erinserb Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7198 days ago 135 posts - 144 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 1 of 7 20 July 2013 at 2:57am | IP Logged |
Considering the quality of nearly all of the Assimil courses, does anyone have experience with this course(s)? I believe two in all, plus a Japanese writing course!
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Paco Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 4279 days ago 145 posts - 251 votes Speaks: Cantonese*
| Message 2 of 7 20 July 2013 at 3:18am | IP Logged |
Assimil Japanese is a decent course for you to build a solid foundation. I have no
experience with the Writing course though.
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mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6974 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer
| Message 3 of 7 20 July 2013 at 10:57am | IP Logged |
The two-volume set, together, is actually just Japanese with Ease. I am not sure why
Assimil broke it up into two volumes, but the second volume is not an advanced book.
I have only started using Japanese with Ease last week, so I don't have any real
feedback. So far, I find it very slow and kind of boring. However, this might just be
the way that all Assimil books start out, since New French with Ease also starts off very
slow but then picks up the pace quickly.
From what I gather from prior discussion threads, Japanese with Ease doesn't take you as
far as other With Ease books, nor does the audio ever reach anything close to native
speed. To learn more, you might want to run a search for previous threads on this topic.
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LanguagePhysics Newbie United States Joined 4148 days ago 34 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 4 of 7 20 July 2013 at 2:15pm | IP Logged |
From what I've read Assimil Japanese isn't that good because the Assimil method struggles to convey the politeness levels of Japanese in a way that makes it intuitive and easy to pick up.
Japanese tenses are also considerably different to Indo-European languages, and I don't think Assimil really explains them very well.
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ikinaridango Triglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6127 days ago 61 posts - 80 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, Italian Studies: German, Polish
| Message 5 of 7 20 July 2013 at 5:04pm | IP Logged |
I've not gone through the Japanese course systematically, as I was already quite far along with my Japanese studies by the time I discovered Assimil, but I have listened to the audio recordings and I can tell you without reservation that I wish I'd known about them when I first started learning the language. If you like the Assimil approach I imagine that Japanese with Ease will prove invaluable to your progress, with the usual caveat that Assimil alone will only take you so far.
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erinserb Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7198 days ago 135 posts - 144 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 6 of 7 22 July 2013 at 5:09pm | IP Logged |
I would like to thank all here who gave their input, it does really help! My language
goals are set to learn French, while slow gathering Japanese material and briefing myself
to prepare for learning it within the next year. After many years, I believe I have a
level of commitment and a goal, instead of trying to decide which language(s)are good for
me. I love both cultures (France and Japan). I have been to Japan several times, but
not France :-) - yet!
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newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6381 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map
| Message 7 of 7 23 July 2013 at 4:02am | IP Logged |
I've listened to later lessons of volume I briefly and the audio seems extremely slow.
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