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Language chaining ? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7229 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 9 of 12 17 August 2009 at 7:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Multiple threads with the same topic, but the one consistency I have found with members it is seems to be only Assimil used to learn another language from a different language base. No real mentioning of other programs. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 6002 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 10 of 12 17 August 2009 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
Assimil being one of the better programs, and of French origin it makes sense. I myself have used the French version of assimil for Spanish, and German as well, though with lesser progress. However, after the Assimil for Spanish, I jumped straight into books written entirely in Spanish for foreigners learning the language. I also have a grammar, and a general language course based in French for learning Italian. The similarities in grammar mean that the explanations aren't so difficult to understand, though I imagine that learning Russian or Chinese or something through French might be a bit harder than if I were to do it through English. Thom. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6133 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 11 of 12 17 August 2009 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah Assimil has a better selection of material in French than in other languages. If I didn't know any better, I'd think this was some kind of conspiracy to get us to learn French.
For me, Finnish is on my target list, but Assimil only carries this language in French and German. I took 3 years of German in high school and I'm currently putting about 1/2 hour/day into German to relearn this, but right now I'm pretty sure I'd be lost in any discussion of Finnish grammar written in German. Still, I'm tempted to buy a copy of this and use it as a secondary study method if I could get a copy here in the USA. Right now, I don't know. I'll be busy with Japanese for awhile, so it's not an urgent issue. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6019 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 12 of 12 17 August 2009 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'd suggest it's more to do with the nature of Assimil than absolute quality. If you look at many of the more standard/traditional methodologies, there's a lot of very terse text -- brief explanations and very short translation prompts. Where there's longer texts, these are usually dialogues with little truly continuous written prose. There's not a lot of redundant information in there, so it's vitally important that the learner understands every word. Assimil, on the other hand, is characterised by long passages of prose, which provides extra context to help the reader determine meaning, so you don't have to understand every word of the text to understand it. I'm not an Assimil user, but I would never recommend my favourite courses to a non-native speaker of English because I feel that they can't be employed usefully without a naturally fluent and subconscious command of the language. Edited by Cainntear on 17 August 2009 at 9:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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