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Assimil’s Passive Wave Killing Motivation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| JCF Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6441 days ago 18 posts - 18 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 1 of 13 05 August 2010 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am working with Assimil's German without Toil (1950). I know that I should learn the language, as my career will benefit from it in the future, and at first I did have fun with the course. However, as time has gone by, I have become bored. I work with and understand the lessons, but the passive wave is simply so boring. I don't really feel like I am learning anything or really making much headway. Any advice for staying motivated?
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| nuriayasmin Senior Member Germany Joined 5271 days ago 155 posts - 210 votes  | Message 2 of 13 05 August 2010 at 10:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Choose different or additional material. It was similar for me when I tried to learn Portuguese with Assimil year ago, the Assimil approach just doesn't work for me. I need to do a lot of exercises and get the grammar explained in detail. If you're also like that, Assimil isn't the right thing for you, no matter how many other people will tell you how good Assimil is.
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| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5326 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 3 of 13 05 August 2010 at 11:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, I don't know what can motivate you, so only a general answer is possible.
If you are not in a hurry ("3 months" or similar), then just put the course aside for some time and do some things you would like to do. Have you learned enough to read some original texts? Isn't there anything you can look up in wikipedia, at first in English, and then in German? Compare the versions, try out how much you can understand, see how far you really are. Get your favorite movie with German audio, watch and listen and see how far your understanding can take you. By trying to use your new language you will get a better perspective for the needs of your further learning. Maybe you should finish your assimil, (if you are really bored you can get faster, use it in a way you have fun with) sometimes our material gets more interesting after a little pause and mental refreshment. Maybe you can just leave through all the grammar notes and understand enough of it to make it productive. Maybe you can stop reading any grammar notes and just read the dialogs with the intention to learn as many words as possible as fast as possible and then continue with new stuff. But nobody forces you to finish assimil if you don't want to (may personal guess is, that 80% never ever make it to the final lesson of course one ...). And maybe you are really motivated to finish your course after some weeks, then do it! It is all completely up to you, have fun! Edited by lingoleng on 05 August 2010 at 11:06pm 3 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 4 of 13 06 August 2010 at 1:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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The thing that really motivates me:
The member "fanatic" here learned German with the same program that you and I are using, and he was able to do technical translations for a company, and live in Germany with no trouble at all. Are the lessons boring? Yeah. I think it's the ease of the program that makes it so great. I can definitely put aside an extra 30 minutes to learn some German everyday. In addition to Assimil I'm doing FSI. FSI is quite possibly the MOST boring program ever created, but it's VERY effective. Don't focus on the current day, mood, emotion, focus on what you'll be able to do once you fluently speak German. That's what always keeps me motivated. :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7131 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 5 of 13 06 August 2010 at 9:17am | IP Logged | |||||
This is a key point. I'm a great fan of Assimil but I don't use it in isolation - I'm one of these people who will seek out the explanations for a perceived pattern rather than wait for it to be "assimilated" and I've done FSI drills in conjunction with Assimil for Spanish in problem areas. You need to find what works for you. For some people, the lightbulb only goes on when they hit Active Wave and they suddenly realise that they have actually learnt something after all. It may be simple boredom and some different resources will help rekindle your interest or it may be that Assimil is not for you and you need to try something different. Take a look at the FSI German language courses here - they won't cost you anything except a bit of time. Maybe try Michel Thomas from your local library. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6039 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 6 of 13 06 August 2010 at 11:53am | IP Logged | |||||
But.... How many languages did he know before he started Assimil German? What did he do other than Assimil? Even if it wasn't another course, he must have done something -- reading, conversations, something. I'm not convinced that many people would do well with Assimil for their first language with noun case, but I could be wrong.
I've said it before and I've said it again: genuine learning is never boring. Learning is pure mental stimulation and boredom comes from a lack of mental stimulation. If something is too easy, it becomes boring because it doesn't stimulate the brain enough. If something is too hard, the brain can't cope and frustration sets in. If the brain then gives up, it gets bored. There's a lot of information in an Assimil lesson, and if someone's bored with it, it probably means that the brain is ignoring it. The problem with learning from input is that language has a lot of redundancy -- information that is not required to understand the message -- and the brain isn't always forced to notice it. In German, it may be the case endings that are ignored because the meaning is also indicated by word order and choice of verbs and prepositions. Perhaps the OP needs to take a more active approach to learning in order to force his brain to stop seeing these things as redundant information and start seeing them as necessary information. I'd echo the recommendation of borrowing MT from the local library. Work through it quickly, then go back to Assimil and go through it at a quicker rate. Introduce the active phase earlier than Assimil recommend. After all, Assimil's timing for the active phase is not scientifically determined, as can be trivially demonstrated: In a 100 lesson course with dialogues in the revision lessons, the active phase begins at lesson 51. In a 50 lesson course with no dialogues in the revision lessons, the active phase begins at lesson 26 -- that's about 60% sooner in terms of actual exposure to the language. In neither size of book does the active phase start at the beginning of the week -- they have just arbitrarily picked the middle of the book for the sake of convenience. So yeah, if passive is boring you, be more active. 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6971 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 7 of 13 06 August 2010 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
Another possibility for getting bored is the content itself. Many people enjoy the Assimil brand of humor, but I get saturated on their witticisms after 20 lessons or so and find it difficult to proceed after that. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JCF Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6441 days ago 18 posts - 18 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 8 of 13 06 August 2010 at 10:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, I have started putting the Assimil sentences into SRS L1-L2 and L2-L1, so I am getting some of the active
phase early. I will probably go with the suggestion to use MT, since I have all of it on my computer already anyway. I have also found a copy of Colloquial and Linguaphone, so I will probably have a look that as well. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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