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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6445 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 17 of 191 01 July 2007 at 1:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree that no one thing teaches fluency (unless you define 'one thing' extremely broadly; certainly, if it's defined as any specific course on the market, you're correct). However, I fervently disagree that drills are necessary. I believe they can be a useful supplement, but I've seen no evidence that they're required. I'm currently studying Dutch pretty much purely through Assimil. I think in the language at times, and find myself producing new phrases. In German and Esperanto, which I'm also studying (more intensively than Dutch) without drills, and in the case of German, even without exercises, I frequently think in the languages and construct new phrases in them. When I want to express something, -and- I know the correct way, it just flows, in both languages. I've been shocked at how easily some basics come to me when I try to speak German with native speakers; whole, correct and nearly-correct sentences just come. There are a lot of limits - my vocabulary is tiny, and I don't use most tenses yet, etc - but I rarely speak haltingly in German, unless I have no idea how to say something. I'm not conversational in German, by any means; but the way that I can express the little bit that I know how to is a stark contrast to my Italian after similar amounts of more traditional study, with a focus on grammar, in a classroom, with a textbook, and exercises and oral drills. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tpiz Diglot Groupie United States cvillepayne.blogspot Joined 6370 days ago 77 posts - 79 votes Studies: Portuguese, English*, French Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 18 of 191 01 July 2007 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Who here has done assimil japanese? I am currently doing that and, what did you do to get through it? did you just listen, recite, and go through the 1st book? Or did you do exercises, and did you memorize everything or just try to understand?
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6445 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 19 of 191 01 July 2007 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
I haven't done Assimil Japanese, but I've spent a significant amount of time with other Assimil courses over the last few months. I listen, recite, shadow, and try to understand in the passive phase. In the active phase, I say and write out translations into the target language (in your case, this would be Japanese), from the source language. I haven't done any of the exercises yet; if I find any particular reason to, I will. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tpiz Diglot Groupie United States cvillepayne.blogspot Joined 6370 days ago 77 posts - 79 votes Studies: Portuguese, English*, French Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 20 of 191 01 July 2007 at 8:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
how quickly did you get through the passive phase? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6445 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 21 of 191 01 July 2007 at 8:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
At roughly the recommended speed. I do a lesson a day, generally - but there have been a few days where I've repeated a lesson, and near the beginning, I also skipped a few days entirely. The active phase starts at lesson 50 - you continue doing lesson 50 onwards passively, but you -also- start actively doing lesson 1 the same day you do lesson 50 passively, then lesson 2 passively and lesson 51 actively, etc. I also did at least one restart, around when I decided to start taking it more seriously. At a lesson a day, the recommended speed, it takes just under two months to get to the start of the active phase, although the new lessons are done 'passively' the first time through too, and only done actively 50 days later. This method works fairly well; I'm quite happy with how my Italian, German, and Dutch are going. I'm less happy with my French; I make significant errors, primarily but not entirely in spelling. The other 3 languages are much more phonetic than French, and so my approach of looking at the book fairly little (at least once per lesson, but sometimes not more than that) has worked significantly better with them. Early on, I tried seven lessons/day for Italian, as I'm already 'fluent' by some definitions in it. There was almost no new vocabulary for me, and it was useful for pronunciation, but it didn't help me much with small points of grammar (things like preposition use) and idiomatic phrasings when I tried to use it this way. I'm much happier with one lesson/day. In a similar vein, I tried starting an 'onion' approach to Persian, where I'd listen to each lesson once, and then continue to the next, _without_ using the book; this had some minor advantages, but I found it quite clearly to be a net loss. This would probably change if I followed the rest of the onion steps - it's not really fair to blame it without doing so - but regardless, the normal way is much less frustrating. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sheetz Senior Member United States Joined 6383 days ago 270 posts - 356 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Mandarin | Message 22 of 191 02 July 2007 at 1:34am | IP Logged | |||||
I'm currently going through Assimil Japanese and I do the lessons daily as instructed along with the exercises. I also place the sentences in a flashcard program to memorize. However, not long after beginning the course, I quickly discovered that the complexities of Japanese script pose significant problems if one wishes to write out the translations into the target language during the active phase. Unless one possesses a photographic memory it's simply impossible to learn all the kanji during the passive phase without any outside study. Assimil does offer an accompanying volume for the course which teaches writing the kanji presented in the dialogs, so that is one solution to the problem. Another solution would be to focus on the spoken language and/or romaji and do the translations in one of those two forms. A third solution, which is what I'm doing, is to learn the kanji separately. To accomplish that, I've begun going through Heisig's Remembering the Kanji. Ideally, this would have been done before starting Assimil, but since I didn't have the foresight to do that I'm doing them both concurrently. (I should note that I do have a small advantage over others studying kanji in that I already know some Chinese characters.) And as I come across new kanji in the Assimil lessons I just skip ahead in Heisig and try to develop mneumonics for those on a case by case basis. Edited by sheetz on 02 July 2007 at 1:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7227 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 23 of 191 03 July 2007 at 3:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Marc, Can you elaborate on what makes the Assimil Esperanto dialogues awful. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tpiz Diglot Groupie United States cvillepayne.blogspot Joined 6370 days ago 77 posts - 79 votes Studies: Portuguese, English*, French Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 24 of 191 03 July 2007 at 3:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yea the problem is that I don't know how to judge how quickly I am going through the lessons and I feel like I can go faster but I don't want to rush past it because im eager to move on but it seems like I don't know if I am learning anything at all, just listening to someone reading a script to me is pointless, as if I'm just listening just for the fun of it, if anyone gets what I am saying.
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