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Assimil Halfway Review | ||
Tags: Learning Strategy | Assimil | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| christian Senior Member United States Joined 5249 days ago 111 posts - 135 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, German | Message 1 of 5 19 June 2011 at 9:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just reached the active phase of the Assimil program where you do a new lesson everyday plus you go back to a
previous lesson and try to recall and translate, plus reviewing the grammar rules along the way. So far I am very impressed with this program. I am in way a professional language learner (but who is?), I have only taken 4 years of Spanish in high school, and this fall will be taking both German and Spanish in college. So I've had no previous experience with programs such as this. I think anyone coming from a beginners level or any with no previous German knowledge at all (me...well I knew "Guten Tag") can effectively use this program to gain a lot of German in a short amount of time, at an easy pace, with entertaining dialogs. I specifically recall a lesson a few days ago where the wife is complaining that her husband told his friends that he married her because of her cooking, when she says that she can't even cook fried eggs. The husband then replies, "I had to give them some reason, do you have a better one?" This program has a lot of interesting and somewhat crudely humorous dialogs, which will keep you going. Assimil consists of 100 lessons. The passive phase (just reading and understanding) is the first 50, and the active phase (active translation) is the last 50. Every 7 lessons is a recall of you you did in the past week. Each lesson has a dialog in German and English, extra practice dialogs using vocab from the main dialog, and practice problems where you write in the missing words. All the dialog written in German is on the recording. I will have to say that this is meant to be for British English speakers, some some of the vocabulary and idioms are a little different, but nothing you can't handle. If anything it teaches you a little about British English. The only downside I've seen so far is that the translations are not exact. For an example it might say "I came across the doctor yesterday", but actually it says, "I met the doctor yesterday". For some reason they aren't always exact. The word order differs too. The might say "Natuerlich gehe ich hin", (which means "of course, I'll go there), but the translation reads "I'll go there, of course". Obviously in English the former is no doubt acceptable, but they chose to translate it to the latter. But if you think about it, this sometimes forces you to correct the translation and use a dictionary to figure things out, which, In my opinion, helps you learn the grammar even better by forcing you to take the initiative to solve it. If you do get this program, my advice is to not over-do a lesson. There is no need to spend any more than 20 minutes a day doing a lesson. In the passive phase, please don't try to remember every German word and translation, and don't feel you that you have to know the entire translation by heart before calling it a day. Just take you time and be sure to go sentence by sentence and match the words with the translation, and look at the cases, word endings, and genders. Don't over-do it. My routine: 1. Listen to the German recording while following the German translation 2. Listen to the German recording while following the English translation 3. Listen to the German recording while following the German translation, once more 4. Read the German out loud 5. Read the English translation in my head 6. Read the German out loud again 7. Go sentence by sentence picking it apart and finding out what each word means in that context (but not memorizing) and looking at genders, cases, and word endings and agreements while also looking at the grammar notes when applicable. 8. Do the Uebong (practice) by listening to a sentence, then reading it and then following the remaining steps in step 7. 9. Read the German translation aloud 10. Do the written exercises 11. Give yourself a pat on the back Everyone's routine will be different. You try a few different things early on, and by several lessons you figure out what you like and don't like. I recommend doing only one lesson a day because later on they go to be pretty long (not ridiculous), but it's best to sleep on just one lesson and take it in slowly. So there you have it: my mini review of Assimil thus far. If you're looking for a final recommendation or approval from me, I 100% give it. The most important thing is to stay motivated and do it everyday with out taking any extensive breaks. Follow up Assimil with some other online programs. Deutsch Welle has an excellent online course, and the best part is it's free. German-flashcards.com is an excellent and contemporarily formatted website for learning vocabulary and phrases using flashcards and games. It's free, but there is a premium service which I have yet to buy, mostly because it only adds a few useless features. This site has an extensive selection of vocabulary which are organized into lists which can be mixed and matched. It uses a pool of words (that of which you set the size), and you can tell each word when to reappear when you think you know it. I definitely recommend checking it out and using it as a follow-up to Assimil. Have fun! 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6356 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 5 20 June 2011 at 2:27am | IP Logged | ||
- How many minutes a day should one spend patting themselves on the back? - Exactly which part of the back should be patted? - About how hard should one p... Sorry, just being silly. Your post is about the 500th on this forum to explain step-by-step how they use Assimil, which I'm guessing is one of the most frequenly posted topics on here (next to the definition of "fluent"). I guess that just shows how good and customizable the Assimil program can be. I keep entertaining the idea to do *only* the passive wave throughout the course for Assimil Spanish, Italian, French, and German at once (having had varied learning exposure to all of them before; I would not be a total beginner). The goal would be to go through them quickly and (hopefully) stress-free to get a solid basic background in pronouncing, reading and understanding spoken (at least at the Assimil recorded speed) for these 4 major languages. Kind of like when I feel my weight is getting too high, I'll do the "Lemonade (Master Cleanser) Diet" and knock off 4 or 5 pounds in a week and get it over with, instead of being continuously hungry for many weeks and losing 1 pound a week. So, this way, I'd get over the hump of learning these languages in maybe 6 months without too much effort. Has anyone done this (just passive) with even one language in Assimil? How did it turn out? I've used Assimil before and liked it a lot, but I did them "actively" from lesson 1, doing the exercises, translating from English to the "foreign" language (L2), etc. I figured that as long as I'm spending time with all of the passive stuff, it's only a little more effort to do the active things and accomplish more. But it does slow you down somewhat, even at the easier beginning lessons. I usually quit after lesson 7 or 14 (Japanese, Chinese, others), not so much because it was too stressful, just because I tend to jump around a lot between languages and courses, which I'm not recommending if you want to get good in anything, it's just what I do. I'm thinking the four-"passive only"-Assimils-at-once would give me variety, with little stress, and advance my passive skills to a much higher level. Disclaimer: I've been thinking about doing this for a long time now, someday I may actually try it. Edited by TerryW on 20 June 2011 at 2:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| christian Senior Member United States Joined 5249 days ago 111 posts - 135 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, German | Message 3 of 5 20 June 2011 at 2:37am | IP Logged | ||
Assimil says give a gentle tap on the left shoulder blade, but I like a more invasive and longer massage on the right. Anyways, about only doing passive...I don't know. I'm doing German and Spanish now at the same time, and doing any more might be pushing it (at least for me, since I want to fully learn the language). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tibbles Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5190 days ago 245 posts - 422 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean | Message 4 of 5 20 June 2011 at 7:08am | IP Logged | ||
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One thing I do in the active phase is first listen to the dialog *without* following any text. I have already heard the dialog at least once, but 50 lessons ago. This forces me to concentrate on listening alone. Then I proceed to a second listen following along with the text in order to reinforce those areas where I had trouble listening.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5343 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 5 of 5 20 June 2011 at 7:55am | IP Logged | ||
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I always do the 3rd post in this link http://how-to-learn-any-
language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=23625&PN=1&TPN=1 . It's done a lot of wonders for me. Better than what I was currently doing. My listening skills and words are coming in a lot better. I've even done it on the Spanish with Ease and getting the same good results. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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