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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 |  | |
| Malcolm Triglot Retired Moderator Senior Member Korea, South Joined 7318 days ago 500 posts - 515 votes  5 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 25 of 184 04 May 2005 at 6:26pm | IP Logged |
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Seth, in Ultimate Japanese, there are four "at home" CDs and four "on the go" CDs. I ignore the latter. Each lesson has a one-minute dialogue at regular speed, followed by the same dialogue repeated with long pauses. After that there's sometimes a pronunciation section, then the vocabulary list is read by one of the speakers. I edit out everything except the initial dialogue at regular speed. If I were to keep the vocabulary section, I could easily have two hours. Did you edit yours in the same way I did.
Also, another point about Assimil is that the dialogue IS the lesson, whereas other courses use a dialogue to introduce the lesson. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Seth Diglot Changed to RedKing’sDream Senior Member United States Joined 7227 days ago 240 posts - 252 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Persian | Message 26 of 184 04 May 2005 at 7:15pm | IP Logged |
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Yes, I edited out everything except the dialogs read at a fast speed; and I still have more than an hour and a half. These dialogs are several minutes long though, even at the regular speed.
Strange that this one is so much longer than the Japanese version. 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 27 of 184 04 May 2005 at 8:12pm | IP Logged |
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Seth, I will try to explain why I like Assimil better than the other programs available. I am currently learning Spanish with Assimil Spanish Without Toil. I have Assimil programs in French (old and new) German, Russian, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Polish and Hebrew.
Assimil takes you right into the language from lesson one. The program is broken up into short lessons which can be learned easily in a day. Each lesson has a dialogue which usually forms a short story or joke, but is usually part of a continuing story of a foreigner visiting the country and learning the language and the customs and culture of the country. You feel you get to know the people involved. As well as the dialogue with notes they have a short exercise at the end of the lesson which uses no new words (generally) but makes use of what you know. There is also a humorous cartoon each day to illustrate the text. I do ten minutes in the morning with the book and recordings, I review the material through the day in five-minute slots when I can, and then again at night. You continue to the next lesson (at least I do) whether you feel you have completely mastered the previous lesson or not. You push the pace and don’t worry about grammar at this stage. This is the passive stage of learning the language. You just have to recognise the meaning. You note the grammar rules but don’t learn them. The recordings are entirely in the target language. You don’t switch your brain back and forth with each language as you listen. They use the same recordings for any language base. It is easy to review the past week’s lessons in five or ten minutes, as opposed to hours using tapes with drills. With Assimil, you are more likely to regularly review what you have done because of the nature of the recording. Also, I find the contents interesting. The recordings for each language discuss how to learn a language at home by yourself with a book and recordings. At the end of two months you have learned about one thousand words. You have got through about one and a half hours of audio but have a far greater return than from one and a half hours of Pimsleur. At the end of two months you begin the active stage, or second wave as they call it, and go back to lesson one. You translate lesson one from your language to the target language. You also work on the grammar of each lesson. This is now very easy because you have been working with the rules for the past two months. This is how you learnt the grammar rules of your own language. You spoke it first and then learnt why you say it that way. Each lesson has a colloquial translation as well as word for word so you know exactly what is being said. At the end of the course, about six months, depending on the language, you can speak and understand the language well with a working vocabulary of around three thousand words. This is a much better return than for Pimsleur. Don’t get me wrong. I have some Pimsleur programs and they do the job I want, but I don’t see Pimsleur as a serious way to learn a language. I learnt German in six months with Assimil German Without Toil and was able to communicate in Germany without trouble. I got a job translating technical texts from English to German, with the aid of a German engineer. I bought a technical dictionary because the technical words weren’t part of the Assimil program, but I was able to explain what was written to the German engineer and he wrote it in good German. I am currently about two months into Spanish Without Toil so I have a Spanish vocabulary of around 1000 words. I have Living Language programs, which I like, but they are nothing like Assimil. In fact, I don’t think Assimil is similar to any language program I have seen. The passive and active stages of learning a language are different to what I have seen anywhere else. 17 persons have 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 28 of 184 04 May 2005 at 8:53pm | IP Logged |
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I think that another aspect of having the recordings entirely in the language and in interesting dialogue form is that it encourages you to think in the language. I don't really feel I am progressing in a language if I have to consciously translate what I hear and what I say.
I feel that Assimil has helped in this regard. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7259 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 29 of 184 04 May 2005 at 9:01pm | IP Logged |
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Seth, I am sorry if I did not answer your question clearly before. In over a decade of obsessive fixation with languages, I found that the best receipe for beginning self-study of any language consists of:
a) recorded material consisting of uninterrupted speech (not pattern drills or the like) entirely in the target language + b) an accompanying transcript in the form of a bilingual text. What is "special" about Assimil is only that this is their basic format and that they offer it for so many different languages. However, they are certainly not unique in this. Linguaphone is not much different, and I have seen it employed by various and sundry smaller presses for a few other languages as well. Has Living Language adopted this format as well now? I honestly have not looked at a Living Language course for some time, and while I do remember them having dialogues, I also recall them as being more traditional in making a formal presentation of grammar. As Fanatic wrote above, Assimil courses do summarize grammar as well, but they do so after you have already learned it, not before, thus allowing you to learn grammar through the language and not learn a language by learning its grammar. All in all, Assimil courses simply lend themselves best to the shadowing methodology I favor. However, it is true that the tapes need to be edited more and more frequently, and that the newer ones are frustratingly slow while the old ones were sometimes absurdly theatrical. Unfortunately, there are very few perfect courses out there. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7259 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 30 of 184 05 May 2005 at 8:11pm | IP Logged |
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An additional note on taped materials. While I understand the pedagogical logic of speaking slowly and clearly for beginning students, it becomes maddening upon reptition when one is more advanced. This is why, in principle, Assimil courses speed up as the lessons progress, though sometimes they inexplicably do not.
Administrator, please don't make generalizations about this most successful and useful method on what I take to be your acquaintance with only its Italian and Serbo-Croatian programs. The Serbo-Croatian tapes are an anomaly in sounding throughout as if the batteries in your player are dying. I'm sure that if you listen to the tapes for the advanced Italian module, you will have nothing to complain about. Since not only I but Georges Kersaudy have found this system to be invaluable, and since Fanatic has now provided such good independent testimony to its worth, I really think that you owe it to yourself as a lover of languages to do some serious investigation of other programs, experimenting with learning from them as I and others suggested, and not expecting them to be like FSI, which they are not. You may come to agree that they are better, and I hope that you will at least come to revise your negative review and comments, which, as you carry so much weight as the sponsor of this forum, probably discourage a good many people from using a program that could be quite useful for them. Well, the solution, sometimes only partial, sometimes a fairly complete cure, is, as I have indicated before, to edit the tapes. How? Sit down in front of the book with a pencil in one hand and a digital watch in the other. Listen to all the tapes and write the number of seconds that all gaps last in the places where they occur. Rerecord the tapes, cutting out those gaps. Cut out the earlier lessons altogether if necessary. You should end up with 3000 words, in context, on a single 120 minute tape. To my mind, this compactness, together with that of the book itself, is a real plus. Since it is obviously beneficial to be able to study in various places and times, portablity of a method is quite important, and this is one that you can always easily have with you. Lamentably, as I have stressed before, Assimil courses are getting worse, not better, as time progresses, and this is a general trend in language publishing. If you are lucky enough to find taped materials from their c.1970 methods, you can probably use them as-is. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Seth Diglot Changed to RedKing’sDream Senior Member United States Joined 7227 days ago 240 posts - 252 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Persian | Message 31 of 184 05 May 2005 at 8:21pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks.
As long as one of the Assimil courses being sold ISN'T "Le Nouveau X..." is it still the real deal? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Malcolm Triglot Retired Moderator Senior Member Korea, South Joined 7318 days ago 500 posts - 515 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 32 of 184 06 May 2005 at 12:21pm | IP Logged |
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I'm using "The New French With Ease" and I like it. However, I had to edit it significantly to tighten up the audio. I used software, and I can't imagine having to edit them the way Ardaschir did (i.e. manually). I put the exercise section on a different track so I can set the dialogue to loop without having to listen to the exercise sentences every time. This a very efficient and convenient way to do it.
What are the main differences between the old and new Assimil French courses? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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