lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5732 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole
| Message 1 of 8 13 June 2010 at 1:45am | IP Logged |
I want to buy one of the Assimil German books for a friend of mine who wanted to learn
German but unfortunately lost her German book. I've heard a lot of good things on this
board about the Assimil series, so I decided to go with this one.
My question: which one should I buy? I've heard that "without toil" is better than "with
ease", so I was hoping to go for that one... but there seems to be two versions of
"without toil" - a 1953 version and a 1981 version by A. Cherel. Which one should I buy?
I remember that my first impression of the 1950s Russian course being negative because I
thought it was all over the place, and I don't want to scare my friend off from learning
German. Any suggestions?
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datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5395 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French
| Message 2 of 8 13 June 2010 at 4:37am | IP Logged |
Personally, I would get the "With Ease" course, because of the book, and the audio CDs. I love the Without Toil, but in order to actually purchase it, you could be running into SERIOUS money, unless you would download the PDF and audio files, print the PDF, bind it into a binder, and burn the Audio CDs for her.
(I actually did this, for myself, not a friend :D)
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tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5263 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin
| Message 3 of 8 13 June 2010 at 11:15am | IP Logged |
I think German without Toil is better than German with Ease. You can buy the book through Abebooks. I doubt
there are significant changes between the 1953 and 1981 versions.
Edited by tractor on 13 June 2010 at 11:15am
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Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5375 days ago 938 posts - 1839 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin
| Message 4 of 8 13 June 2010 at 11:24am | IP Logged |
The only significant change between the 1953 version and the 1981 is the binding material - the 1953 version is in a brownish cloth whilst the 1981 version is a proper hardcover.
I find the 80s hardcover versions more durable.
All Assimil is 'all over the place' - that's kinda how it works. I always start Assimil after doing a basic course like MT, TY or Pimsleur.
Edited by Elexi on 13 June 2010 at 11:25am
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lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5732 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole
| Message 5 of 8 14 June 2010 at 8:28pm | IP Logged |
datsunking1 wrote:
Personally, I would get the "With Ease" course, because of the book,
and the audio CDs. I love the Without Toil, but in order to actually purchase it, you
could be running into SERIOUS money. |
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I actually found the book for a very good price. :P However, no CDs, unfortunately...
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datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5395 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French
| Message 6 of 8 14 June 2010 at 8:31pm | IP Logged |
lynxrunner wrote:
datsunking1 wrote:
Personally, I would get the "With Ease" course, because of the book,
and the audio CDs. I love the Without Toil, but in order to actually purchase it, you
could be running into SERIOUS money. |
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I actually found the book for a very good price. :P However, no CDs, unfortunately... |
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That's just my luck then :D... I found a French Without Toil book for the price of... $160.00
Edited by datsunking1 on 14 June 2010 at 8:31pm
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pythonbyte Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5738 days ago 26 posts - 28 votes Studies: French, German
| Message 7 of 8 14 June 2010 at 10:33pm | IP Logged |
The problem with the "Without Toil" books is the audio is hard to obtain. Even if you do track it down it's usually poor quality. I have both the German and Russian courses from the 50's but the audio is atrocious.
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datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5395 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French
| Message 8 of 8 15 June 2010 at 3:07pm | IP Logged |
pythonbyte wrote:
The problem with the "Without Toil" books is the audio is hard to obtain. Even if you do track it down it's usually poor quality. I have both the German and Russian courses from the 50's but the audio is atrocious. |
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My German one isn't too great, but my Russian audio sounds like it came from a studio
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