Gala Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4549 days ago 229 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian
| Message 1 of 3 29 September 2012 at 9:11pm | IP Logged |
I found a copy of this Assimil Spanish-based French coursebook going for relatively
cheap online. I picked it up since French is on my list, I'd like to try the L3 through
L2 technique, and I'm curious about Assimil. I also bought New French w/ Ease on Amazon
just to get the audio.
I have done a forum G-search for the course, but there weren't that many detailed posts
about the Spanish-base version and how it has worked for others with Spanish as L2. I'd
be interested in hearing any such experiences, as well as native-Spanish speakers'
experiences with the course, and general thoughts from those who approached L3 through
L2.
Comparing the texts, it seems to me that the Spanish translations of the dialogues are
more natural than the English ones. It occurred to me that it would make sense that
French to Spanish translations would tend to be more successful than French to English,
and that this might effect all of the Assimil courses for Romance languages that are
available in a non-French RL base. Perhaps even more so for others, as the one RL
that English can claim partial descent from is French.
BTW, the book I bought is copyrighted 1983 yet is titled El nuevo
francés...which surprised me because I thought that those titles were the very newest;
maybe that's just the English-based "The New..." series?
Also, I knew from posts here that Assimil-audio is said to be shared by all of the
courses for any given target language, if they are of the same generation. I took a
risk, though, in buying a 1983 book and the audio that came with the 2008 New French...
(though I'd read here that the CD's coming with '08 packages were copyrighted '98, and
indeed they are.) From a quick leafing through both books, I see probably a 90%
correspondence between the lesson dialogues. Most are exactly the same, but a number
have a few minor changes in wording (mainly dealing with currency/prices.) I've only
come across one that is completely different, but I'll update on this after I've had a
chance to examine both more closely. Anyway, hopefully the 2 semesters of lousy French
college classes I took will be of assistance in sorting out the differences.
Edited by Fasulye on 03 October 2012 at 6:00am
1 person has voted this message useful
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tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5452 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin
| Message 2 of 3 29 September 2012 at 9:40pm | IP Logged |
There are three generations of Assimil French beginner courses:
1) French without Toil (El francés sin esfuerzo) - 140 lessons
2) French with Ease (El nuevo francés sin esfuerzo) - 99 lessons
3) New French with Ease (El francés) - 113 lessons
New French with Ease is an updated version of French with Ease: Some minor changes have been made to some of
the lessons; a few lessons have been rewritten; the last 14 are completely new.
4 persons have voted this message useful
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Gala Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4549 days ago 229 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian
| Message 3 of 3 29 September 2012 at 9:58pm | IP Logged |
tractor wrote:
There are three generations of Assimil French beginner courses: a few
lessons have been rewritten; the last 14 are completely new. |
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That doesn't bother me much, as by the time I've completed the 99 lessons in the old
book, my listening comprehension will (I certainly hope) be good enough that I should be
able to derive some benefit from the 14 remaining audio lessons without referring to a
book. If I couldn't, I think I'd write Assimil off at that point:) Anyway, sounds like I
have audio lessons that correspond almost exactly to the dialogues in the book, plus
extras that don't. I'll be selling the New French w/Ease book at some point, but I guess
it might possibly be worthwhile to keep it in reserve until I've finished those last
lessons.
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