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When are you done with an Assimil lesson? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7146 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 9 of 14 26 August 2011 at 1:00pm | IP Logged |
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I would simply say I play the audio and read the book until I can read and understand and listen and understand while reading the target language and then simply listen and understand. This should take about ten to fifteen minutes.
With each new lesson I play the previous lessons so I revise them each day. I also play through all of the lessons from about lesson 15 onwards when I am driving or walking and I find that listening to old lessons is not tedious. That way I don't have to worry if a lesson has "stuck" or thoroughly mastered. I do a new lesson every day regardless if I feel I have completely mastered the previous lesson or not. I still play through a full course if I have to make a long drive. I have Russian and Polish courses (both Assimil and non Assimil) completely in the target language and either tell a story or consist of short humorous stories that I enjoy listening to. This is a good way to practise listening to the language and improving aural comprehension. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ikinaridango Triglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6125 days ago 61 posts - 80 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, Italian Studies: German, Polish | Message 10 of 14 26 August 2011 at 1:01pm | IP Logged |
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In all fairness, I don't think that Professor Arguelles advocates repeating each
individual lesson before moving on to the next one, but rather he describes his own method of listening to the course in its entirety, first shadowing without the text, then shadowing while reading the teaching language, and then shadowing while reading the target language. It's also worth noting that not only does he not follow Assimil's own guidelines, but he suggests, on this matter I wholeheartedly agree with him, that each learner must discover the learning style most suited to her. You can find his description at the beginning of language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=22&PN=1">this thread. In answer to hf's original questions, I would say that were I starting an Assimil course today I wouldn't treat it as a simple equation running something along the lines of Wave 1 + Wave 2 = Completion of Course. I find, and this may not be true for you, that following an approach akin to the one detailed by Professor Arguelles does work for me as I find that with each cycle through the course the material becomes a little less opaque. There are some periods when I feel that I am making swift progress, and others when I feel frustration beginning to mount, but by pressing on I ultimately find that those aspects of the language that initially confounded me start to feel much less alien. In essence there's not necessarily any need to be alarmed if you feel that things aren't clicking into place as quickly as you might have hoped, but don't feel afraid to experiment. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4909 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 11 of 14 26 August 2011 at 1:29pm | IP Logged |
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I have found the answers here very helpful. I hope the OP has as well. Now, however, allow me to add a little wrinkle: do you use Assimil alongside other learning materials? Or do you prefer to work through one course at a time.
I have recently started learning French with my son, and we switch between several different courses. The result is that we only do 1 or 2 Assimil lessons per week, but we often spend 2 days on a lesson. Do people think it would be more helpful to stick with Assimil, for continuity? Or keep up with multiple courses, for variety? Edited by Jeffers on 26 August 2011 at 1:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ikinaridango Triglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6125 days ago 61 posts - 80 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, Italian Studies: German, Polish | Message 12 of 14 26 August 2011 at 2:15pm | IP Logged |
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If you have access to other language-learning materials of good quality, then I can't
see any harm in using them in tandem with Assimil. At the moment I use Assimil as the foundation of my language learning and then move on to bilingual readers, easy readers as well as volumes of fiction and non-fiction for which I also have an English translation. However the languages I am focussing on most at the moment, Italian and German, are related to other languages whose grammar I am somewhat familiar with. Were either my first foreign language, or belonged to a family of languages of which I knew little, I would be more tempted to introduce into my study programme materials designed to reinforce grammatical understanding. That said, I have only arrived at position of starting with Assimil and using it exclusively until I feel that I am ready to tackle more advanced material through a process of trial and error. It may be that you and your son find the greater variety more stimulating. I think the trick may be to audition a few different approaches and see which one or ones work(s) best for you. Good luck! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5022 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 14 27 August 2011 at 6:03pm | IP Logged |
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An excellent topic for discussion.
I finished "Spanish with ease" last Saturday, and I must say that I agree wholeheartedly with Elexi, that this is really just the beginning. I seriously doubt I would even come near to passing a B1 exam at this point. An example of something I did right was doing a new lesson every day in the manner recomended by Fanatic (and Assimil) , even if I had not fully grasped the days lesson. I feel that this is important as you will pick up a lot of Spanish very quickly this way. You can worry about mastering the lessons later. An example of something I did wrong was trusting to much in this whole concept of assimilating grammatical structures. This didnt really work for me, and I wish I had just looked up the grammer in another book rather than trusting that I would somehow "pick it up" from Assimil. I would advise you to do as Fanatic recomends, as an experiment if for nothing else. If you are one of the lucky ones, the method might work as well for you as it does for him. Its worth finding out, because if thats the case then you may be able to learn lots of new languages without having to put in hundreds of hours of work. I also think its a useful starting point for more intense work later on. I would say I have at least an 80% comprhension of even the hardest lessons in the book now. This is ideal for shadowing. I also sometimes read through several chapters in one sitting, or do several active lessons in one go. I used other programs extensively both before and during the course. I dont think I would have got much out of the course if I hadnt. I had completed Pimsleur 1 and 2, the 8 foundation Michel Thomas, some Learning Spanish Like Crazy and lots of other things before starting the course. Also, dont be brainwashed into thinking you must choose between fsi and Assimil. I have been doing Platiquamos alongside the course, and I think the two courses complement each other beautifully. Another thing I wish I had done differently, is use Margiritas Magic Key before starting Assimil. I'm using it now, and it provides a fantastic grammatical foundation. I think Assimil would have been a lot more help with that under my belt. Also, find something else to help with listenening comprehension. Those tapes dont even begin to aproach native speed, and seem to employ quite a strange accent. As an experiment, listen to some audio off the fourth cd, then listen to a few minutes of Radio Nacional de Espana. This way, you will hear how far off the mark thosse tapes really are. I think that repeating dialogues until you can repeat them while taking a shower, is just a fancy way of saying "memorise the dialogues". Personally, I find this much more tedious than just biting the bullet, and doing some drills. So in answer to the original question, I think you are done with a lesson when the day is done, regardless of how well youve memorised it (at least for the 5 months or so it takes to complete the initial active / passive wave, after that its up to you, but you will probably need to work with the course for considerably longer than this). Edited by dbag on 27 August 2011 at 8:49pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |
| hf Tetraglot Newbie United States Joined 4898 days ago 9 posts - 11 votes Speaks: Bengali, Urdu, English, Hindi Studies: Spanish, Arabic (classical) | Message 14 of 14 29 August 2011 at 10:08pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks everyone for your suggestions, especially fanatic and dbag. They really helped.
@dbag: I agree with you that completing Madrigal's Magic Key before starting Assimil is very helpful. I did it myself and I'm so glad I did. @jeffers: Right now, I am supplementing Assimil with the workbook on Spanish Verb Tenses in the Practice Makes Perfect series and I'm finding it very helpful as well. I usually do Assimil during the week and use the weekend for reviewing the week's lesson and doing some grammar work. I find that to be the right mix for me. After reading everyone's advice here, I have somehow become very relaxed about how I approach Assimil and I find that I'm picking up more of the language now per minute of study time than I did before. It seems that the key really is to relax, review and move on. And it's easier to do it with something like Assimil. Someday, when I'm done with the course, I'll be back here reporting on my progress and will hopefully also share what I may have done right, wrong or differently :) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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