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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 |  | |
| maxb Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 7186 days ago 536 posts - 589 votes  7 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 97 of 184 07 February 2006 at 5:55am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm beginning to think that if you use the right method chinese (at least the spoken language) shouldn't be harder to pick up than any other language. The toughest thing to learn in chinese is passive listening. If you don't know at least 95% of the words they are saying on a recording it can be very tough to follow what is being said. For instance my active vocabulary for German is very small probably around 3000 words. However I can still follow news broadcasts do due the large number of cognates with my native language (Swedish). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tuffy Triglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 7037 days ago 1394 posts - 1412 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German Studies: Spanish | Message 98 of 184 07 February 2006 at 1:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Fanatic: very interesting to read about what you write about Assimil (I also have it but only have done 2 lessons or so). I have one question though: with Pimsleur I get the change to recall what I have learned. I have to translate a sentence or have to think what I would say in a certain situation. With Assimil the audio only consists of Spanish sentences. So you don't get a change to practise 'recalling' what you know. Do you have any thoughts on that or tips? Because the way I see it is that you only seem to listen to Spanish and recognizing words.
Having said that, do you think too it is useful to simply listen to these lessons next to Pimsleur or Platiquemos. So is it enough not to actually study but simply and ONLY beeing able to UNDERSTAND the new conversation each day? Would that improve once speaking skills in the end too? I just heard "negro" for instance for black tabaco. And there was also something for blond. But I don't recall it yet. But when I hear the sentence (in combination) I will understand it. Is that beneficial, 'learning' in a relaxed way like this? Or would it be better to put all my time in the main course I'm folowing? By the way, your post does make me doubt again about Platiquemos. It's very interesting to see that FSI even has competition here when it comes to the same amount of words. But Platiquemos does seem to be more my learning style (Luke gave me a nice comparison between the two courses; I recognised myself more in Platiquemos (explaining everything you say right away instead of later on). The perfect solution would be to be able to do them both at the same time I gues. Hence my questions above if just listening and understanding would help. Anyway, very interesting all this :) Just have to find what suits me best. Edited by tuffy on 08 February 2006 at 2:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7149 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 99 of 184 07 February 2006 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The idea is that you listen to the lessons and simply understand during the passive stage for two months. You don't worry about being able to recall the words. If you want to remember a word, you simply look it up. But you are not concentrating on speaking skills yet. When the active stage begins, you go back to lesson one and do the exercises and translate from your own language to the foreign language. This is easy by this stage because the vocabulary has passed from your passive to your active vocabulary by so much repetition. This is how you learn a language by being in the country. You have learned the grammar and sentence construction by means of repetition and assimilating what you read and hear. They do recommend that you speak the lesson through either with the speakers or repeat after each sentence. I found I didn't need drills to learn good German grammar or sentence construction when I learnt with Assimil. (German is the only language I have learnt by Assimil alone and it is the language in which I am most fluent outside of English.) So, listening to the recordings, doing the passive then the active waves gave me the success I needed. There is no mental translation or trying to remember rules of grammar. The practice you get from Assimil is enough.
I wouldn't like to advise you one way or the other. By all means, try Assimil alongside your other programs and see how you go. If it works, use it. If it doesn't, drop one or the other. Maybe you could make Assimil your main learning course and use the others for extra practice. Find what works for you.
I will do a word count on some of my Assimil programs, both old and new versions to see if there is a difference, to see how the vocabulary is introduced. Assimil certainly beats Pimsleur hands down but I would like to see a comparison with FSI. Edited by fanatic on 07 February 2006 at 6:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Thuan Triglot Senior Member GermanyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6933 days ago 133 posts - 156 votes Speaks: Vietnamese, German*, English Studies: French, Japanese, Romanian, Swedish, Mandarin | Message 100 of 184 07 February 2006 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Simply listening to the lessons is just the passive wave. During the active wave you work through the lessons again, but this time you have to reconstruct the original dialogue from the German translation and do some excercises (again translations). This should be enough. By using the vocabulary and grammar that you aquired through the passive wave to create your own sentences you will consolidate your knowledge for the active usage.
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| tuffy Triglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 7037 days ago 1394 posts - 1412 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German Studies: Spanish | Message 101 of 184 08 February 2006 at 2:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I see. Final question about this :)
So only doing the passive wave, will that improve ones skills a lot too (only listening). Maybe I can drop the active wave and leave that to Platiquemos then? By the way, good to know that the excercises are for the active wave. I was already doing them. So the passive wave is only listening. It can't hurt to do that a little :) Instead of watching Spanish tv perhaps (for now). Thanks for the info! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7149 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 102 of 184 08 February 2006 at 2:41am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The idea with the active wave is that you go back to the first lesson of the passive wave and it is well and truly learnt by then. You work with what is already familiar to you. So, doing the active wave with another program really defeats the purpose. All the same, there is no reason why you can't use other methods as well as Assimil.
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| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7149 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 103 of 184 08 February 2006 at 2:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I have just done a word count for the first four lessons of Italian Without Toil.
Lesson one introduced 29 new words. Lesson two introduced 22 new words. Lesson three introduced 30 new words. Lesson four introduced 29 new words. That is a total of 110 words learnt in 4 days at an average of about 27 words a day. At that rate you easily learn the basic 3,000 words in 5 months. In fact, at that rate you will learn them in less than 4 months with another 5 or 6 weeks to put the words into your active vocabulary. That is a great return for your time and effort. You have also learnt grammar and sentence construction and you can express yourself quite well in the language. It is easy to learn 27 words a day using the Assimil method because you are under no pressure to memorise them or call them from memory. They simply go into your memory, in context, through repetition and repeated use in the active stage. You don't even have to worry that you have the previous lesson completely mastered before you move on to the next. What surprises me is that I learnt the Assimil Spanish at the rate of two lessons per day (50 odd new words a day) for the first three or four weeks. On the other hand, I found the words easy to recognize because I was fluent in French at the time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7149 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 104 of 184 08 February 2006 at 4:31am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I will amend the figures in my last post.
On day five you learn 25 new words and on day six you learn 18 new words. Each seventh lesson is for revision and notes on grammar and usage resulting from the previous week's lessons. At the rate of one lesson per day, which is recommended, you would learn 128 words in the first six days of study, no new words in the revision lesson, which means you learn about 128 words in a week, times four gives us about 500 words per month. These are not words learnt like on flash cards but every word is learnt in context. The Assimil Italian Without Toil has 140 lessons. This is equivalent to 20 weeks, or about 5 months. At the rate of 125 words per week you would learn 2,500 words by the end of the course. Because they are the most frequent and important words, you can speak the language quite well after finishing the course. I found I had to learn the technical vocabulary that was needed for my job and there is also more to learn in specialized areas such as local travel etc. Because you have the basic vocabulary it is easy to ask what new expressions mean. Edited by fanatic on 08 February 2006 at 4:33am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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