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Making our own Assimil | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Russianbear Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6601 days ago 358 posts - 422 votes  1 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, Ukrainian Studies: Spanish | Message 33 of 130 28 May 2008 at 3:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
True. The grammar point one may want to introduce in Spanish may not be in German or in Russian. So, in a generic course, while someone who is learning Spanish would be learning something in, say, lesson 30, those who are learning German and Russian might not be learning any new grammar at all. Edited by Russianbear on 28 May 2008 at 3:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| blindsheep Triglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6186 days ago 503 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 34 of 130 28 May 2008 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm excited by the idea of making a open Assimil like course, I can't translate properly to other languages, but I would be willing to help with anything I can, whether it be making recordings of the dialogue in English and/or counting new words, making a glossary etc. I could also try my hand at writing dialogues perhaps. I don't have a ton of time, but definitely enough to contribute.
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| BGreco Senior Member Joined 6219 days ago 211 posts - 222 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: French, Spanish | Message 35 of 130 28 May 2008 at 3:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm absolutely thrilled with the positive response this has received and by the great insights that have been provided. There are a few things that need to be done before we start.
1. Figure out how to fix the problem of things not translating into certain languages. 2. Something that may be very basic in one language could be very difficult in another. How do we work around this? 3. Think of a plot/Make a script. If a few English speakers got together in a chat through AIM or something similar, I'm sure we could get a lot done very quickly. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6729 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 36 of 130 28 May 2008 at 3:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
And Slavonic languages are very tricky because of cases... You can't simply introduce all the cases in first 10 lessons... and it's difficult to avoid if you don't pay special attention from the very beginning. So it might be advisable to use different texts for different languages, or at least to group the languages somehow (e.g. Slavonic, Romance etc.).
These two questions actually are connected. My suggestion would be: - prepare a good and funny English script, think about introducing and repeating vocabulary (mostly), be careful about introducing some basic grammar structures (like past tense) but don't pay to much attention to the grammar as it can be very different in other languages. - write scripts for different target languages, based on the English version. No exact translations, as it may be strongly advisable e.g. to omit some grammar structure if it poses to many problems at this moment. It's also a good way to deal with sentences like "I'm not a map", which may not be easily translatable into some languages. I know, this is the harder way around, but I'm pretty convinced it's very important to provide good-sounding phrases and the vocabulary you may need (so that Polish learners don't learn how to say "pound" in the third lesson...). (* Some course would probably vary from the original version more than other ones, depending on the authors' ideas, but I don't really consider it as a problem). - literal translations into English.. - grammar and vocabulary explanations in English. - (optional: translations of translations ;) and explanations - different base languages. This is very time-consuming, of course, and most courses will probably have an English version only, but it's a great possibility we don't have to exclude). What do you think about it? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| BGreco Senior Member Joined 6219 days ago 211 posts - 222 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: French, Spanish | Message 37 of 130 28 May 2008 at 4:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That sounds like a great plan. We can make the scripts flexible so that they work for each language. If someone feels like translating a course so that English is not the base language, that is great, but I think the most practical way is to concentrate on the English base courses first.
I'll start thinking of and writing a script. English speakers, please contribute ideas. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6729 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 38 of 130 28 May 2008 at 4:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks, I'm happy I've managed to invent a (hopefully) feasible plan. Now I'm waiting for great and witty English scripts :).
Another suggestion: maybe we could start by trying to list some situations and some phrases we'd like to teach (kind of brainstorming). I'm pretty sure non-native English speakers would help with such a list as well. If we had such a base, it would probably be easier to write English dialogs later (and to put them into some reasonable order). About the base languages: there's at least one course we should translate literally into different base languages. I mean the English course, of course :), if we're going to prepare it (incl. recordings and grammar explanations) as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| BGreco Senior Member Joined 6219 days ago 211 posts - 222 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: French, Spanish | Message 39 of 130 28 May 2008 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If the translators also want to make a literal translation for those learning English, it would definitely be a plus.
As for brainstorming topics, yes! If we had a bunch of different situations, we could string them together into a story. As for phrases, the question is: How much are people willing to contribute? I am willing to make courses that are just as long as real Assimil courses, even with the advanced ones, but how much will people be willing to translate and record? How many words will we want to teach? Input on this would be very helpful. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6982 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 40 of 130 28 May 2008 at 4:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Russianbear has touched on the problems that I had faced earlier when taking an existing language course (a Polish one) and adapting it to Slovak (BTW I got permission from the author of the Polish course to use his course as a model). Each language has its own way of expression - what's applicable to one may not be applicable to the other. I repeat that even for similar languages such as Polish and Slovak, it's tougher than it looks.
I initially had a wild idea of converting FSI Hungarian Basic to Slovak (little risk since FSI Hungarian is in the public-domain and it goes into good depth), but that was too much work even for the first chapter since the grammatical explanations even at that point were completely different. In Hungarian, I had to think about introducing vowel harmony, present tense of "to be" and agglutination. In Slovak, I'd had to think about gender, present tense of "to be" and basic declension. Envisioning the following chapters led me to conclude that it'd be very difficult since each chapter ends up discussing different grammatical points even if the dialogues are identical. It's just because the languages are different. Now that I think of it, Russianbear's comments also remind me of how Pimsleur set up its courses. Because they're at such a basic level, it's possible to create new courses by merely translating a "master course" and changing names to suit the location where the target language is spoken. However I've read complaints that this approach has still lead to dialogues sounding stilted or limited in order to maximize "transferability". Perhaps this restricts Pimsleur from putting out more advanced materials, or adding even cursory notes on grammar, if it wanted to. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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