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Tags: Shadowing | Polyglottery | Alexander Arguelles | Reading | Language Program | Learning Technique/Method | Assimil | Book | Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| ficticius Pro Member United States Joined 6108 days ago 23 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German Personal Language Map | Message 169 of 278 05 September 2008 at 9:27am | IP Logged | ||
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Seeking advice - I am in the second wave of Assimil German. I'm finding that my reading comprehension is a million times better than my speaking ability. This really concerns me as my goal is to speak German as well as read it. I thought speaking fluency was the main benefit of the Assimil method. Any suggestions?
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| josht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6447 days ago 635 posts - 857 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Spanish, Russian, Dutch | Message 170 of 278 05 September 2008 at 10:29am | IP Logged | ||
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A few things:
1) Have you been reading the lessons out loud during the passive wave? I've found that in going through Assimil's French course, reading the lessons out loud (repeatedly) helps me a great deal. You also might consider shadowing the audio; if you're unfamiliar with the idea of shadowing, search the forums, as it's been talked about a lot. I don't personally like shadowing, but others swear by it. 2) Lower your expectations a bit. It's quite common to have your passive abilities far surpass your active skills. It's obviously one thing to recognize a word, and quite another to quickly be able to produce it in speech. 3) This doesn't have to do specifically with speaking, but I think it is worth noting. I own the Assimil German course, but I purchased it after I'd been studying German for quite a long while. Beyond a few words here and there, I can understand all of the course. What I wanted to note is this: the English translations are awful. Often, the English sentence doesn't resemble the German sentence in the least. The French course by Assimil is excellent in regards to this, so I'm unsure as to what happened. This may give you a lot of trouble in regards to the active wave; if the English and German translations correspond to each other poorly, obviously, you're going to have trouble translating from English to German. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ficticius Pro Member United States Joined 6108 days ago 23 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German Personal Language Map | Message 171 of 278 08 September 2008 at 11:28am | IP Logged | ||
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If the English to German translations are not accurate, doesn't that make it difficult to translate from English to German? I love Assimil and have heard great things about it till now.
If Professor A., Fanatic, Volte or any one that has experienced success with Assimil German can offer up some advice, it would be most appreciated. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| josht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6447 days ago 635 posts - 857 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Spanish, Russian, Dutch | Message 172 of 278 08 September 2008 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, it does make it more difficult. In regards to their success with Assimil: Professor Arguelles and Fanatic both used one of the older versions of the course, which were generally of better quality. For example, in my copy of Assimil's Russisch ohne Mühe from the 1970s, when the German construction varies a lot from the Russian, often a word-for-word German translation is given to help clarify things. I've checked out one of the older German without Toil courses from 1950s before, and it too had many word for word translations, to help with the active wave.
And to clarify, I'm not saying that Assiml's stuff is bad. Even with its problems, the new German with Ease is still a wonderful place to start when learning the language. It just happens that the German course isn't nearly as good as the French one (in my opinion). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7147 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 173 of 278 09 September 2008 at 2:35am | IP Logged | ||
I had no problems with the German to English translation for German Without Toil. I have a feeling that there were a couple of words that could have been translated better. I heard a mother call her son and he said he would come "gleich." She said, "Not gleich, but sofort!" As I recall, in German Without Toil, both words are translated as immediately. I didn't find that a big deal but it could have caused embarrassment. By the way, my brother has just returned to Germany to work for a few months. He learnt German using Assimil German Without Toil alone and he has just been tested as being suitable to go straight into the "very advanced" German class run by his company. Edited by fanatic on 09 September 2008 at 2:44am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| phouk Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 6039 days ago 28 posts - 48 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Russian | Message 174 of 278 09 September 2008 at 4:00am | IP Logged | ||
Both "sofort" and "gleich" can be correctly translated as "immediately", and both can be used interchangeably in most situations. There is a slight nuance between them in that "sofort" can also mean "instantly" and "gleich" (especially in spoken speech) can also mean "shortly". So maybe this exchange could be translated as "I'm coming in a sec." - "Not 'in a sec', NOW!". But I can't imagine a situation where using one word instead of the other would cause any embarrassment. Edited by phouk on 04 March 2009 at 8:46pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 175 of 278 09 September 2008 at 7:56am | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't had any particular problems with German with Ease. As for English translations (and translations in general), there are a lot of ways to say things. Regarding "immediately" (from the gleich/sofort example), we'd better not take the translation too literally or we might encounter problems if we see them as perfect synonymes.
(By the way, the FSI courses are full of examples like "as you may remember, this word means --- but is often used as the English word --- and also in this case".) As long as I make sure that I listen to real German (and internalize it), I don't put too much focus on the "translating back into German from English" (where I think that some translations may cause problems). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zorglub Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 7001 days ago 441 posts - 504 votes 1 sounds Speaks: French*, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin | Message 176 of 278 10 September 2008 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | ||
I often read old Assimil was better than the currents versions are. Well I can't really tell and my own experiments are based on the current versions of Italian (not"with ease") , "Spanish", and German" as compared to the previous editions that date back to the 1985 or 95 5 don't remember. I do not find the newer versions worse. But of course I have no idea about the much older versions. What I know is they were very efficient for me. And I'm always dubious when I hear "it used to be better before". It has always been better before and to day is the before of next year. There's a bilingual Matin/french book for those interested, "Quid novis sub sole" , that shows that ancient Ital... oops: Roman authors already stated everything was better before, pupils better educated, less problems in the Middle East etc.... End of rant. Z Edited for bad spelling. Edited by zorglub on 11 September 2008 at 5:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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