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Confused by reviews | ||
Tags: Usefulness | Assimil | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6453 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes  Studies: German | Message 25 of 52 02 December 2008 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Assimil is a lightweight course. Mauger's Cours De Langue Et De Civilisation Françaises is an excellent comprehensive course.
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| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6681 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 26 of 52 02 December 2008 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If you are Spanish and you use Assimil to study French, Italian or Portuguese, I agree with Fanatic.
If you are Spanish and you use Assimil to study English, German or Russian, I disagree. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Leopejo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6115 days ago 675 posts - 724 votes Speaks: Italian*, Finnish*, English Studies: French, Russian | Message 27 of 52 02 December 2008 at 2:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
Care to expand? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6681 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 28 of 52 02 December 2008 at 4:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
I mean that if your native language is closely related to the language you are studying, you will have enough with Assimil. I think you will have enough passive vocabulary due to the cognates. Consequently, I think it's perfectly feasible to understand news, TV and so on. However, with more different languages, you will have more problems. This is only my opinion. It's possible some people have understanding problems after Assimil in closely related languages and others will learn difficult languages with ease. For example, Fanatic is a mnemonic expert and maybe it's easier for him. I don't know. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7152 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 29 of 52 02 December 2008 at 4:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
What books did I read? When I arrived in Germany I was given an autobiography of the person who put me up for the night. I read the book straight through without difficulty. I read a book on mathematics which I enjoyed. Neither book was difficult. What lectures did I attend? I attended lectures on digital electronics and on philosophy and religion. My French Assimil, French Without Toil has about 4,000 words and German without Toil has around 3,000. The grammar was adequate. I didn't really need to learn any more grammar but I like to know so I learnt grammar and asked questions anyway. The fact that I did public speaking and taught in a German school indicates to me that my German was adequate. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6681 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 30 of 52 03 December 2008 at 9:25am | IP Logged | |||||
Do you really think this can be applied to the average Assimil learner? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6017 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 31 of 52 03 December 2008 at 1:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't know what to make of this statement. There was grammar that Assimil didn't teach you, which you reckon you could have done without. However, you learnt that grammar, which suggests that you encountered it and needed it in the real world (the brain is good at forgetting things that aren't useful). This is a problem we all face, as learners, when someone asks for learning advice: identifying which individual parts of our learning history actually mattered. I'm sometimes tempted to say that "exact pronunciation doesn't matter" because the courses I followed initially took that line. However, I did always have a tendency to obsessively practise individual sounds, so it doesn't match reality. That said, my technique for practising was, as I said, obsessive, and not for "normal" people's consumption, so I can't advise doing it. I can say that pronunciation is important, but I have to admit that I don't know how to learn it. So you'll see why it's hard for anyone else to take anything useful when you say that the extra stuff you did wasn't important.... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6322 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 32 of 52 03 December 2008 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Personally I think a course like Assimil (preferably in conjuction with Linguaphone) is the best starting point in a language. The reason being, I don't want a 3 volume comprehensive all-points-covered course, that would take months and months to plough through. Thus, Assimil is the most attractive, in that it is neither too concise nor too detailed; it gives you all you need to going; a core vocabulary and grammar and an understanding of how the language works. From here you can start tackling newspapers, films, audiobooks, novels and so on and really get the language down. To criticise it for not teaching you more is to miss the reason it succeeds as a perfectly sound method. Combining this with Linguaphone is the best start you can get I think.
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