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How do you study with Assimil? | ||
Tags: Learning Technique/Method | Assimil | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| BellaLuna Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4976 days ago 21 posts - 37 votes Speaks: Korean*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 12 25 September 2010 at 4:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's been a week since I began my study with Assimil along with other books and programs. First of all, I
wasn't impressed with Assimil at all. It just looked like a bilingual book with slow audio program. But when I found out how people are using Assimil, things were clicking and I was understanding and memorizing at the same time. It seems like most of Assimil users only study about 30 mins or less per lesson. Well I've been studying one hour or more >< Am I doing it wrong? The way I study Assimil, other book, programs or other subjects, i tend to memorize first and then understand, sometimes I do it backwards. If you tell me to write lesson 1 through lesson 6, I can write the lessons, exercises, and fill in the blank exercises without missing anything out in order. I read fanatic's note that says move on when you understand the lesson when you read and hear. I am not sure if I feel comfortable moving on that way, but at the same time I dont want to spend too much on something that I shoudn't. I wish, we have longer hours per day :( This is the way I use assimil: 1. Just listen to the new lesson 2. Read English translation while listening 3. Read Spanish out loud without audio, and figure out what it means 4. Read again without looking at the translation and try to understand 5. Listen to the audio and read the English translation 6. Listen to the audio and read Spanish 7. Read the note 8. Listen and pause then repeat 9. Do the exercise. 10. Listen to the audio with my book closed and understand it. 11. Read the English translation and translate it in Spanish(no audio) 12. Read the Spanish and translate in English (no audio) 13. Read the English Translation and translate it in Spanish again (no audio) 14. Listen to the audio and speak along with the audio. 15. Do #14 until I can hear each word with meanings. Too much? I just feel uncomfortable if I didn't memorize. Thanks to professor Arguelles, I shadow when I pedal unless I do a group ride. Anyways, how do you study your Assimil? Thanks Edited by BellaLuna on 25 September 2010 at 4:57pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5235 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 2 of 12 25 September 2010 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here's what I usually do during the passive wave:
1. Listen to the lesson (at least once). 2. Listen to the lesson while reading the target language (TL) text. 3. Read the TL text aloud. 4. Read the TL text aloud, the notes and, if necessary, consult the translation. 5. Read the TL text aloud three times. 6. Read through the preceding 4 lessons (TL text) aloud. 7. Read through the TL text aloud twice. 8. Translate the exercises from English to TL (speaking only). 9. Do the stupid fill in the blank exercises. If I'm unsure about the correct pronunciation, I listen to the audio again. I spend about 30 minutes on each lesson. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lexii Senior Member United States Joined 5004 days ago 162 posts - 194 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 3 of 12 25 September 2010 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you for posing this question, BellaLuna. I just started Assimil Japanese and am curious about "how to Use", too. There are a few other threads here on these forums, as well as some videos on YouTube. It seems as though many people tailor Assimil to suit their own needs (maybe that's why there's no "official" How to Use info?). It'll be nice to get more input from HTLAL readers.
For me, right now, Assimil Japanese is all review. I'm doing Lesson 3 today. Here's what I've been doing: 1) Using a bookmark, cover the romaji and read the Japanese. 2) Check my understanding of the passage by reading the English text. 3) Simultaneously read while listening to the audio. 4) Speak out loud during the breaks. 5) Read the notes (cross-ref to the items indicated) 6) Pay particular attention to the literal translation (crucial to internalizing syntax) 7) Listen, read and speak again. That's really all I'm doing right now. I'm toying with the idea of listening first (no reading). I think I'll need to play with it a bit more to figure out what works for me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6565 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 4 of 12 25 September 2010 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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In my view, less stress = better. Before ever seeing an Assimil booklet I had read
plenty of opinions about how to use them and how to use them "best". All of which resulted in methodological overkill and trying in vain to reach some kind of imagined optimal efficiency of learning that I never did. Much later I found out that Assimil pretty much works and you don't have to do anything special to make it work. For instance, I don't use the recordings at all, I don't feel like it. And I'm still learning just the same. So I've made peace with Assimil and given up the idea that you really have to squeeze a certain way to get the juice out. What's deceptive about Assimil is how small that booklet is and how, to put it bluntly, insignificant the daily amount of work seems to be. Just read a dozen sentences of dialog and that's all you do. But if you have the patience to keep it going you will realize that it works; you go back to earlier lessons and you know that stuff. Of all the people talking about Assimil I think fanatic probably is the best person to listen to. Not because his prescription is somehow better, but because his laid back attitude about it conveys the idea that it's not, as it may seem, critically important exactly what you do and in what order, how many repetitions and all that. Just keep going with the lessons and you learn. Edited by numerodix on 25 September 2010 at 7:05pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Faraday Senior Member United States Joined 5900 days ago 129 posts - 256 votes Speaks: German* | Message 5 of 12 25 September 2010 at 7:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with numerodix. Try different things and see what works best for you.
I'm convinced that the real reason Assimil advocates its 30 minutes a day approach isn't necessarily for any intrinsic superiority of the method, but to lessen the anxiety and stress experienced by many language learners. By capping the commitment at 30 minutes a day, they're making the lessons manageable and not overwhelming for its customers. Especially the beginning language learners. Assimil realizes that consistency is the most important ingredient. But there's no real reason that you can't cover a course intensively over a few weeks if you wanted to. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cmj Octoglot Groupie Switzerland Joined 5120 days ago 58 posts - 191 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Arabic (classical), Latin, Italian | Message 6 of 12 25 September 2010 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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One thing to keep in mind is that the amount of work you will have to do per lesson depends on the proximity of the target language to your native language or other languages you know well. I've been doing both Assimil Italian and Arabic. In Italian I can proceed very casually, listening to the lessons without putting in too much effort and occasionally taking a look at the notes, often finishing my work for the day in under 20 minutes. In the case of Arabic, I'm compelled to follow a fairly intensive regime, with longer sessions, repeated listenings over a period of several weeks along with grammar and vocabulary drills.
Of course, your English is excellent, but coming from a non-Indo-European background it is unsurprising that it will take you somewhat longer to work your way through a lesson in Assimil Spanish (bear in mind that a lot of people going through Assimil in 30 min. a day are learning languages very closely related to their own native languages), while you'd likely be able to blow through Assimil Japanese at a very rapid rate. In other words: don't worry about it! If you're making progress, you're doing it right. Edited by cmj on 25 September 2010 at 7:43pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ilperugino Pentaglot Groupie Portugal Joined 4956 days ago 56 posts - 75 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 12 25 September 2010 at 8:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sitck with what you don´t understand or can´t do (or speak, or write). There you must work on, and repeat and whatever you device to get you going. Edited by ilperugino on 25 September 2010 at 8:13pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5055 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 8 of 12 25 September 2010 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | ||
Since you are already fluent in English, I don't think you'll face the same difficulties with learning Spanish that a Korean monolingual would have. Just take it slowly. For passive wave: I usually listen once or twice first, to see what I can make of the lesson without looking. Then I listen once while reading the English and observing the cognates and how well they match up. Then I read the Spanish internally, comparing to the English meaning. That allows me to make out some vague words that may not have been clear to me from the recording. I then read the notes. Finally, I listen again to the recording and try to see if I understand everything without looking at the text. If I cannot, I take a glance at the English text to ascertain what's going on. I repeat this sequence of listening only until I can understand it entirely without looking at the English or Spanish. Lastly, I repeat aloud after the recording to practice my pronunciation, pausing between phrases and clauses to get my own repetition in. (Btw, I don't touch those Control Exercises at all until the active wave. I don't even look at them during the passive wave). For active wave: I don't really listen to the recording at all. I cover the Spanish page and translate everything into verbal Spanish and pronounce it as best I can. I simultaneously write down what I'm saying in a Word document, taking care to get all the accents, diacritics, and punctuation right. Finally, I recheck what I have written against the correct Spanish text. If there are corrections, I rewrite the whole the incorrect portion of the sentence and speak the entire sentence out loud. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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