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Assimil Strategy-Good or Bad?

 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies Post Reply
watupboy101
Diglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 4905 days ago

65 posts - 81 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French

 
 Message 1 of 7
11 August 2011 at 9:02pm | IP Logged 
So I started Assimil's New French With Ease maybe a month ago. I am on Lesson 27 and I have a proposed
method.

1. Do the lesson's up to 25 (chose wherever you want I guess)

2. Once you get to 25 do lesson 1 (again), and 26 lesson 2, ect. (shadowing, going over grammar)

3. after you do the first 7 lessons (1 week) crop out the spaces and speed it up and put it on you IPOD.

4. For the next week listen to these as much as possible to lessons 1-6 (while doing review 8,9,10,ect. and doing
the new lesson each day)... shadowing and listening

5. Then after that week take 1-6 off your IPOD and put 8-13 on there, and listen for the whole next week while
doing the "new" review lessons at the same time and doing the real "new" lesson per day. And do this for the
entire course, this will hopefully help you have the dialogues sink in better so you are ready for the active phase.

What do you think of this Idea? Also please feel free to ask for clarification on this "method" (if you will) I tried to
word it as best as I could but I'm aware it is a little confusing.

Thanks in advance!

Edited by watupboy101 on 11 August 2011 at 9:05pm

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jazzboy.bebop
Senior Member
Norway
norwegianthroughnove
Joined 5420 days ago

439 posts - 800 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Norwegian

 
 Message 2 of 7
11 August 2011 at 10:28pm | IP Logged 
Well, you could do that but the course is designed so that words, phrases and constructions are shown again in later lessons, negating the need to go over them again in the way you are thinking of doing.

Listening to the dialogues again on your iPod a lot is a good idea but as for reviewing the earlier lessons from lesson 25 onwards, the course is made so that you shouldn't have to review the earlier lessons again and you'll hit them again in the active phase. It'll take up a lot of time when you get to the active phase if you do 1 active, 1 passive and one review as well.

If you have the time and will to do it though, it certainly can't hurt.
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watupboy101
Diglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 4905 days ago

65 posts - 81 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French

 
 Message 3 of 7
11 August 2011 at 10:42pm | IP Logged 
Well, I should've mentioned this but when I say I review a lesson it's more like open the book play the recording while shadowing and make sure I understand then I read the notes, and it's done. It takes about 5 min to "review" 1 lesson.
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Faraday
Senior Member
United States
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129 posts - 256 votes 
Speaks: German*

 
 Message 4 of 7
12 August 2011 at 12:03am | IP Logged 
This comment is directed as much toward myself as anyone else, but here it is: Do what works for you. Experiment.
Use your intelligence and gumption. Don't take anyone else's word as gospel, be it Arguelles's or Mezzofanti's, until
you verify through your own experience that it is so.
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jasoninchina
Senior Member
China
Joined 5233 days ago

221 posts - 306 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Mandarin, Italian

 
 Message 5 of 7
12 August 2011 at 6:42am | IP Logged 
One thing I do along with Assimil is vocab learning with Anki. I got a deck with 2500 common words and study 5 a day. I would guess that I have seen about 1/3 of them in Assimil so far. It's really nice to have that interplay between the two resources. Learning with Assimil alone can feel a bit unquantifiable at times. If you add in a few new words a day you can feel better watching the word count go up.
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Aquila
Triglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 5483 days ago

104 posts - 128 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, English, German
Studies: French

 
 Message 6 of 7
13 August 2011 at 8:44am | IP Logged 
jasoninchina wrote:
It's really nice to have that interplay between the two resources. Learning with Assimil alone
can feel a bit unquantifiable at times. If you add in a few new words a day you can feel better watching the word
count go up.


In my opinion, Assimil is one of the best commercial methods available. You learn a lot of grammar, expressions
and vocabulary in very short period of time. The method is particularly comfortable and pleasant to use. Without
effort is rather exaggerated, but the concept of assimilation works.

But I also would't use only Assimil. I use mostly several methods simultaneously, like an audio course or a good
podcast or a method like Teach Yourself and I memorize words, expressions and grammatical structures with Anki.

Edited by Aquila on 13 August 2011 at 8:45am

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Michael K.
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5731 days ago

568 posts - 886 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Esperanto

 
 Message 7 of 7
13 August 2011 at 3:10pm | IP Logged 
When I was going through it I thought of reviewing all the lessons from 7 days ago to the present time. Not really reviewing them, just start 7 lessons back and listen to them to see if you understand without a transcript (ie you're on lesson 25, start the CD on lesson 18 and listen til you get to 25, review anything you don't remember).

There are supposed to be 10 steps to using Assimil with the CDs, one of the steps is to listen to the CD with the book closed and by the time you do everything else on the list, you should have no problems understanding the recording. I figure once you can listen to the CD and not look anything up in the book you're ready to move on, or at least review at a later time.

Since I'm on the active wave now I write down all the new constructions and vocabulary and try to use them in a sentence, as well as the constructions in the lessons I'm reviewing. I really wouldn't try it until the active wave since your vocabulary will probably be kind of limited, but whatever works.




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