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Assimil Express | ||
Tags: Time to learn | Assimil | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6786 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes  Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 1 of 13 02 September 2012 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Do we have any recorded history of people doing Assimil really fast?
My problem with Assimil has always been that it's too long. Small booklet, yet if you do one lesson per day it's going to take months and I don't have the patience for it. And the lessons are too short; I need more intensity to feel like I'm doing something worthwhile, to maintain a momentum. So I've been trying something different. The past week or so I've been doing 5 lessons a day and rather enjoying it. If I did 5 in a row it would get too repetitive, so I'm reading a book on the side and every 5 pages I pause and do an Assimil lesson. Since I'm intermediate in French it's no problem at least for the first half, the material is easy. But it's still very useful as it fills in many gaps in grammar, pronunciation and colloquial language. Is anyone else doing something similar? What are you findings? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 13 03 September 2012 at 3:57am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm doing 7 Assimil lessons per day most days. There is still the idea of a multi-wave approach. The first wave is a familiarization/understanding wave. The second wave is either a repeat of the first if the lessons are challenging or I use it to read the notes and study the lesson more intensively, but still without speaking. Later waves will involve speaking and writing and translating. I think it's a very good way to approach Assimil. My only fear is that I will move on beyond Assimil before I've gotten everything out of it that I could have.
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 13 03 September 2012 at 2:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's your book. If you want to do more at a time, do it, Assimil's word isn't the law.
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 4 of 13 03 September 2012 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Why not just spend more time reading? It will start flowing much better if you don't stop after five minutes.
Assimil sort of contains some spaced repetition if you do it as intended, so I'd not do too many lessons. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5264 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 5 of 13 03 September 2012 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wanted to know what Assimil themselves had to say about increased learning intensity, so I had a look into the prefaces of about a dozen courses.
Generally they recommend one lesson per day, but this is not a uniform rule. In some courses they suggest that you may spread this out over several days if it's too much, but in any case you should do at least 10-15 minutes each and every day, never missing a single day even if you did large amounts on the preceding day. They are adamant about this. Originally they also used to recommend doing bits of 10-15 minutes twice a day rather than 20-30 minutes in a single session, if possible. These are the general rules regarding timing. What if you want to do more? In some courses they consider this, especially in the older ones. They explain there that the Assimil method is especially suitable for busy people who have no time for studying hard for hours each day, so the method is designed to adapt to the individual learner's absorbing capacity; the main point is to just be regular. In the preface to the old Italian course they suggest speeding up the learning process by doing two lessons a day if you are in a hurry, but then preferably not both at once, more like 15 min. in the morning and 15 min. in the evening. In the old Russian course they went even further, although this is a difficult language and the course is said to have a steep learning curve. I don't have the French original, but in the English version - Russian without Toil - they explain: "You may very well study several lessons together, if you wish or have the time to; but be regular, do not let one day pass without doing your quarter of an hour of Russian; make it a habit." In the German version of the same course (also from the early 50s) the translation differs a bit. Here it reads that there is no problem going through the texts "several hours at a stretch" (or per day) if you have time and feel like it, provided you are being regular. So that's what Assimil has/had to say about it. Personally I think that all this knowledge input requires time to get fully absorbed; if you work through a course very quickly you may have to add some extra review time afterwards so that what you learned takes root. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 6 of 13 03 September 2012 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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I firmly believe that this "do something every day" thing is just to prevent people from giving up. If you study for two hours, you won't forget it if you do nothing next day. You will forget some if do nothing for 3 days, and you'll forget most of it if you do nothing for a month. But if your motivation is strong and the language is already embedded into your lifestyle, you shouldn't be worrying about those baby steps. Just be aware of your level of motivation - if it's decreasing, get more enjoyable materials.
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| Kronos Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5264 days ago 186 posts - 452 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 7 of 13 03 September 2012 at 7:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks Serpent. That's just what I have been thinking about recently, and what is also my experience. Reading those old prefaces I wonder if Assimil was catering for unexperienced and overworked learners with this rule in the first place.
Particularly with Assimil I have done some experiments lately, and doing always the same language every day bores me after a while. Also it takes some time to have the learned stuff settle down in my consciousness, a process which gets a little bit hampered if I am filling it with new learning stuff in the same language everyday but which benefits from forgetting about it for a short while or for irregular breaks. Something like studying every second day, in the early stages, but then preferably for half an hour or more is much more becoming. When I get back to the lesson after two days it is still completely fresh. After three or four days this begins to slowly wear off, but it doesn't matter really as long as I don't pause for weeks. I can always review and bring it back. The only risk I can see is that if I stretch it out too much on a regular basis, getting through a course would take an eternity. However learning a language at a speed of 10-15 minutes each day, as Assimil seems to recommend, won't do it much quicker. "We promise you success, on the only condition that you should study regularly, i.e., at least a quarter of an hour each day. Daily repetition is the key to success." (from the foreword of Russian without Toil) Success with Russian from scratch at 15 minutes a day with a course that is full of high-class literature. They are optimistic. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6786 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 8 of 13 03 September 2012 at 9:54pm | IP Logged | ||
Right, but I guess you mean that you're doing 7 lessons per day but also repeating the same lesson 7 times? So you're still progressing at one per day. I meant 5 new lessons per day. Thanks guys, but I didn't mean "what do you think Assimil recommends?". I think we all know that. :) Edited by numerodix on 03 September 2012 at 9:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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