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Assimil

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zorglub
Pentaglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 6759 days ago

441 posts - 504 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: French*, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin

 
 Message 257 of 278
25 August 2011 at 6:11pm | IP Logged 
TMoneytron wrote:
Has anyone else had problems with translations?

To me the German to English translations seem to be getting less understandable as I go on, and don't match what I would normally think it means.

Example, "Man kommt eben zu nichts." Is translated as "You don't have time to do anything." Yet there is no explanation of what the kommt denotes in here. Should I be learning just the overall meaning so I can "feel" it?

Some of the phrases also don't seem to make sense in English: "Remark of a bat: "Wait and see! I'll fly past next year!" What does that even mean? I'm getting a little confused. Some help would be greatly appreciated.


Which version are you talking about ?

The bat's remark does not mean much it's just a joke I think.
"Man kommt eben zu nichts."is an idiom , as many idioms in any language they happen to look obscure to non natives. It also means not to succeed in anything , methinks.
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TMoneytron
Groupie
United States
Joined 4620 days ago

70 posts - 83 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 258 of 278
26 August 2011 at 11:11pm | IP Logged 
I have the 1987 version. Does the newer version have clearer translations?
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The Aussie
Newbie
Australia
Joined 4607 days ago

10 posts - 11 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: French

 
 Message 259 of 278
28 August 2011 at 7:03am | IP Logged 
I have a few questions, first.
Is this a good strategy?

Passive
Read through the Lesson, look at the TL part, then the English part, matching up the words, see what everything means.
Play the Audio, while following along with the book. Repeat until you can Understand what is being said.
Put the book away, play audio and translate into English aloud (E.G. Audio: "Attendez une minute", You: "Wait a minute"). Bring back book, turn the Audio off, read the TL part, saying the words aloud.
Read notes.
Later that day (At least two hours later) Do the lesson again.

Active
Do the same for the lesson you're on, for the revision lesson,
Cover up french, translate aloud.
Listen to audio, write down what you/I hear, put unknown words into Anki.
Do Fill in the blanks Exercises.


Apparently you can go through the book in two months, I've got 3 months to get a better grip on the language (Well, the stat of December), I'm not interested in reaching absolute fluency, as i know that's impossible within my allocated time frame, so i would love some help with that, like, do double lessons, triple on weekends. I'm 15, so i might learn faster then some adults. Although due to my age, i'm still at school, and i still have school commitments, although the only major one is a one week camp (Followed by the school holidays, although ism taking Assimil with me).


Finally,
After i complete the course,should i continue learning french in school until year twelve, so i could continue to further my knowledge in the language? (Note: I didn't start learning languages to trump my peers) Would learning a new language on the side while still taking french mess up my french? (I'm thinking German, Japanese, Dutch, Thai, Italian or Spanish) What else can i do to further my French knowledge?

Thanks for reading.
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zorglub
Pentaglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 6759 days ago

441 posts - 504 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: French*, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin

 
 Message 260 of 278
28 August 2011 at 10:41am | IP Logged 
The Aussie wrote:
I have a few questions, first.
Is this a good strategy?

... Put the book away, play audio and translate into English aloud (E.G. Audio: "Attendez une minute", You: "Wait a minute").... Would learning a new language on the side while still taking french mess up my french? (I'm thinking German, Japanese, Dutch, Thai, Italian or Spanish) What else can i do to further my French knowledge?

Thanks for reading.


My feeling is that "Bring back book, turn the Audio off, read the TL part, saying the words aloud" is useless. Translating from the written text, French to English, that's part of the active phase but doing it in the first phase cannot harm.
I'd suggest to do a lot of shadowing.

By the way there is no way Assimil (which I praise) can bring you to fluency , even less "absolute" fluency. Especially for such a complicated language as French (or English, or German...)

Take every opportunity to learn other languages, it cannot mess up your French.
It may bring some confusion when you learn related languages at the same time, I do not think it really matters. You might want to use Assimil for those languages too. I would have done it at the time, had I known what assimil achieves.
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The Aussie
Newbie
Australia
Joined 4607 days ago

10 posts - 11 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: French

 
 Message 261 of 278
29 August 2011 at 12:02pm | IP Logged 
I've never really understood shadowing, can you please explain it? Or give me a link to where i can read about it. I know Professor Arguelles has a video, but i can't seem to view the 55 minute video.
Oh yes, by fluency, i meant that with using outside materials and Assimil, i could not achieve fluency in that allocated time-frame.

Edited by The Aussie on 29 August 2011 at 12:03pm

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TMoneytron
Groupie
United States
Joined 4620 days ago

70 posts - 83 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 262 of 278
31 August 2011 at 10:19pm | IP Logged 
I'll post this here too.

But does anyone know how different vocabulary is between the With Ease and the Without Toil series is? I know the latter may have some outdated epxressions, but I have both now and I was thinking about continuing on with the Without Toil book after I finish with Ease. Would that be redundant? Or would I learn a lot more vocabulary?

It really sucks that Perfectionnement Allemand hasn't been translated into English.
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newyorkeric
Diglot
Moderator
Singapore
Joined 6138 days ago

1598 posts - 2174 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian
Studies: Mandarin, Malay
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 263 of 278
01 September 2011 at 3:42am | IP Logged 
No, it wouldn't be redundant. The Without Toil books usually differ quite a bit from the With Ease books. The Without Toil books tend to move faster with more advanced vocabulary and grammar.

Edited by newyorkeric on 01 September 2011 at 6:00am

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dleewo
Groupie
United States
Joined 5577 days ago

95 posts - 131 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Mandarin

 
 Message 264 of 278
01 September 2011 at 3:11pm | IP Logged 
newyorkeric wrote:
No, it wouldn't be redundant. The Without Toil books usually differ quite a bit from the With Ease books. The Without Toil books tend to move faster with more advanced vocabulary and grammar.


I actually find the WithoutToil book (at least for German) is easier than the WithEase.

I'm currently doing both for German, doing one lesson each per day. I'm on lesson 35 in each book. For each lesson, I always play the dialog without opening the book and I find that I can understand more of the WithoutToil dialog vs the WithEase dialog on that first pass.

Also, each lesson of WithotuToil has less sentences than the WithEase. The German WithoutToil has 125 lessons vs the 100 for WithEase and while I'm only at lesson 35, I'm thinking they can go slower in WithoutToil as they have more lessons over which to stretch the material.

Please note that this is only the opinion of someone that is at lesson 35 and only for German. Other languages may differ.

Derek




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