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Assimil (Luca’ Method) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5002 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 17 of 41 18 April 2011 at 2:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is reminding me of the great flashcards debate - does translating from L1 to L2 increase your ability to produce L2 and "think in the language", or merely your ability to translate? I have no idea, I don't have a clue about the psychological aspects of the meaning vs. its representation in L1 and L2 etc. but it's something I've been wondering about for a while. I'm thinking that maybe doing L1 to L2 during my Assimil revision (of the book I've already finished, but would still like to "internalise" more) would be more productive than simply reading and shadowing the L2 dialogues, especially since I already understand well and production is the skill I really need to work on.
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| AndrewW Newbie United States Joined 4802 days ago 29 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 18 of 41 18 April 2011 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | ||
I always run my own substitution drills with Assimil. Any sentence I had trouble with or found really interesting, I'd throw into Anki in some form. And then when it comes up in Anki, I'd just play around with it. Take each part and make a different sentence out of it. This seems to work well with Anki, in that the first time you just kind of remember the phrase and words. The next time it comes up, you can play around with it a little more. And so on... That seems to help me. Looking through some of my early Anki cards, I see a lot of false cognates and weird grammar structures. Edited by AndrewW on 18 April 2011 at 8:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 5845 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 19 of 41 19 April 2011 at 3:52am | IP Logged | ||
I am no expert, but I would say that it absolutely does increase your ability to think in L2. This is because when you hear an L1 sentence, or read it, you understand it's meaning instantly and effortlessly. If you force yourself to produce the L2 sentence in less than a couple of seconds, then you are forced not to translate but to produce directly from meaning. So actually you are going from meaning -> L2. As you move along in this method, you go from forcing yourself to make the connection between the content, and gradually building a "mind" in L2 that will start to automatically produce language. I disagree that the same result can be brought about *solely* by talking to yourself or trying to use it in everyday life, because when you talk to yourself, you are able to anticipate or avoid any troubling language structures. Plus, there is not a reliable feedback and you could start to inculcate errors. It is not a true challenge for the mind to adapt to. However, I do think talking to yourself can be done cautiously. Obviously however, the ideal situation of using the structures in "real life" with natives, all the time, provides the immediate challenge and inculcation, but unless you are in a 24 7 immersion environment, in my opinion it has to be supplemented if you want the maximum speed possible. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6470 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 20 of 41 21 April 2011 at 12:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Luca's method is a direct-inverse translation method. As far as I know this is the method that Roger Ascham, tutor of Queen Elizabeth I, used with translation to and from Latin.
He wrote "The Scholemaster" and he explains "the double translation of a model book". The method itself seems to have been taken from Cicero. Luca's method works very well and better if you have audio. Ancients scholars used this method. Nothing new under the sun. Edited by slucido on 24 April 2011 at 7:07pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 arashikat Diglot Pro Member United States Joined 4472 days ago 53 posts - 80 votes Speaks: Tagalog*, English Studies: Korean Personal Language Map | Message 21 of 41 29 February 2012 at 7:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm going to try this!
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| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4496 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 22 of 41 29 February 2012 at 8:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've kind of "collected" opinions on this from different sources by myself, as I was interested in optimizing my self-studies, had no prior experience with this and thus tried to learn learning itself.
I am currently learning using the VocabULearn audio series. There are 3 levels, each comes with 4x 10min of vocab in 4 categories: 120min nouns, 120 min verbs, then adjectives, then phrases. I tend to learn "production" faster (English -> Japanese), even though English is not my L1 really (but quite close to it). When it comes to Japanese -> English, I can manage most of the time, too, but the process of learning takes longer and after that, I can't produce (while I can recognize words taught English -> Japanese). It happens quite often that, when I hear a Japanese word, a light goes on in my head, but I lack the English or German term to translate. For me, translation of _any_ kind is _not_ a good thing and actually _hinders_ your progress in various aspects. IMHO: If you hope to ever think in the target language, amass vocab until you can use a L2 - L2 dictionary as soon as possible. Learn to produce, but listen to the feedback very closely (or read, if there's no audio). I think the original Assimil works great for Beginners. As soon as you are Lower Intermediate and up, you need to adjust your learning methods. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Majka Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic kofoholici.wordpress Joined 4452 days ago 307 posts - 755 votes Speaks: Czech*, German, English Studies: French Studies: Russian | Message 23 of 41 29 February 2012 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | ||
For me reacting to spoken word and replying in L2 (or L3...) and translation are two different skills which should be trained separately. And the situation is even more complicated when learning L3 through L2 or with languages with different mental language map. Unless the sentence is quite simple, a technically correct L2 - L1 - L2 translation sequence could end as a game of Chinese whispers / broken telephone. I am currently re-learning French through English. I am starting at the very beginning and "running" through the lessons. But I noticed that I could translate from English to French quite easily and lacked at the same time the skills to do the same from my native language. One reason is that not only the words, but the underlying logic of the language (grammar, word order in sentence) is much nearer between English and French then between Czech and French (quite a different kettle of fish). Perhaps after two weeks of learning I put the whole wordlist I learned from English to French in Anki, generating Czech to French cards. It took me about a month and half to work through ca. 2600 words and short phrases (introducing up to 200 "new" words per day and actually looking for the problem words). After this, I was as comfortable going from Czech as from English and abandoned this deck completely. Back to my learning method - I use shadowing quite a lot, but I find that transcribing the lessons from audio helps me to check if I can really understand all I think to know. Transcribing checks not only spelling, but a grammar too. In French this is extra useful - French "looses" lot of grammar in the speech - the verb endings, agreement etc. Unless a learner wants to speak only, this shouldn't be overlooked. In a sense, I am still doing a passive wave (in another program then assimil). I do some translating, but at the moment still from French to Czech. Edited by Majka on 29 February 2012 at 9:41pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| arashikat Diglot Pro Member United States Joined 4472 days ago 53 posts - 80 votes Speaks: Tagalog*, English Studies: Korean Personal Language Map | Message 24 of 41 01 March 2012 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just want to clarify this method...
From what I understand it's: 1. Listen to the audio 2. Repeat the audio (listen again or recite with it?) 3. Read text w/ audio 4. Read text w/o audio 5. Translate from target language to English 6. Translate my English translation back to my target language 7. Check the translations (I'm using Assimil) Do I recite or just listen again? Do I repeat the whole sequence again or just once? Edited by arashikat on 01 March 2012 at 9:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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