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How do you study with Assimil? | ||
Tags: Learning Technique/Method | Assimil | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5242 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 9 of 12 26 September 2010 at 2:25am | IP Logged |
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Numerodix is right about the Assimil Method. It does work. But you have to follow it. And that means not working too hard! The point of Assimil is to assimilate the language, and this is especially the case in the Passive Wave. You should learn passively, reading aloud to get comfortable talking and working through the notes to understand but making no effort to learn anything. If you want to make sure you're progressing, avoid Active checks. Instead, reread a lesson from a week ago and make sure you still understand it. If you do, you're fine.
I have here before me Le Latin sans peine. The first verb in the book is deponent (loqueris, from loquor). The next verb is irregular (est, from esse). In lesson 5, you get your first passive (vocatur, from vocare). You could never do this in a normal book, because no beginning student could master all these forms in such a short space of time, at least not with ease. But after reading lessons for seven weeks, you get pretty comfortable seeing forms like this. By the time you reach the Active Wave, they're no big deal. That's the beauty of Assimil - you don't have to learn anything until they've gotten you ready for it. Items 1-10 in your list more or less represent an aggressive approach to the Passive Wave. But items 11-15 are Active Wave. You're not meant to do them until you've been exposed to the language enough that you're more comfortable with the variety of forms. Otherwise, you have to teach yourself things consciously that you are meant to absorb unconsciously. You are free to keep doing 11-15 if you want, of course, but you're turning Spanish with Ease into Spanish with Struggle. And you're not following the Assimil Method, which means you won't get the Assimil Method's results. Specifically, you won't get that feeling of ease that comes with just working through the lessons in the Passive Wave, nor the realization of just how much you've learned when you start the Active Wave. Instead, what you'll get is the same sense of working really hard to master the material that comes with many other language courses. The very ease of the Assimil Method can make it hard - you have to delay the gratification of actively using the language until you reach the Active Wave and you have to trust that you're learning when it feels like you're making hardly any effort at all. But, again, it really does work! So if you're frustrated or worn out from trying to actively learn during what should be the Passive Wave, I would strongly encourage you to give yourself a break and give the Assimil Method a real chance. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |
| MäcØSŸ Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5604 days ago 259 posts - 392 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2 Studies: German | Message 10 of 12 26 September 2010 at 4:55pm | IP Logged |
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My method:
1) Listen 2) Read, take note of all new words 3) Listen again 4) Exercises 5) Put new words on Anki This takes approximately 30min per lesson. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6744 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 11 of 12 27 September 2010 at 7:07am | IP Logged |
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My approach also aims to minimalize stress. I'm only on the passive wave so far, and it's a language which I've had prior experience in, but this has been my approach:
1. Listen once or twice without looking at the text to see how much I get. 2. Read the German text, English translation and notes. 3. Listen for understanding, referring to the text if necessary. After doing this once or twice I have the meaning of each sentence down without having to refer to the text. These steps 1-3 I consider my 'prep time', and takes about 10 mins. 4. Shadow while walking. I can consider the lesson complete if I'm able to shadow fluidly and effortlessly, and the declensions come naturally without me having to think about them. This step requires upwards of 10 listens, and is the crux of my Assimil study. It's hard for me to say how long it takes to finish a lesson, because I do step 4 spread out over a few days. I try to avoid mastering a lesson in one huge spurt because I find that hurts my ability to recall it later. So even if it's just one listen, I make a point to expose myself to at least one past lessons every day. Also, I do make a few SRS cards for each lesson, but I do so retroactively (a few days or even a week after finishing the lesson) so that it becomes a review of something I already learned, rather than a 'you must drill this vocab before moving on to the next lesson' kind of thing. I never do the fill-in-the-blank exercises and I never do translations, at least not during the passive wave, because those things feel like a chore for me. Edited by Lucky Charms on 27 September 2010 at 7:10am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Desacrator48 Groupie United States Joined 5103 days ago 93 posts - 127 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 12 of 12 28 September 2010 at 12:38am | IP Logged |
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I started recently Assimil New French with Ease. I'm on lesson 16. This is what I do, more or less after adapting my style over the first dozen or so:
1) Just listen to the lesson at least 5-7 times, book closed. 2) Try to repeat what I just heard, sentence and a phrase at a time, trying to get down the sound as close as I can. This requires constant pausing and quick rewind. 5 times through 3) Open book and looking only at the French text, now just listen and follow along with the words to see how they are spelled. ~3 times 4) Same as step 2, except now by sounding out the words while looking at the text too. This step helps to clarify certain sounds I might have glossed over by just listening, because now I can see all the letters and spaces in the words. Repeated until now completely familiar with the lesson. 5) Now I read/skim the translation, matching up the new words with their French counterpart. Just a quick memory storage of the words, because my goal is not to learn French as a translation of English, but to assimilate the language as is. 6) Now I return to step 4, playing the audio again and repeating out loud with the text, now completely knowledageble of what I have been hearing and saying all this time, if I had not been able to deduce from before after step 4. The idea here is that you learn French by showing/not doing, in that you avoid an English translation to understand, and instead you pick up based on context and intonation of the voice actors. 7) Now I read the text notes. As Assimil's intention is for these notes to enhance what you have already learned from the context of the dialogue, this usually is like a "oh yes, of course this is why this is that way..." feeling. You internalize the grammer notes, don't force yourself to analyze it too much like a college professor might make you, and then I return to do step 4 once again with this appreciation of the grammer under my belt. 8) Now I listen to the exercises on CD without looking at the text, done about 3 times. 9) Repeat along with the CD a few times now. 10) Read the exercises, repeat with the CD, and glance at the answers to check that I know what is being said. 11) Complete the fill-in the blanks orally and check my work. For the revision lessons, I read the grammer lessons a few times through. Since that doesn't take me very long, I spend the rest of the time recording the pronunciation of new words from that week's lesson from Google Translate for French onto my iPod Touch for my own pronunciation practice away from Assimil. Each lesson, including revisions, takes me about an hour. I hope it didn't take you as long to read my long-winded response. :) I would appreciate any feedback and comments, as I anticipate spending many months in the future with Assimil French with Ease and Using French. Thanks. Edited by Desacrator48 on 28 September 2010 at 12:44am 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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