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French Assimil Disappointment | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5409 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 9 of 34 25 March 2010 at 4:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks Fanatic. My worries lied mostly in the fact that I told a friend to use it and
since she was quite confused at the beginning, it got me wondering. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kampernaut Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5410 days ago 38 posts - 54 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 10 of 34 25 March 2010 at 1:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hopefully I can provide you with some additional reassurance that the recommendation you made to your friend was a good one.
I started the Assimil course you are talking about a few weeks ago. I had previously been trying to learn with podcasts called Coffee Break French and a course called Façon Parler. Many years ago I also spent a lot of time on the BBC's Get By In French in preparation for some business trips. I suppose I would be what Assimil call a "false beginner". I'm now at Lesson 55 of the Assimil course which means I'm just starting the second wave. My prior learning allowed me to whizz through the earlier lessons. I chose Assimil because the other things I had tried didn't force me to speak very much and I too read the recommendations here. Now I've hit the second wave, the individual lessons are more complex so they take longer. One lesson and the second wave repeat of an earlier one take up all the time I have available in a day to devote to learning French. I must say that I think the course is very good indeed and refreshingly different. A few weeks ago I had put aside an easy reader book because it was starting to get too difficult for me to understand as I got into the later chapters. Yesterday I picked it up again and was able to completely understand a few pages that were challenging me before I started Assimil. In the beginning, I too questioned the simplicity of the lessons and the value of reading the phrases aloud but after a few lessons the obvious flaws in my ability to speak French were exposed and I discovered that I really didn't fully comprehend things I thought I understood from previous materials . It really helps your pronunciation if you keep repeating and trying to emulate the audio as closely as possible. This repetition also seems to make you start to think in the language. When I'm speaking the French words, I'm not thinking of the translation but directly what the phrases mean. Almost as though the words themselves create pictures in my mind. The pace of the spoken words in the audio accelerates quite quickly as you advance through the lessons. It is very helpful for it to be so slow in the beginning. Please don't be mislead by the apparent simplicity of the early lessons. Your friend will be thankful for it when he/she returns to them in the second wave. Despite the simplicity, the act of translating from English both verbally and in writing makes one properly understand things you think you know. Anything new that I come across gets put onto a flashcard program on my iPhone. I put a phrase with the new word in it on one side and the English translation on the other. The flashcard program uses spaced repetition to automatically help get the words into my long term memory. I find phrases are more effective than single words. I try to make sure that the phrase illustrates the gender of a new noun and I sometimes make up phrases that illustrate the conjugation of verbs. I've also found that I'm starting to catch more of the French radio programmes I listen to. I'm nowhere near fully understanding the entire dialogue but I am definitely catching more than just the odd word here and there. I have suspended work on the other courses I was working with due to time constraints and a preference for Assimil. I will probably return to them later. If I had the time, I would probably continue with other materials in parallel to Assimil particularly Façon Parler because it is based upon written exercises. In summary, I think your friend should stick with it and you should try not to worry too much that your recommendation wasn't a good one. If your friend has the time to follow another course in parallel, I don't think that would do much harm. I don't think Assimil is for everyone. I don't fully understand how it works but I know it is working for me. I hope it does for your friend too. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5613 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 11 of 34 25 March 2010 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I enjoy Assimil German Without Toil, it's much more simple and to the point, no "fluff" if you understand what I mean. I have Italian with Ease also, I think it's best to go through that program with at least SOME knowledge of the language. I have Berlitz Self Teacher Italian, which I will finish before starting Assimil :) Hopefully it will help me understand more :)
I got to lesson 18 of German Without Toil before laying it aside... I can read about anything in German and understand around 50-60% of it. A member here sent me an email a couple days ago in German, and I was able to read it word for word. Assimil definitely works, you just have to stick with it :) It's a great method. Edited by datsunking1 on 25 March 2010 at 4:32pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6498 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 12 of 34 25 March 2010 at 5:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am presently doing an experiment with Assimil Swahili. Learning European languages is
one thing, but I want to know if it can teach me a language I have never studied before and where I also have no help in the form of similarity to a known language. I was initially worried about progress as well, but I'm now drawing close to the end of the passive phase and the earlier dialogs are really easily comprehensible. So are the few exercise dialogs I set aside, so it's not just a matter of having memorized the translation, I can also understand other materials that draw on the same grammar and vocabulary. What's more, I get the feeling that I'm immediately internalizing the language, while with other courses I first learn grammar and vocabulary and rely on translations, only later getting that feeling of having internalized the language, the epiphany moment. I'm not sure if another epiphany moment lies in store for me, but I already feel better about Swahili than I did about Czech, which I studied using Teach Yourself. Of course I'm only doing passive work at the moment. I did enter vocabulary into Anki for easier memorization. This is because a lot of words are very similar, and Swahili's conjugation is very versatile, not rarely only two letters of an 8 letter word are actually part of the verb stem. So I am re- inforcing verb stems mostly and this way I was also able to estimate that the complete Assimil course will probably teach me 1500 words - not as many as some other Assimil courses, such as the Modern Greek one, but definitely more than any other language course I know of. I am looking forward to mastering Swahili. You can follow my progress in my TAC log. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5409 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 13 of 34 25 March 2010 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I'll be darned. Last night, I dreamed I had given the wrong Assimil version to my friend and that the right version had bright, colourful pages where the dialogs were illustrated in cartoon format.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zorglub Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 7028 days ago 441 posts - 504 votes 1 sounds Speaks: French*, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin | Message 14 of 34 27 March 2010 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | ||
Whaaaat ??? After lesson 18 you can read about anything in German and understand around 50-60% of it ? I'n stunned and dead jealous,, I can't achieve as much after going through the whole course, active/passive and a lot of shadowing. You must have hiddent skills. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| pineappleboom Groupie United States languageloft-ashley. Joined 5281 days ago 66 posts - 76 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Russian | Message 15 of 34 13 July 2010 at 3:37am | IP Logged | ||
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no one has a hidden talent for languages you have to be motivated and passionate.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| grunts67 Diglot Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5330 days ago 215 posts - 252 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 16 of 34 13 July 2010 at 4:40am | IP Logged | ||
OoC Which Assimil method did you use and didn't like ? For none-european language, did you manage the lesson in 30-45 minutes, one each day ? /OoC OP, you really need to give the method some time to see the result. Don't forget, you need the time to assimil the language. As an another user as suggest, do a couple of lessons, try and see the result after completing lesson 14. You will not be able to talk very much but you will understand some bribe of the language. If you put the effort, you will get the reward. If it doesn't work, maybe assimil isn't for you and you could try an another method like fanatic suggested. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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