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Old vs new Assimil programs | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7145 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 9 of 14 31 May 2005 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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The Language Without Toil books went through a number of editions with different cartoons but kept the same text. The only changes I have found were minor changes to prices and the amount given as tips. Otherwise they are word for word the same. The old cartoons were by Pierre Soymier and the newer ones were by Gring or by Gring and Soymier.
If a book is called German Without Toil, it is valid for the set of cassettes or records you may have, so long as they have the same name. I was given a set of cassettes to go with my Deutsch Ohne Muhe program (I learnt from records) and the recordings are different to the records, but they still retain the same script. They have different speakers and they include all of the exercises. I think the records left out some exercises. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zack Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 122 posts - 127 votes Speaks: German*, English, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 10 of 14 03 June 2005 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | ||
Several places - amongst them on www.abebooks.com: A Canadian bookseller sells the set for a mere $15. I was very tempted to order it, but because of previous bad experiences with older used tapes I'm hesitant (I'm not a collector - just a learner). There's also a 1957 edition of the book only - and I think I also saw some earlier editions of the book. If you are collecting vintage Assimil, you could also have a look at ebay.de (if you haven't already). There I've seen some much older editions. By the way - I saw that Assimil now offers some online language-courses. Does anyone have any experience with that? The reason I'm curious is that on the whole I am really unhappy about all the packaging your typical language-course comes in and couldn't care less for bulky boxes with tapes, CD's or even CD-ROMs. I suppose that most people nowadays record the audio to mp3 or similar format anyway. Wouldn't it be nice if publishers made their audio-material available on the web for download? Then you buy the textbook with a registration-key, log onto the publisher's site, download the audio and are ready to learn. Edited by zack on 03 June 2005 at 4:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jradetzky Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom geocities.com/jradet Joined 7206 days ago 521 posts - 485 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, GermanB1 | Message 11 of 14 03 June 2005 at 5:01pm | IP Logged | ||
I have experience using the multimedia versions of Assimil Polish and Assimil French. Each couse comes in a CD and the lessons are exactly the same as the book + tapes edition, i.e., you go to lesson one, click on start and you listen to the conversation while the text is being displayed, then you can click on individual sentences to listen again and read the translations and grammatical notes. However, I could not find the translation exercises (instead at the end of each lesson you're shown sentences for you to rate them as easy or difficult to understand). The sentence completion exercises are the same as in the book, with the blank spaces for you to type in. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7145 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 12 of 14 05 June 2005 at 8:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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A comment on the old and new Assimil programs.
The old Assimil programs took you to the country of the language you were learning as a visitor and commented on the customs, manners and characteristics of the people through the eyes of the visitor. They were very friendly in approach and taught you about the background to the language as well as teaching the language itself. Because the programs were made in the forties and fifties for the main part, most of the information has either changed or simply no longer applies. That has not been an issue with me. I just keep it in mind as I learn the language. But, I can see that Assimil would have been criticised if they had not changed the programs and if they had kept the out of date material. My main complaint with the new programs is that the recordings are painfully slow for the first week of lessons with too much repetition. That is also no big deal as you can either put up with it for a week or simply edit the tapes. If you are learning a language completely from scratch the repetition could be helpful. The basic principle of the learning method remains the same for the old and new programs. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Dadanga Newbie United States andriuszlabys.com Joined 5464 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: English | Message 13 of 14 12 December 2009 at 9:49am | IP Logged | ||
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Does anyone by any chance have audio records for Assimil 1957 German without Toil edition?
I have been searching everywhere on web including ebay, amazon and other sites. Could you give me an advice where I could obtain a copy of it? (I heard excerpts from vintage French edition. The artistic quality of those recorded dialogues is far superior compared to modern editions!) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rafal Diglot Groupie Poland besmart.pl Joined 6853 days ago 83 posts - 85 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC1 Studies: German, Spanish | Message 14 of 14 12 December 2009 at 11:01am | IP Logged | ||
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There's a bootleg copy available for download at uz-translations. It's legal to download in most of Europe (due to 50 year copyright protection of audio recordings there) whereas in the US it's not legal (95 year protection).
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