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Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5606 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map
| Message 9 of 64 15 April 2011 at 8:12pm | IP Logged |
This is very interesting to compary different ASSIMIL courses respective their quality.
I cannot compare because I have only experience with
- Türkisch ohne Mühe
which is of excellent quality. I especially appreciate the additional information which is given on life in Turkey and the Turkish culture.
Fasulye
1 person has voted this message useful
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5770 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh
| Message 10 of 64 15 April 2011 at 10:12pm | IP Logged |
ChiaBrain wrote:
I remember reading a post of Professor Arguelles' saying that their "El Catalan Sin
Esfuerzo" (Catalan for Spanish Speaking People) was their best work.
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I found the French version (which uses the same audio) very good. (Caveat emptor: I used it after learning Spanish, French and some Italian.)
The Basque book I got (Iniciación al Euskara) was pretty horrendous. The first few lessons were uncharacteristically phrasebooky, and had a list of conjugated verbs tacked on the end. There were several exchanges of the sort:
"who is that?
"that is Koldo? He is a student."
"And who are they?"
"They are Inaki and Amaia."
"Are they students?"
"No, they are teachers."
I know exactly why they did it this way... "because Basque is different".
Yeah, well, if it is too different to be taught "the Assimil way", why try?
Some of the dialogues had a narrator. A) No natural dialogues have narrators. B) The narrator talks just like the conversants, which I find really disorientating.
5 persons have voted this message useful
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5212 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin
| Message 11 of 64 15 April 2011 at 11:30pm | IP Logged |
Cainntear wrote:
ChiaBrain wrote:
I remember reading a post of Professor Arguelles' saying that their "El
Catalan Sin
Esfuerzo" (Catalan for Spanish Speaking People) was their best work.
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I found the French version (which uses the same audio) very good. |
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Are you sure they share the audio? The Spanish version has 70 lessons. The French version, at least the one that
they sell nowadays, has 100 lessons.
1 person has voted this message useful
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5104 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish*
| Message 12 of 64 16 April 2011 at 1:27am | IP Logged |
It would be very difficult for me to rank Assimil courses since how one experiences them is directly related to the level at which they are used. It is not the same to start with an Assimil course from zero than to use one to build upon already laid foundations. In my case, I like to use Assimil once I'm at the intermediate stage, and prefer grammar-translation types to start a language.
4 persons have voted this message useful
| Guido Super Polyglot Senior Member ArgentinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6287 days ago 286 posts - 582 votes Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, German, Italian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Catalan, Dutch, Swedish, Danish Studies: Russian, Indonesian, Romanian, Polish, Icelandic
| Message 13 of 64 16 April 2011 at 11:05am | IP Logged |
Excellent: Italian (10), English (10), French (9), Dutch (9), Portuguese (continental, 8), German (8), Polish (8), French Perf. (9),
German Perf (8). (points)
Good: Swedish and Dutch Perf. 7/10 for both
Boring: Italian Perf (boring lessons, useless vocabulary and horrendous typography). 3/10
Outrageous: Inglés Perfeccionamiento (it's all about politics and economy). 1/10
5 persons have voted this message useful
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5324 days ago 938 posts - 1839 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin
| Message 14 of 64 16 April 2011 at 11:31am | IP Logged |
Here is my opinion - of the ones I have used:
1. New French With Ease, Dutch with Ease, Le Latin (which, contrary to most, I rate above the old Latin Sans Peine), German Without Toil, Danois Sans Peine, Italian Without Toil (which is worth it for the songs alone!),
2. French without Toil (I love this course, but its chaotic layout lacks the elegance of the New French with Ease offering), German With Ease (good but let down by its mistakes), Using French, Spanish Without Toil, Spanish With Ease
3. Italian With Ease, Dutch without Toil, , Latin Sans Peine (let down by its audio), Le Grec sans Peine
4. Using Spanish (too many mistakes)
I have the perfecting series for Dutch, German and Italian but I haven't used them, so I can't comment.
2 persons have voted this message useful
| Romanist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5041 days ago 261 posts - 366 votes Studies: Italian
| Message 15 of 64 16 April 2011 at 12:57pm | IP Logged |
zerothinking wrote:
It does seem to me that language courses were better in the past. Exception being we now have audio easily available. |
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I've heard a lot of people say this about Assimil. I myself have two copies of Assimil Dutch - one from the 1970s and one from the late 1980s. I must confess that I have not actually used either of them (yet!) But on the basis of a fairly careful examination, I would have to agree that the earlier one is clearly better. The more recent one one still looks, by any average standards, very good. Yet the 1970s edition still manages to surpass it.
There was often a kind of quirky humour with the earlier Assimil courses. They contained jokes, funny stories, etc, which made them real fun to read. This is less apparent in the more recent editions.
1 person has voted this message useful
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5206 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek
| Message 16 of 64 16 April 2011 at 6:32pm | IP Logged |
From my own experiences:
Excellent:
L'Alsacien sans peine - dialogs felt real and mirrored the culture described
Using French - I used this in France; every day I noticed and got to make use of the things I was learning, so on the money for semi-formal conversation in the '90s at least
Italian with ease (older version) - funny stories where the humor heightened the experience and helped you pick up on what was going on
Pretty good:
Breton sans peine (Morvannou's 2 tome set) - nice presentation of the language and the dialogs felt authentic. But the attempt to present all four dialects was an overreach
Latin sans peine - fun presentation, but I moved on to other things before finishing it
Le Nouvel espagnol sans peine - nice culture notes and the dialogs were fun, if not as funny as earlier Assimils; better than Spanish with ease, which was reviewed accurately above
So-so:
Le nouvel italien sans peine - Just did not flow like an Assimil book should
Chinese with ease? - I couldn't get into it
Awful:
L'Arabe sans peine
2 persons have voted this message useful
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