|
 |
After Assimil, going back | ||
Tags: Assimil | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| soclydeza85 Senior Member United States Joined 3908 days ago 357 posts - 502 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 1 of 12 22 July 2014 at 3:16am | IP Logged |
|
I have 23 lessons left in Assimil (passive wave) and I was thinking: finishing all 100 lessons (or however many there are for the given language) is definitely good for familiarizing oneself with a language. However, I feel like Assimil is a goldmine that, if all of the content is mastered, can definitely take a learner to a well rounded, proficient level in a language; but this can't be done just by doing 1 passive and 1 active wave.
So I was wondering: after completion, do any of you go back over the program and really study the content in depth? What exactly do you do? What is your strategy/method? Edited by soclydeza85 on 22 July 2014 at 3:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 2 of 12 22 July 2014 at 3:50am | IP Logged |
|
I think doing a second active wave is essential. I did it in Spanish and that is when everything started falling into place. I did the first two waves quite thoroughly, but it was the third wave (the second active wave) that really brought it together.
5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| kerateo Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5647 days ago 112 posts - 180 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, French Studies: Italian | Message 3 of 12 22 July 2014 at 4:28am | IP Logged |
|
I'm doing "Le nouvel allemand sans peine" with about also 23 lessons to go in the
passive wave so I know what you feel. But I think I would need like 5 to 10 waves to really master the course, should it be done?. If you keep learning new things every wave I dont see why not. There's a popular guy here called the professor who made a review video of the assimil programs and in one part he says that it is neeeded at least a year to really master a program. If you take into account that it takes around 5 months to do the two standard waves and that at the third wave you would probably start translating at least 2 lessons per day, I think in a year you would at least do 5 waves. In L'Italien sans peine" there's a paragraph around lesson 70 in which the author (Monsieur Cherel himself) ask you to start a third wave, while still doing the first and the second!! (I wouldn't do many waves of Italian since my native language is spanish but for russian...) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 4 of 12 22 July 2014 at 1:07pm | IP Logged |
|
Good point, Kerateo. Prof A suggested that a typical Assimil book could be usefully used for about an hour a day for about a year. Personally, I agree with him that anything over that would not be too useful, but think that working out of the same book for that long (while still useful) would get a bit boring. The problem, as I see it, is that when you use the book that much you begin to simply memorize the lessons instead of actually learn the language. Another option is to simply set the book aside for six months or a year and then come back to it and do another quick active wave.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 12 22 July 2014 at 3:02pm | IP Logged |
|
I did a passive and active wave of Assimil's New French with Ease, and reached a slightly wobbly A2. This was enough for me to more-or-less read an actual French book. But while I was preparing for my B2 exam, I went back and looked at NFWE, and I noticed it was absolutely crammed with useful little expressions and idioms that I had forgotten and relearned later on.
So I can easily believe that it's worth doing a second active wave, or quickly reviewing an Assimil course after reaching B1. But as much as I love Assimil, I seriously doubt that it's worth doing the course over and over and over, especially if that means that you indefinitely delay native materials and actually trying to speak the language. Here at HTLAL, several people have tried endlessly reviewing very good beginner courses, and most of them wound up stuck in the high beginner levels despite heroic effort. The people who really seem to zip through the intermediate levels are those who dive in and actually use the language: they do a Super Challenge, or they Skype obsessively, or they use the language in their day-to-day life. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's a good idea to start supplementing Assimil with native materials as early as lesson 50 or so. The people who did that, like tastyonions, made far faster progress than I did with my pure Assimil approach. Of course, early on, you may need to work with very short snippets of native materials, and rely heavily on parallel texts to make sense of them. See iguanamon's Multitrack approach for more suggestions. In summary, I can believe that reviewing Assimil now and then is pretty useful up through B2. But massively overlearning of one or two courses while avoiding real-world use of the language seems to work out pretty badly for a lot of people. 12 persons have voted this message useful | |
| soclydeza85 Senior Member United States Joined 3908 days ago 357 posts - 502 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 6 of 12 22 July 2014 at 3:47pm | IP Logged |
|
First off, thanks for the replies, there's definitely some good insight in here.
I like the idea of periodically going back for more active waves. I also figure it would be good to listen to the audio periodically; since I would already be familiar with the lessons, I could focus on the nuances like prepositional usage and contractions and such. I would think that it might be good to memorize some of the lessons, even to the point where I could recite an entire lesson just from memory - everything (vocab, colloquialisms, etc) would be in context rather than just strictly memorizing a vocab set with Anki or Quizlet. It's just an idea though. But I do agree that it shouldn't remain my main program, nor should I allocate as much time to is as I am during the initial passive/active waves. emk - I do agree about moving on and not trying to "master" a program, though. When learning other things in the past (non-language related) I would have the mentality with some things I should take my time and build a rock-solid foundation before moving on and I would go over and over the same stuff, but it never really got me anywhere. I always excelled more when I would just move on to more advanced material and not look back (since working on advanced material would involve using the basic stuff anyway). I have been working with a lot of native material though (mainly listening) but I do have to get my native-reading in order. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7206 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 7 of 12 22 July 2014 at 4:05pm | IP Logged |
|
I'm guilty of going over the Assimil French courses again and again. I've got 4 of them. Today I was briefly considering putting some of the vocab in Anki. Not that I won't do that someday. I use native materials as well. I also do FSI. There's no real good reason for me to learn French other than I like it. There is not a monetary nor familial nor social reason to learn it.
Here are some of the upsides of learning an Assimil course from top to bottom. 1) If you quit the language for a few years, the amount of material you will have to refresh to is small. It will be very familiar. 2) Some thought of someone who felt they knew something about teaching the language went into the course. 3) From looking at Professor Arguelles spreadsheet logs as well as a personal testimony on youtube, it's clear that he found mastering an Assimil course to a degree beyond which the authors of the course describe was beneficial for him. One way was that a language he later aborted was quickly revised by a 2 hour "shadowing march" with Assimil. So, I personally think of getting a course like Assimil and some others down is being in position to activate the language, such as through Skype or a social relationship when the need or desire arises. If one's personal constitution doesn't support mastering a course, there's nothing wrong with that. You have to listen to your heart. Another method is probably more effective for that individual, and perhaps even the one who is a stickler for perfection, which is fantasy anyway. The trick to getting more out of repeated trips through a course is to vary your methods. Reading, writing, look away repeating, shadowing, etc. The main thing is just to keep going. Edited by luke on 22 July 2014 at 4:25pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4048 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 8 of 12 07 August 2014 at 5:27pm | IP Logged |
|
Hi guys.
I personally don't feel like using Assimil alone, but I find it a very useful instrument to acquire the language, most of all to enhance one's arsenal of idioms and colloquialisms and oral comprehension. More than do one passive wave and several active ones, I would learn the language structure studying grammar actively while working with assimil in only passive mode in a spaced repetition fashion. An idea can be to start studying the lessons, with one lesson being restudied (only in audio mode if my comprehension of every sentence is complete, another couple of times with translation and with transcript is what I hear isn't clear in my mind, and not putting more than 10 minutes) after 3, 7, 15, 30 and 90 days from the first time. Assuming that Assimil Dutch is 84 lessons, for example, like this: Day # -----> lessons Day 1 -----> 1 Day 2 -----> 2 Day 3 -----> 3 Day 4 -----> 4, 1 Day 5 -----> 5, 2 Day 6 -----> 6, 3 Day 7 -----> 7, 4 Day 8 -----> 8, 5, 1 Day 9 -----> 9, 6, 2 Day 10 -----> 10, 7, 3 Day 11 -----> 11, 8, 4 Day 12 -----> 12, 9, 5 Day 13 -----> 13, 10, 6 Day 14 -----> 14, 11, 7 Day 15 -----> 15, 12, 8 Day 16 -----> 16, 13, 9 Day 17 -----> 17, 14, 10 Day 18 -----> 18, 15, 11 Day 19 -----> 19, 16, 12 Day 20 -----> 20, 17, 13 ...... Day 31 -----> 31, 28, 24, 1 Day 32 -----> 32, 29, 25, 2 Day 33 -----> 33, 30, 26, 3 Day 34 -----> 34, 31, 27, 4 Day 35 -----> 35, 32, 28, 5 ....... Day 92 -----> 62, 2 Day 93 -----> 63, 3 Day 94 -----> 64, 4 Day 95 -----> 65, 5 Day 96 -----> 66, 6 ..... Day 173 -----> 83 Day 174 -----> 84 (and without putting the assimil's sentences in anki, that I find it an enormous amount of time that I can use to study the grammar) And then close the Assimil Dutch's book forever and do only advanced grammar and native resources. Edited by tristano on 07 August 2014 at 10:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
