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Thoughts on assimil advance?

  Tags: Assimil
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Breogan
Bilingual Tetraglot
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Spain
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Speaks: Spanish*, Galician*, French, English
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 Message 9 of 20
31 July 2010 at 4:26pm | IP Logged 
magictom123 wrote:
contrary to the above, it has been mentioned here by others who own both old and new
assimil courses that sections of grammar, maybe for example the past subjunctive is
mentioned in the without toil books but only in the 'using' of the new versions, and not
the with ease books. Does anyone else have a reason for why they think that the quality
level has dropped in the new books. Only having a limited experience of studying with
assimil, it seems that the drop in quality is really a drop in quantity, as the new
courses pad out pages with exercises and virtually blank pages. The content itself may
not be as 'full' as the without toil books, but they are useful nonetheless


Yes, besides in the old series they used to tell us some sort of story, i.e. in "French without toil" a young man travels from England to France in order to improve his French (he has taken the Assimil course before :). This fact may be quite more interesting to students than unconnected lessons of the later Assimil methods.

What I don't like about the old series is the location and the small letters of the recordings translations; They are difficult to follow.


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michaelmichael
Senior Member
Canada
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Speaks: English*
Studies: French

 
 Message 10 of 20
31 July 2010 at 5:17pm | IP Logged 
Breogan wrote:
magictom123 wrote:
contrary to the above, it has been mentioned here by others who own both old and new
assimil courses that sections of grammar, maybe for example the past subjunctive is
mentioned in the without toil books but only in the 'using' of the new versions, and not
the with ease books. Does anyone else have a reason for why they think that the quality
level has dropped in the new books. Only having a limited experience of studying with
assimil, it seems that the drop in quality is really a drop in quantity, as the new
courses pad out pages with exercises and virtually blank pages. The content itself may
not be as 'full' as the without toil books, but they are useful nonetheless


Yes, besides in the old series they used to tell us some sort of story, i.e. in "French without toil" a young man travels from England to France in order to improve his French (he has taken the Assimil course before :). This fact may be quite more interesting to students than unconnected lessons of the later Assimil methods.

What I don't like about the old series is the location and the small letters of the recordings translations; They are difficult to follow.



Did the old series have more recordings, or was it still around the 3 hour range. What kind of exercises did they have ? If they had the translation type, were those on the recordings ?
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tractor
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 Message 11 of 20
31 July 2010 at 5:23pm | IP Logged 
michaelmichael wrote:
What kind of exercises did they have ? If they had the translation type, were those on the
recordings ?

At least German without Toil has only the translation type. They are on the recordings.

Edited by tractor on 31 July 2010 at 7:40pm
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Breogan
Bilingual Tetraglot
Groupie
Spain
Joined 5944 days ago
42 posts - 48 votes
Speaks: Spanish*, Galician*, French, English
Studies: German, Russian, Arabic (classical)

 
 Message 12 of 20
31 July 2010 at 6:10pm | IP Logged 
michaelmichael wrote:

Did the old series have more recordings, or was it still around the 3 hour range. What kind of exercises did they have ? If they had the translation type, were those on the recordings ?


Yes, "Without toil" series used to have more lessons, i.e. 140 for French and 125 for German. The overall time is more or less the same than in "with ease", maybe a little more, but the point is that the old lessons were shorter, so they put more lessons than they do nowadays. I like the old way.

The old exercises were translations, not filling the gaps with words. I'm not sure about all the exercises being recorded, but I think some of them were just written on the book and the disks did not contain them.


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michaelmichael
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 Message 13 of 20
31 July 2010 at 6:23pm | IP Logged 
Breogan wrote:
michaelmichael wrote:

Did the old series have more recordings, or was it still around the 3 hour range. What kind of exercises did they have ? If they had the translation type, were those on the recordings ?


Yes, "Without toil" series used to have more lessons, i.e. 140 for French and 125 for German. The overall time is more or less the same than in "with ease", maybe a little more, but the point is that the old lessons were shorter, so they put more lessons than they do nowadays. I like the old way.

The old exercises were translations, not filling the gaps with words. I'm not sure about all the exercises being recorded, but I think some of them were just written on the book and the disks did not contain them.



OK so old series
-still around 3 hours
-still had translations exercises on the recordings
-shorter lessons

Hmm when i think of it like this, it doesn't seem so vastly superior to the new version.
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tractor
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Studies: French, German, Latin

 
 Message 14 of 20
31 July 2010 at 7:50pm | IP Logged 
michaelmichael wrote:
Hmm when i think of it like this, it doesn't seem so vastly superior to the new
version.

I've gone through both the German without Toil and the German with Ease. I'd say the old one is superior, but not
vastly superior. The grammar points are better explained, the grammar section at the end of the book is longer
and better, there are almost no typos in the English texts, there are not so many sloppy translations from French to
English, the vocabulary is probably larger and I like the stories, humour and illustrations better.

Edited by tractor on 31 July 2010 at 7:51pm
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michaelmichael
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5285 days ago
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Speaks: English*
Studies: French

 
 Message 15 of 20
31 July 2010 at 11:41pm | IP Logged 
tractor wrote:
michaelmichael wrote:
Hmm when i think of it like this, it doesn't seem so vastly superior to the new
version.

I've gone through both the German without Toil and the German with Ease. I'd say the old one is superior, but not
vastly superior. The grammar points are better explained, the grammar section at the end of the book is longer
and better, there are almost no typos in the English texts, there are not so many sloppy translations from French to
English, the vocabulary is probably larger and I like the stories, humour and illustrations better.


I'm not too concerned about the grammar, I have a lot of books that just specialize on that. The vocabulary on the other hand is a bit of a concerned, I was hoping I could read newspapers and possibly harry potter after completion.
1 person has voted this message useful



tractor
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5481 days ago
1349 posts - 2292 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan
Studies: French, German, Latin

 
 Message 16 of 20
01 August 2010 at 12:30am | IP Logged 
michaelmichael wrote:
I'm not too concerned about the grammar, I have a lot of books that just specialize on
that. The vocabulary on the other hand is a bit of a concerned, I was hoping I could read newspapers and possibly
harry potter after completion.

I can read newspapers, although there are some words here and there that I don't understand. I have used other
methods in addition to Assimil though.

Edited by tractor on 01 August 2010 at 12:30am


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