haziz Bilingual Triglot Newbie United States Joined 3860 days ago 28 posts - 37 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian)*, English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 1 of 7 09 May 2014 at 3:12am | IP Logged |
I find myself in possession of two editions of Assimil's Spanish course with a third edition on it's way; namely I have
the 1957 edition of Spanish Without Toil, and a recent printing of the 1987 edition of Spanish With Ease. I also have
ordered, but have not received, the new English base version of L'Espagnol directly from Assimil. The 1957 and
1987 editions are definitely different and I believe the as yet unreceived L'Espagnol is also a new, different, text. All
three have an English base. I am tempted to do one lesson from each edition every day.
Has anybody tried to work with multiple editions of Assimil in parallel? If yes, was it helpful? I suspect that eventually
my enthusiasm may wane a bit but I think I can keep this up for 5 months or so.
Would this be helpful? Am I confusing myself? Will I hate the name Assimil by the time I am done?
Edited by haziz on 10 May 2014 at 10:08pm
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Mutant Groupie United States Joined 3909 days ago 45 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German
| Message 2 of 7 09 May 2014 at 4:09am | IP Logged |
Will you hate Assimil by the time you are done? I doubt it. Only you can decide, based on your own trial and error, whether or not you will get confused. Personally, I can say that yes, I would be a bit lost, but a lot of forum members have used the older Assimil courses in tandem with the newer versions with great efficacy. I personally only have worked through Spanish With Ease, and am currently working on New French With Ease. I have no desire to supplement my learning with the older courses, mainly because I'm also working through the Berlitz Self Teacher, Linguaphone, (gasp) Rosetta Stone (because of my eight year-old), and am also considering ordering a Hugo course for French. But I say go for it! And please, let me know how you found the new Spanish course in comparison with the older ones!
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Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5781 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German
| Message 3 of 7 09 May 2014 at 4:27am | IP Logged |
I did 2 editions of Assimil German in parallel and am currently working my way through a third. I think it's
just a matter of personal preference to be honest. FWIW I quite like it.
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Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian
| Message 4 of 7 09 May 2014 at 6:31pm | IP Logged |
I think studying from two similar textbooks at the same time wouldn't work well for me. I'd rather do another actitivy at this time, such as studying grammar directly or even using native materials. I did go through all the German and Russian editions I could find for Assimil, but it was one after another. And I skipped what I already knew.
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luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 5 of 7 09 May 2014 at 7:10pm | IP Logged |
I've done 4 Assimil French courses, at times in parallel. For me it's a good approach.
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Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5343 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish*
| Message 6 of 7 14 May 2014 at 7:21pm | IP Logged |
In my opinion, using different Assimil generations concurrently is one of the absolute best, most effective approaches to developing a new language. For this, languages with three distinct generations such as German, Italian, Dutch or Russian are specially blessed.
I would recommend though obtaining first a basic overview of how the language works through a Berlitz Self-Teacher, In Three Months, or basic grammar-type manual, so that your time spent with Assimil goes towards actually assimilating and growing your language rather than guessing at its functional aspects.
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kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish
| Message 7 of 7 14 May 2014 at 8:56pm | IP Logged |
We all have such different styles. For myself I would hate doing three Assimil's at
once. I like the program, but usually by the end I'm chomping at the bit just to finish &
to start using native materials.
I can't imagine tripling the amount of work to get to the same place.
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