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Assimil versus US language programs | ||
Tags: Learner type | Platiquemos | Pimsleur | Reading | Language Program | FSI | Assimil | Accent | Book | Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7378 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes  12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 184 17 April 2005 at 12:22am | IP Logged | ||
One nice thing is that they have a lot of cultural and grammatical observations such as those you could get from a highly educated language teacher. Also, when translating a phrase they provide for both a word-for-word translation and regular translation. That means you don't have to try and figure out what the unexpected words in the foreign language phrase mean when they have no equivalent in your own. They also have traditional songs here and there in the program, with cultural explanations. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7258 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 10 of 184 17 April 2005 at 9:21am | IP Logged | ||
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Heartburn, I will bet you the $100 difference that the pricing for the Spanish course that you found is a typo, i.e, it should have been $75, just as the version with tapes was $72, discounted to $45.
I have never heard of an Assimil course coming with a CD-Rom. I don't know how to flip back to page 1 on this thread without losing this entry, but to whoever wondered how Assimil was different from Living Language or [Routledge] Colloquial language X - they are not at all the same. Again, as I said in my original posting, which I believe prompted this one, I consider Assimil to be the best method on the market, the only competition for a few languages being Linguaphone. "You" not only could learn a language with Assimil, "I" personally credit the method with being the foundation of almost every single language I have taught myself. For some languages, other methods are better, but if I knew nothing else, if I were given only the choice of Assimil or X, I would unhesitatingly choose Assimil. That said, Assimil, like all methods, is getting worse, not better, and if I knew nothing else and were given the choice between "Le nouveau X sans peine" and "Le X sans peine," I would unhesitatingly choose "Le X sans peine." I never tried a Pimsleur course until I was a sophisticated autodidact. They may be good for beginners, but they are tediously slow and simplistic if you have any experience whatsoever. As for FSI and DLI courses, while I respect different learning styles, I still cannot really understand their popularity with the other members of this forum. They were designed for American government officials, who are anything but renowned for their skill in learning languages. Apart from my experience, why do I believe Assimil to be the best method available for almost any language? Because the founder / inventor, Alphonse Cherel, was a heroic polyglot who went from country to country learning gathering experience learning languages before he ever sat down to write a course. 15 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7378 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 184 17 April 2005 at 11:21am | IP Logged | ||
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I'd say that for a person new to language learning, Assimil does require a lot of discipline to achieve real results. The lessons are very short, there are no drills, so it's easy to 'do' a few lessons, then look at the next one, then wonder which lesson you actually mastered. All the burden of learning, testing yourself and deciding whether you are fit to go to the next level is on the learner. That's quite a burden if you have never taught yourself a language and still somehow wonder if that is at all possible.
With US audio-lingual programs, all you need to complete the program is listen with attention to the lessons. With the drills and repetitions, by the time you are through with a cassette, you are relatively certain to have covered the material in the lesson. This means the quantity of self-discipline you need is smaller than with Assimil. As long as you listen for so many minutes every day and pay attention, the rest is more or less taken care of by the program. Ardaschir, I agree that Pimsleur is slow but if you do it when driving, it it quick enough as some attention still needs to be given to the road. But for an advanced language learner doing it in his study, the time can probably be better spent with another program. As for FSI and DLI I warmly recommend anybody who has never tried these programs to give them a go. It is indeed surprising that Americans, who are not known for speaking many languages, would make some of the very best language programs out there, but I believe they do. When you think of it, the market for language programs in English is the biggest in the world, and the considerable pressure during WWII to produce functional speakers of German, Japanese and other languages gave (as I was told) a considerable impetus to innovative language teaching that would not rely on teachers but rather on recordings. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7148 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 12 of 184 03 May 2005 at 12:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi, I am new to this forum but I have wanted to answer some of the criticisms of Assimil on the website for some time.
I have Assimil French, Spanish, German, Russian, Italian and Dutch programs and just the books for Hebrew and Polish. Here is why I like Assimil programs. The recordings are entirely in the language and cover spoken language. The lessons are interesting, humorous, and introduce you to the country, people and culture of the language. Each lesson can be completed in a day and covers a short dialogue and exercise and has a cartoon to illustrate each lesson. The course comes across as friendly. You work at the lessons at a fast pace until about the 55th or 60th lesson, then you go back to lesson one and complete grammar and translation exercises which are easy by now as you have been using the grammar for the past two months. While you do this "second wave" you continue with the first, doing the lessons at breakneck speed. I was speaking acceptable German in two months and speaking fluently in five months. I would read and listen to my lesson for the day in the morning, read the lesson through during breaks through the day, and then complete the lesson in the evening. I would spend between twenty and forty minutes working with the program. If I reviewed material, or missed a couple of days for any reason, it was easy to review the last week's lessons in minutes. In my early course (German Without Toil) the audio fitted on three cassettes (I recorded phonograph records to cassette tapes) and it taught a vocabulary of around three thousand words. By contrast, I have found other courses to be painfully slow. They take a full side of a tape to teach a dozen words. Review is painful as well. It is very easy to play the Assimil recordings in the car and review a huge vocabulary while you drive. I am currently working my way through Spanish without toil and I am enjoying it. The course is fine as a stand alone but I am using a whole lot of other material to consolidate what I am learning. I listen to Synergy Spanish with drills (which I like better than Pimsleur for a number of reasons) but it still seems like work doing the drills. I think Assimil might be a lazy way to learn a language, in spite of an earlier comment. I wonder if the value of the different courses really depends on the personality of the user. Some people seem to thrive on courses which I dislike, but if they work, then they are successful so far as I am concerned. BTW, Assimil gives literal as well as colloquial translations of the text which is very helpful. 23 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7378 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 184 03 May 2005 at 12:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome to the forum Fanatic!
I am glad that we can hear voices in favor of Assimil that have actually used it quite a lot to balance my own negative opinion that was not based on such a long testing. I am more and more in favor of Assimil and will probably alter my negative review on this website. Thanks for letting us know about your experience! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Platiquemos Hexaglot Language Program Publisher Senior Member Panama platiquemos-letstalk Joined 7164 days ago 126 posts - 141 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish | Message 14 of 184 03 May 2005 at 9:49am | IP Logged | ||
His comments are true about Americans in general, but the reverse side is that the fact that few Americans have obtained any language proficiency in school is what led to FSI developing its widely acclaimed series. The result is that, with the exception of languages that Europeans study from an early age on (French in many cases, and English for sure), American Foreign Service officers (not American government employees in general) have a great reputation for language proficiency, especially in the more uncommon languages. I think a big part of the fame of the FSI courses lies in the fact that they work even for people who don't have much language learning skill or experience. DIA is a little different, largely because of its student body which in large part consists of enlisted men who are being taught to monitor broadcasts or interrogate prisoners. Until a few years ago (at least--I can't be sure of the situation since I left), the military sent its higher ranking officers who were to be attaches at Embassies to FSI. Finally, a little defense of my compatriots (and brothers in the English-speaking world from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc, who also tend to suffer from "foreign language deficiency syndrome"). There is just not that great a need. English has become the second language of the world, and there are very few places you can go where you can't "get by" in English. This is not true for continental Europeans (even, I think the French, now that French has lost its former status as the world's second language) where they can go and "get by" in their native tongue. I don't want to excuses us Americans for not learning languages, just express that I believe there is some excuse. PS I'm not familiar with Assimil programs; I'm sure they're excellent. But so are the FSI programs. Edited by administrator on 04 May 2005 at 3:10am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7378 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 184 04 May 2005 at 3:16am | IP Logged | ||
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One thing about Assimil that I don't like is that the program is not very interactive. There are no pauses in the dialogs for you to repeat them, no oral exercises where you need to speak. All the active part relies strictly on your deciding to repeat aloud a part of the program or make up your own drill. I think the program could be used by a mute with absolutely no change required.
The dialogs are very slow and unnatural. The lessons are very short and easy and grammar is taught in a natural, inferential way. Pimsleur is better in terms of automatising small talk, being able to understand dialogs at natural speed and getting your pronunciation to near perfection, but it doesn't go as far as Assimil does. FSI is better for its drills and dialog and some programs go even further than Assimil. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Malcolm Triglot Retired Moderator Senior Member Korea, South Joined 7317 days ago 500 posts - 515 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 16 of 184 04 May 2005 at 3:47am | IP Logged | ||
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Francois, which Assimil program did you use? In the two programs I've been using, I found there were way too many long pauses in the dialogues.
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