad point.
As I was reading the book, I noted all the typos in a document and sent the document to the Assimil "reading board". So perhaps the second edition will be clear of all the mistakes I've seen.
For me, it's nonetheless a good course. I definitively recommand it (just wait for the second edition of the book if you're not in a hurry :o))

Edited by Arnaud25 on 01 July 2014 at 4:46pm

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JamesS
Diglot
Newbie
Australia
Joined 4205 days ago

20 posts - 30 votes
Speaks: English*, Indonesian
Studies: Javanese, German, Mandarin

 
 Message 51 of 67
02 July 2014 at 1:13pm | IP Logged 
newyorkeric wrote:
I am adding my review of Chinese With Ease that is in my any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=6414&PN=0&TPN=11" >log. Here it is for those
interested:

Since I'm close to the last lesson of Chinese With Ease, I thought I'd comment on the quality of the course.
I'm not going to actually speak of the quality of the lessons and the recordings, which are both good. The
dialogs are sometimes funny as expected, the actors are good, and usually the vocabulary is helpful,
everyday language.


I have been using Assimil for both Chinese and German and I have to say I have mixed feelings about their
Chinese course. Whereas the German course gallops along at a frenetic pace, is full of wit and, when I'm not
feeling completely overwhelmed, gives the impression of taking me to a reasonably advanced level in at least
passive skills, the Chinese offering seems to just amble along and delivers a fraction of the amount of content
despite having 6 extra lessons and much longer audio recordings. With all of the dialogues thrown in about
buying stamps, arranging business meetings and so on from time to time it also seems to resemble the
'glorified phrase book' approach nowadays taken by Colloquial and Teach Yourself. Assimil German never
seems to waste a single sentence throughout the whole book but Assimil Chinese has whole lessons, even at
the end of the second volume, that are so laughably easy that they are simply a waste of time.

On the other hand, now that I'm doing an active wave and am focusing more on learning the characters (I
went through all of the lessons first just using the pinyin), it does seem to be very useful for learning to read
and write. There are a manageable number of new characters per lesson and many are repeated at a
reasonable rate. This has actually got me thinking that it might after all be the best approach for a language
like Chinese. It is still my main resource for Chinese and I wholeheartedly recommend it but it nonetheless
does look a bit poor when compared to other Assimil offerings.

Edited by JamesS on 02 July 2014 at 11:05pm

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newyorkeric
Diglot
Moderator
Singapore
Joined 6369 days ago

1598 posts - 2174 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian
Studies: Mandarin, Malay
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 52 of 67
04 July 2014 at 7:05am | IP Logged 
Overall, I thought the pace was not too slow. Chinese naturally has to be introduced at a slower rate since it is more difficult than most European languages. Also, the Chinese course speeds up a lot in volume 2. I never felt any lessons were laughably easy. In fact, it took me many, many revisions to finish off volume 2 (passively, I didn't do an active wave).
1 person has voted this message useful



Crush
Tetraglot
Senior Member
ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5855 days ago

1622 posts - 2299 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto
Studies: Basque

 
 Message 53 of 67
05 July 2014 at 10:03pm | IP Logged 
Personally i found the Chinese course painfully slow and way too easy. Some of the lessons were better than others, but as a whole i found it pretty boring. I didn't finish the second course, so the last few lessons might be better. Still, though it was a bit faster than the first course it still felt way too slow.
1 person has voted this message useful





newyorkeric
Diglot
Moderator
Singapore
Joined 6369 days ago

1598 posts - 2174 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian
Studies: Mandarin, Malay
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 54 of 67
07 July 2014 at 3:27am | IP Logged 
Crush wrote:
Personally i found the Chinese course painfully slow and way too easy. Some of the lessons were better than others, but as a whole i found it pretty boring. I didn't finish the second course, so the last few lessons might be better. Still, though it was a bit faster than the first course it still felt way too slow.


Just curious to know what was yours and James's background with Chinese when you did the Assimil course.
1 person has voted this message useful



JamesS
Diglot
Newbie
Australia
Joined 4205 days ago

20 posts - 30 votes
Speaks: English*, Indonesian
Studies: Javanese, German, Mandarin

 
 Message 55 of 67
08 July 2014 at 12:39pm | IP Logged 
newyorkeric wrote:
Just curious to know what was yours and James's background with Chinese when
you did the Assimil course.


I had something of a background in Chinese so I started at around lesson 35, although I have since found
that there is a bit of material in the earlier lessons that is new to me. I'd never gone very far beyond the basic
survival level though, so I was certainly still a beginner when I started with Assimil.

I guess the point of my earlier post is that it is not a bad course for learning Chinese but it's just not what you
might expect from an Assimil course. I think you are right to ask whether it could ever be done along the lines
of an Assimil course for a language more closely related to English (or French) but all the same it does have
some frustrating elements to it.
1 person has voted this message useful



JamesS
Diglot
Newbie
Australia
Joined 4205 days ago

20 posts - 30 votes
Speaks: English*, Indonesian
Studies: Javanese, German, Mandarin

 
 Message 56 of 67
21 July 2014 at 6:58am | IP Logged 
In the past I've heard that Assimil Arabic is a shocker - has anything changed on this front?

Edited by JamesS on 21 July 2014 at 7:16am



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