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Assimil in a language you don’t know yet | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4654 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 17 08 March 2014 at 4:15am | IP Logged | ||
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As has been discussed in other threads, the English base translation of L'Espagnol from
Assimil is coming out sometime soon (hopefully this month): Here is the link to the new course- http://fr.assimil.com/methodes/spanish It is going to be a translation of this course- http://fr.assimil.com/methodes/l-espagnol Let's say someone doesn't know French, but knows English and is interested in Spanish. Wouldn't it still be beneficial to use the audio and Spanish side of these dialogues until the English is available? One could edit the audio to flow at a more natural speed, and then just L-R and whatnot with the Spanish side until the English is available. One could just ignore the French side entirely. Then, once the English is available and one starts to go through Assimil, a student will already have the intonation and sounds and such internalized, or at least moreso than starting from scratch. Additionally, if you get to where you can blind shadow and know the Spanish spelling and pronunciation in-and-out, it seems like it would make things go much smoother once you start comparing the English and the Spanish translation is basically already stuck in your head. I never considered this sort of thing before, but this scenario of a translation of an Assimil course being released for an already published course had not come up before in my studies and meandering interests. Anyone think this is a good idea and/or see issue with it? It seems it could really help lead to someone assimilating the sounds and pronunciation since that is really all there is to do with the information. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6382 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 17 08 March 2014 at 4:24am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't see the point of using an Assimil course for that, rather than native material that you have a transcript for - a novel, podcast, or news broadcast, depending on your preferences. Early Assimil lessons are usually artificially slow, with resultingly odd intonation; editing the audio can bring up the speed, but the intonation patterns will still be distorted. If you want to get used to the intonation, listen to native materials, perhaps supplemented by a bit of material for learners that uses backchaining.
I tend to agree with Atamagaii that blind shadowing is pointless - or at least rather inefficient. I did a month of it, fairly intensely (maybe 7 hours on the days I did most) some time ago, with Mandarin; I've retained very little, though not nothing. Your core intuition, though, that reading L2 while listening to L2 is useful, is correct - it's stage 2 of LR for a reason. :) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6382 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 17 08 March 2014 at 4:33am | IP Logged | ||
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You're welcome. And there are plenty of good ideas hidden within your post; it's just some of the details which were off. Keep experimenting!
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| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4654 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 4 of 17 08 March 2014 at 4:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, I've never actually tried L-R before. It seems like a good thing to try someday.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6382 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 5 of 17 08 March 2014 at 4:36am | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, it can be great fun. Serpent's written a lot of good stuff about it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4197 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 6 of 17 08 March 2014 at 4:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Actually, I believe Professor Arguelles has said that he usually starts an Assimil course by blind shadowing the audio to learn the sounds, and trying to figure out as much as he can of the language on his own, and only check the translation after getting pretty familiar with the audio on his own.
Of course this is probably more productive if you know a related language, or already have some idea of the grammar going in. I don't recall ever hearing him discuss if he used different methodologies for starting a new language family or not. Though I could see that getting frustrating if you're ready to start working with the translation and are still waiting for it to get released. Edited by YnEoS on 08 March 2014 at 4:51am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6382 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 7 of 17 08 March 2014 at 4:54am | IP Logged | ||
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YnEoS: yes, he does. I like his onion approach of listening and learning more and more (Swedish went from a blur to rather transparent on simple things with fairly few repetitions of short clips - a minute or two), and of checking the translation only after listening for a while. Nonetheless, I think blind-shadowing early is a mistake - but take it with a grain of salt, as he's clearly a far more experienced language learner than I am. It's one of the few things I think he does quite suboptimally - although as he points out in his videos, there are worse alternatives, like silent periods that last far too long.
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6540 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 17 08 March 2014 at 5:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Note that Assimil is not "real" LR. The technique relies on extensive reading and a familiarity with the content.
IDK, I don't really see the point here. It's great to shadow Assimil when you already understand it, but Assimil is a late bloomer. It's the opposite of the courses that have exciting first lessons and then get dull. 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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