psy88 Senior Member United States Joined 5379 days ago 469 posts - 882 votes Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French
| Message 1 of 5 03 March 2010 at 4:24am | IP Logged |
I hope I am posting this request in the correct place. Motivated and inspired by this forum, I have decided to begin to study an additional language.I have been, and will continue, studying Spanish but have now added French as a new target language.
My decision and my birthday coincided and now I have a lot of material to use. My question to you with more experience and knowledge: Where to start? Which program to use first, second, etc. Which ones to use separately and which together?
Here(in no particular order) are my resources:Michele Thomas Speak French for Beginners(10 CD course);French in 10 minutes a Day (book and CD's); Berlitz Self-Teacher French (book);Behind the Wheel French Level I; Assimil New French with Ease; Cortina Conversational French in 20 Lessons (book).
I thank all of you in advance for whatever suggestions you may offer.
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Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5210 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 2 of 5 03 March 2010 at 6:18am | IP Logged |
I just started Michel Thomas Spanish and I like it. A lot of people on this forum love Assimil, but I have not gotten my hands on it yet.
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psy88 Senior Member United States Joined 5379 days ago 469 posts - 882 votes Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French
| Message 3 of 5 04 March 2010 at 4:08am | IP Logged |
Thanks Johntm. I too used Michele Thomas for Spanish and I also liked it a lot. But,I am asking about recommendations for the particular sequence I should follow with the resources I have available to me. Good luck with your Spanish!
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delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 6969 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German
| Message 4 of 5 11 March 2010 at 4:39pm | IP Logged |
I'm using Assimil for Mobipocket reader on my windows mobile phone. I would say it's
excellent. Really convenient. I also have supermemo for my phone and I put a lot of
vocab into it. One last thing I use on my HTC phone is a free program that came with it
called mp3 cutter. I use this to slice up the Assimil audio.
I started learning Mandarin through Pimsleur which is similar in many ways to MT.
Unless you have to go to France in a couple of months and need to start talking I would
avoid these courses. They get phrases into your head but you could do this with
supermemo if you really wanted to. Assimil is a much more natural method for learning.
It's just a pity they don't have Assimil on Mobipocket reader for lots of other
languages (currently they only have French and Spanish). I myself will always start
with Assimil from now on.
I'm wondering where to go after Assimil? Actually I thought of Pimsleur and MT as once
I finish Assimil they may actually be fun for activating the vocabulary and words that
I already know. I will cut up the phrases and chuck them into my French Audio loop.
What about FSI or French in Action? Do they take you further than Assimil? Lastly I was
looking at Linguaphone. They have some advanced courses, but very expensive. However,
they also have internet subscription lessons for just £19.99 a year.
Edited by delectric on 11 March 2010 at 4:41pm
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ArtVision Newbie Russian Federation Joined 5154 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Studies: Russian*, English Studies: French, Italian
| Message 5 of 5 18 March 2010 at 1:04am | IP Logged |
The FSI all 4 books for French will take you further than New Assimil with ease, however it would be a great
addition to FSI course, Assimil has large vocabulary, yet the coverage of gamma is very good with FSI,
French in Action is a unique program, there is no analog in any other language to my knowledge,
it would be on par with FSI, maybe even higher level if you do all excesses from 2 work books and listen to audio
provided with it and watch all 52 video episodes, the main strength of F in A is simply in the story, it is great fun to
follow the videos! Keeps you motivated, which is the key to learning languages in general
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