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Criticised Assimil programs | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7221 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 49 of 67 30 June 2014 at 10:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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@newyorkeric, Thanks for the review. I just saw a similar critique regarding the same type of errors regarding the tone misprints on Amazon.com. Now I know what to expect and I will be priming with something else, before using Assimil. @Jeffers, Thanks as well. I noticed I have four books from Peter Jones to learn Latin. The Ancient Greek one looks like the newspaper cartoon like the Learn Latin book. I will have an idea how the teaching approach is after I finish the Latin book first. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arnaud25 Diglot Senior Member France Joined 3842 days ago 129 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Russian | Message 50 of 67 01 July 2014 at 4:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Assimil Perfectionnement Russe (french edition)
I've read the book entirely and I'm going to study it carefully a second time. It's a good course, mainly focused on modern spoken russian (almost nothing on the classical russian culture or litterature: only one lesson on the history of Russia and a few things on the history of St-Peterburg, for exemple.). One of the speaker on the audio is very difficult to understand: he speaks quickly and swallows the words. The audio is rather fast, anyway. One major drawback is that the first edition was not proofread correctly (it's the one dating from January 2014) and the book contains more than 50 mistakes or typos. The majority of them are not very important and will be noticed only by native french people, but it's annoying anyway. There are also a few mistakes in the grammar tables and notes, and that's a problem if you don't know perfectly your russian grammar: bad point. As I was reading the book, I noted all the typos in a document and sent the document to the Assimil "reading board". So perhaps the second edition will be clear of all the mistakes I've seen. For me, it's nonetheless a good course. I definitively recommand it (just wait for the second edition of the book if you're not in a hurry :o)) Edited by Arnaud25 on 01 July 2014 at 4:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JamesS Diglot Newbie Australia Joined 4215 days ago 20 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English*, Indonesian Studies: Javanese, German, Mandarin | Message 51 of 67 02 July 2014 at 1:13pm | IP Logged | ||
I have been using Assimil for both Chinese and German and I have to say I have mixed feelings about their Chinese course. Whereas the German course gallops along at a frenetic pace, is full of wit and, when I'm not feeling completely overwhelmed, gives the impression of taking me to a reasonably advanced level in at least passive skills, the Chinese offering seems to just amble along and delivers a fraction of the amount of content despite having 6 extra lessons and much longer audio recordings. With all of the dialogues thrown in about buying stamps, arranging business meetings and so on from time to time it also seems to resemble the 'glorified phrase book' approach nowadays taken by Colloquial and Teach Yourself. Assimil German never seems to waste a single sentence throughout the whole book but Assimil Chinese has whole lessons, even at the end of the second volume, that are so laughably easy that they are simply a waste of time. On the other hand, now that I'm doing an active wave and am focusing more on learning the characters (I went through all of the lessons first just using the pinyin), it does seem to be very useful for learning to read and write. There are a manageable number of new characters per lesson and many are repeated at a reasonable rate. This has actually got me thinking that it might after all be the best approach for a language like Chinese. It is still my main resource for Chinese and I wholeheartedly recommend it but it nonetheless does look a bit poor when compared to other Assimil offerings. Edited by JamesS on 02 July 2014 at 11:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6379 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 52 of 67 04 July 2014 at 7:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Overall, I thought the pace was not too slow. Chinese naturally has to be introduced at a slower rate since it is more difficult than most European languages. Also, the Chinese course speeds up a lot in volume 2. I never felt any lessons were laughably easy. In fact, it took me many, many revisions to finish off volume 2 (passively, I didn't do an active wave).
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| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5865 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 53 of 67 05 July 2014 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Personally i found the Chinese course painfully slow and way too easy. Some of the lessons were better than others, but as a whole i found it pretty boring. I didn't finish the second course, so the last few lessons might be better. Still, though it was a bit faster than the first course it still felt way too slow.
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| newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6379 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 54 of 67 07 July 2014 at 3:27am | IP Logged | ||
Just curious to know what was yours and James's background with Chinese when you did the Assimil course. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JamesS Diglot Newbie Australia Joined 4215 days ago 20 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English*, Indonesian Studies: Javanese, German, Mandarin | Message 55 of 67 08 July 2014 at 12:39pm | IP Logged | ||
I had something of a background in Chinese so I started at around lesson 35, although I have since found that there is a bit of material in the earlier lessons that is new to me. I'd never gone very far beyond the basic survival level though, so I was certainly still a beginner when I started with Assimil. I guess the point of my earlier post is that it is not a bad course for learning Chinese but it's just not what you might expect from an Assimil course. I think you are right to ask whether it could ever be done along the lines of an Assimil course for a language more closely related to English (or French) but all the same it does have some frustrating elements to it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JamesS Diglot Newbie Australia Joined 4215 days ago 20 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English*, Indonesian Studies: Javanese, German, Mandarin | Message 56 of 67 21 July 2014 at 6:58am | IP Logged | ||
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In the past I've heard that Assimil Arabic is a shocker - has anything changed on this front? Edited by JamesS on 21 July 2014 at 7:16am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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