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Assimil a load of rubbish?? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6484 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 33 of 92 08 April 2009 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I don't think so. What do you find interesting and stimulating in sentences like "My tailor is rich and my father is poor"? Assimil is as boring as other methods.
What?
If you want this kind of fluency, you don't need Assimil, you only need a phrase book, its little grammar explanations and its audio. In fact, Assimil has some phrasebooks (book and audio) that are much more useful in this regard. You can edit the audio with Audacity and introduce the sounds (native question and target answer and viceversa) into Anki (SRS software) and you have a very good "everyday situation" method. Much better than the original. Edited by slucido on 08 April 2009 at 8:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Kugel Senior Member United States Joined 6347 days ago 497 posts - 555 votes Speaks: English* | Message 34 of 92 08 April 2009 at 9:30pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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It's simply impossible to be fluent after doing the 100 or so lessons from Assimil. I'm perplexed that this claim of fluency would even be mentioned, because the company, as far as I know, doesn't even make this fluency claim.
And the translations were so unhelpful that I found "L'Hebreu sans Peine" just as effective and/or ineffective as "German with Ease." I think a good litmus test would be this:can you pass an entrance test, skipping the first 2-3 years of a language curriculum at university by just completing 100 lessons of Assimil? This question doesn't even touch the surface of fluency; it only asks if Assimil can bring you to to this respectable(you did indeed put a lot of hard work into it) yet beginner level. I don't think Assimil can even do this, but I would like to hear from anyone with honest success to prove me wrong. And I don't mean just thinking you are fluent with delusions of grandeur; on the contrary, I mean actually passing 3 years of college language classes by testing out thanks to Assimil. Traveling to a foreign country and speaking with natives is awesome, but not exactly as awesome as testing out 3 years of hard language classes with a $50 language program in 6 months. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6712 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 36 of 92 08 April 2009 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Many years ago I bought a quite thick book with a nice title "German in 3 months" or something like that. I never finished it but I still remember how excited I was about mastering German... not in three months (I wasn't so naive after all) but with the use of this book mostly. Now it makes me laugh as I know exactly how big the difference between the content of this book and fluency is... not to mention the huge gaps between basic, advanced and native-like fluency, which I hope to achieve one day.
It wasn't Assimil but anyway, let's face it - a small book will not bring us from zero to fluency, no matter how good it would be and how well we would master its content. It's simply too small. And there's nothing in Assimil to blame, let's just see what it's written on their website: "This course familiarises you with the language used every day in a wide variety of contexts. Basic grammar and essential vocabulary are combined with an introduction to the Italian way of life." ""With Ease" series Beginner to Intermediate The "With Ease" series is Assimil's flagship collection. Available for more than 50 languages, these courses enable beginners to acquire an average vocabulary of between 2,000 and 3,000 words, to learn the basic grammar rules, and to gain a command of everyday conversation" 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6712 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 38 of 92 08 April 2009 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Actually, I quoted it as an example of how few you're going to learn with it, not how much. No matter if it's 1500 or 2500 words, it's still far from fluency, and that was my point. "Everyday conversation" doesn't sound like fluency either.
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| Thuan Triglot Senior Member GermanyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6739 days ago 133 posts - 156 votes Speaks: Vietnamese, German*, English Studies: French, Japanese, Romanian, Swedish, Mandarin | Message 39 of 92 08 April 2009 at 11:11pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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The amount of vocabulary depends on the course you look at. The amount of vocabulary covered in Assimil Korean is significantly less than in Assimil Swedish. Assimil Japanese/Chinese 1 and 2 combined offer less than Assimil French or Italian.
I took one Japanese at my university. I quit after four months. I couldn`t even properly introduce myself. I thought that Japanese was too difficult for me. Thanks to Pimsleur Japanese I I regained my confidence and made the decision to continue with Japanese. Thanks to the recommendations by Fanatic and Ardaschir I decided to study Japanese with the Assimil method. I didn`t use any SRS or flashcards, shadowing was the main method I used to become familiar with Japanese. After I finished the first 50 lessons in book 1 I didn`t feel as if I could hold a conversation in Japanese. Seven months after I began the course (between lesson 60 and 70) I suddenly felt that I was ready for a real life conversation. I met one of my Japanese friends at a cafe and I told him that I wanted to talk to him in Japanese. I had my first five minute conversation in Japanese. Assimil Japanese 1&2 gave me the necessary tools to express myself in Japanese. Assimil Japanese was all I needed to talk with my Japanese friends in Japanese. Later on I would use other methods such as SRS or L-R to continue on my path to fluency, but I can say without doubt that I`ve built my foundation with Assimil. As for grammar, I took the JLPT2 in December without any preparation and I failed the test. The worst part has been the grammar part. So, if you want to take an official test, do study grammar. As long as I keep to the grammar that I`ve studied through Assimil, I rarely make any mistakes. From what I remember, if you use the basic Assimil course with the "using whatever" course you will have learnt most of the basic grammar and around 4500 words. I don`t know where I got this from - if this is wrong, please correct me. This is probably enough to feel comfortable in a conversation with native speakers, but nothing close to literacy. And as I`ve mentioned before, Assimil courses for exotic languages (like Chinese or Japanese) cover even less. You won`t be able to pass the JLTP2 after having finished Assimil. But I would still recommend this course to others, simply because I have yet to see better language courses. Move on to native material after you`ve finished Assimil. The foundation that you have built should be more than enough to help you out with these materials. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5790 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 40 of 92 08 April 2009 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I did El inglés sin esfuerzo without any prior knowledge of English. I still remember the day I bought it in El Corte Inglés, one of the biggest Spanish stores. I'd never heard of it, I was just looking for something light, with many dialogues and no grammar or vocabulary lists. It was the fanciest course in the shelves, even with mp3 files, so I picked the package and it turned out to be one of the best purchases I've ever made. A real gem, everything in it was ideal for me: the size, the methodology, the records, I kinda fell in love with this little book and kept practising every day. That said, I've got no problem accepting that other people might get much more out of it than what I did, but fluency? Honestly, I can't quite believe it. There's not enough English in the course to claim that you've learnt the language, that's all. Edited by Javi on 08 April 2009 at 11:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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