Old Assimil - is it obsolete? (Language Programs, Books & Tapes) Language Learning Forum

Old Assimil - is it obsolete?
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Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes

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Betjeman
Groupie
Germany
Joined 6141 days ago
85 posts - 204 votes

Speaks: German*

Message 65 of 66

27 April 2012 at 10:17am | IP Logged

Elexi wrote:

' the newer German With Ease contains more current German and less
errors.'

Have you read the English base version? There is almost an error per page and, whilst
the translator appears to have been able to translate from German to English relatively
well, it was done with no sensibility for the fact that s/he was a translating a
language course aimed at beginners. As a result, the translation fails to capture some
of the idiomatic construction that, say, New French With Ease (which, admittedly is
written by a native English speaker) has.

I have finished all three beginner courses: Without Toil, With Ease and L'Allemand in
the French base. In my opinion L'Allemand is the best of the three in terms of its
construction as a beginners' language course - it teaches you useful German from lesson
1, but it goes into far less depth than the other two. I would say that despite its
quaint outdated language, I learnt the most from Without Toil.

The spelling issues didn't bother me one bit.

I own both, the Without Toil and the With Ease books but being a native speaker of German I haven't used
them for actual learning purposes. When I said the With Ease course had less errors than the preceding
one, this was only with regard to the German part. But I followed more or less the same schedule as you
did in English, working my way through the old Englisch ohne Muehe, Englisch ohne Muehe heute and the
new Englisch ohne Muehe books. I observed the same strengths and weaknesses, too. The newer the
course the less errors, the older the richer.

1 person has voted this message useful

tractor
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5451 days ago
1349 posts - 2292 votes

Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan
Studies: French, German, Latin

Message 66 of 66

27 April 2012 at 9:27pm | IP Logged

Betjeman wrote:

The newer the course the less errors,

Maybe in the target language. In German with Ease there are typos and lots of sloppy translations from French in the
English text.
1 person has voted this message useful

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