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Comparing Assimil Russian 1951/1971/2004 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6314 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 9 of 34 12 May 2009 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you for the detailed review! I personally own the German edition of the 1971 course, which I bought from Amazon.fr. Last I checked it was still available there, brand new and factory-sealed.
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| phouk Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 6036 days ago 28 posts - 48 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Russian | Message 10 of 34 12 May 2009 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks to all the people who said thanks!
I think new material is introduced much too often (while only in a limited amount) to be a mere oversight. First, how much benefit do fill-in-the-blanks and similar tests have to the learner? You can each one once, maybe twice, to get feedback on your progress - after that, you just know most of the answers. Plus, I don't actually need that much help and effort in getting feedback - normally, I don't feel confused about whether I already understand something or already know all the words in the lesson. Certainly, I don't need such feedback in every lesson - maybe once at the end of the course or a couple of times in between would be enough. Such tests are good for school and to give feedback to a teacher, not for learning and for the self-directed learner. What you have in the old-style Assimil courses is exercises, not tests. They allow you to exercise the language some more, by giving you extra text that you can read, and re-read, and listen to, and listen to again, and translate in both directions again and again, until it's yours. Doing so would add less benefit if they were limited to be a very strict subset of the vocabulary and sentence structures that the lessons introduce. At the same time, they fulfill a different function than the lesson text, because not being limited to a coherent story, they can for example focus on a particular topic like a particular tense or case or way to ask a question. All in all, I feel that somebody who had made not only 100 lesson texts, but in addition also some 150 +/- exercise texts fully "his" in the way I describe above, would be further along the learning curve than somebody who had done 100 lesson texts plus 100 fill-in-the-blank tests. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Rout Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5710 days ago 326 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish Studies: Hindi | Message 11 of 34 13 May 2009 at 1:19am | IP Logged | ||
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I couldn't agree more that translation exercises are the best. What you COULD do with these (older versions) is translate the exercise before listening to the audio since you've learned all vocab and sentence structure in the lesson. That would be a real challenge but I haven't tried it.
Juan, I think I tried to answer you in your other post.. I'm almost positive that you have the second edition. Does it have a song in it? BTW, the professor said the 1971 version of Russian was his absolute favorite Assimil book made. Surely that says something. I know the New Russian from the 80's must be different than all of these but I wonder how much so. Anyone had a look at it? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| phouk Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 6036 days ago 28 posts - 48 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Russian | Message 12 of 34 31 May 2009 at 10:12am | IP Logged | ||
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In addition to what I wrote earlier, here's a look at the appendices of these books
("Russisch ohne Mühe (heute)"): - 1951: grammatical appendix, 30 pages - 1971: grammatical appendix, 18 pages (reduced content) - 2004: grammatical appendix, 50 pages (with the same content as 1951, slightly edited, in larger print; table of content for the grammatical index; added list of structural words of the russian language (looks helpful); one-page grammatical index pointing to the corresponding lessons; 20 page vocabulary index 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5836 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 13 of 34 01 June 2009 at 12:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Phouk --- Thanks so much for starting this informative thread. I haven't started using the Assimil course yet (using a Swedish course right now) although I downloaded the English audios (2004). I will definitely make sure to complement that with the OLD books; or see if I can find the whole -51 set from an antiquariat or Abe books online.
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| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5836 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 14 of 34 01 June 2009 at 6:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi josht, I pm:ed you... ! Thanks so much for offering
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| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5836 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 15 of 34 02 June 2009 at 12:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Breogan - yeah, I found "Le russe sans peine" ;-) Hadn't realised it was that old...
But I haven't found the -51 version that josht was mentioning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5836 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 16 of 34 02 June 2009 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ok, so:
"Russian without effort" aka "Russisch ohne Mühe" aka "Le russe sans peine" is the -71 issue. For the 2004 (approx) issue, they added the word "New" to the title to indicate that they had edited the book.... ?? And the other conclusion is that the older the book, the more content... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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