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Assimil French Courses for Fluency

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vikramkr
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 Message 1 of 8
01 March 2010 at 3:25am | IP Logged 
I am currently using Assimil's New French with Ease course. Upon completing it, I plan on completing Assimil's
Using French course. Presumably at this point, I will be fluent in French, so my question is this: would it be
worthwhile to complete the Business French course afterwards, as well?

Edited by vikramkr on 01 March 2010 at 3:25am

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Paskwc
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 Message 2 of 8
01 March 2010 at 3:33am | IP Logged 
If you've reached complete fluency, then no. If you're already fluent, you're time will
be better spent reviewing French business related literature.

However, if you're unable to make sense of native business related literature, Assimil's
Business French course would be a good idea.
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Splog
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 Message 3 of 8
01 March 2010 at 8:57am | IP Logged 
Ouch! You asked a thorny question, because "fluency" is a loose term. There have been many thread on here trying to pin it down, and in the end there is little consensus and people tend to agree to disagree,

Turning to the Assimil books: I studied both the French With Ease and Using French courses pretty intensively a few years back when I was living in Luxembourg. As a result, I was able to handle simple situations. Since I needed to sit in on business meetings I also bought and studied Assimil Business French, and it covered a lot of material in neither of the two other books.

Still, having finished all three Assimil books my French was only at "survival level". That is, I could certainly get by, but it was still only the beginning.

After another two years in Luxembourg, talking every day in French, watching TV, reading papers, and so on, my French was substantially better. I suppose it was close to fluent by then (in that I could talk about most things one way or another) but there still remained a massive amount to learn.

In summary, the Assimil courses are a springboard that will take you to a basic level of fluency so that you can "get by". You will need an immense amount of continual study and immersion to build on that basic survival level. The Business French book you mention may be a useful "next step", with many more steps still ahead of you.
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microsnout
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 Message 4 of 8
01 March 2010 at 5:54pm | IP Logged 
I would have to agree with Splog here. After those first two courses you will likely still be far from fluent by most
peoples definition. Rather than doing a third Assimil, I think it would be best to dive into materials for native
French speakers like books, movies, and above all interacting with native speakers..
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vikramkr
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 Message 5 of 8
01 March 2010 at 9:00pm | IP Logged 
When I said mentioned that I would be fluent after the two courses, I was assuming basic fluency (as opposed to
advanced fluency). Is this a reasonable conclusion? Indeed, I have seen varied opinions on both Assimil and fluency
in this forum; some views back my conclusion and others don't.

I suppose Business French would be a good idea.
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josht
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 Message 6 of 8
01 March 2010 at 9:13pm | IP Logged 
I've used French with Ease and Using French, and I think the biggest problem you'll face when you're done with them is a relatively small vocabulary. Not to say the courses don't teach a lot of words; they do. But when you're done, you'll still have a vocabulary of three or four thousand words (just my estimate after using them, I've not done a word count). That's a good base, but you'll still be reaching for all sorts of basic words that the courses just don't teach.
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kerateo
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 Message 7 of 8
01 March 2010 at 9:25pm | IP Logged 
you should try french without toil between new french with ease and using french, just a thought.
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reltuk
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 Message 8 of 8
01 March 2010 at 9:59pm | IP Logged 
vikramkr wrote:
When I said mentioned that I would be fluent after the two courses, I was assuming basic fluency (as opposed to advanced fluency). Is this a reasonable conclusion? Indeed, I have seen varied opinions on both Assimil and fluency in this forum; some views back my conclusion and others don't.

I suppose Business French would be a good idea.


There's a lot of debate about words like fluency on these forums. Sometimes they do more to hinder the conversation than they do to help it along. The purpose of almost any beginner language course should get you to the point where you're consuming native language materials. For a language like French there are a very large amount of native materials available in most parts of the world and language exchange partners are relatively easy to find. So, depending on your expected uses of the language, French with Ease and Using French should be plenty good to get you into the fruitful language exchange/watching tv/listening to radio/reading newspapers and novels stage. If you actually want to do business in France then its possible that the Business French would have relevant cultural and linguistic usage information which you would find helpful even after completing Using French. But it's not going to help with fluency as much as just using the language as much as possible with native materials will.


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