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Assimil Challenge: Pre Planning

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129 messages over 17 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 15 ... 16 17 Next >>
DaraghM
Diglot
Senior Member
Ireland
Joined 5910 days ago

1947 posts - 2923 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian

 
 Message 113 of 129
07 September 2012 at 10:02am | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
Not only, I think the agreement was about max 100 hours or low A2


While I've breached the 100 hours criterion, I'm still only a low to mid A2 in Russian in terms of my speaking capability. I'll also finish the Assimil French course around the same time.

Serpent wrote:
I don't like translating unless it's for the benefit of others, what could be the alternatives to translating for the active wave?


I find the active wave frustrating at times because of the quality of some of the translations, and also slightly redundant. I tend to learn the lessons off by heart. I find it much more valuable to do the active wave as you are doing the current lesson.

Instead of translation during the active wave, I'll review the footnotes from the old lesson. These often contain nuggets of information, and vocabulary, that are forgotten, as they're not relevant to the audio.

Edited by DaraghM on 07 September 2012 at 10:02am

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stifa
Triglot
Senior Member
Norway
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Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German
Studies: Japanese, Spanish

 
 Message 114 of 129
07 September 2012 at 11:21am | IP Logged 
I'd really like to join, but I'm not sure if I can, because I am already studying
Japanese by myself and uni is starting soon as well. I'm also considering picking up
German again too, because I'm at an A2/B1 level in that language. I also have to figure
out what language to try. Perhaps Russian or Spanish, because the former has an
interesting alphabet whereas the latter is very commonly spoken throughout the world...
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Arekkusu
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Canada
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Joined 5140 days ago

3971 posts - 7747 votes 
Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto
Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian

 
 Message 115 of 129
02 October 2012 at 5:51am | IP Logged 
I like your initiative. Very much looking forward to seeing the results. How will you
know you have reached B1?

Personally, I don't like Assimil that much, but I will still give this some thought. 6
months is a long time when you have other projects and languages on the go, but perhaps
a simpler language like Catalan, Portuguese or Dutch could be fit for this.

As you might know, Sprachprofi and I attempted a 30-day challenge with Finnish, from
scratch, back in February and we used mostly Assimil. A Helsinki Finnish professor
tested us and evaluated us at A2 after less than 35 hours, so I can't imagine how 6
months would not take us a step up. However, I found Assimil Finnish to be quite
annoying, so I'm not about to give it another 6 months. I think Sprachprofi also tried
to follow Assimil's suggested method with Swahili. Perhaps she can retell her
experience here.

It's not a secret that not all Assimil courses are created equal. I suspect some people
will have more success with some languages while others will struggle with other
languages. 6 months is a long time when you are working with crappy material...

In my view, it's not impossible that a single book would take you to B1, but Assimil is
not it. It's not nearly detailed enough to be your only source of information. Not that
you couldn't ride it out and make it to B1, it's just that it would be so frustrating,
you'd give up or look elsewhere. I'm sure some people would disagree, and maybe some
people have done it, but it doesn't work for me and I'm guessing many, if not most, of
the people here will give up if they try to use Assimil only. Then again, maybe the
community will encourage them to persevere. When we were doing Finnish, it was clear to
me that if Assimil had been the only source of information, I would have given up.
There were too many holes and gaps, senseless dialogues, etc. And yet, I was most
certainly motivated. Although I should say I didn't do the passive and active waves as
suggested; I simply couldn't imagine myself reading 50 lessons without questioning
anything. I think we are all critical, we want to ask questions, we want to know,
and to ask adults to just sit back and take it all in for 50 lessons is just too much.
It might work if passive and active periods were much shorter, maybe over 10 lessons at
a time.

Edited by Arekkusu on 02 October 2012 at 5:57am

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langluv
Newbie
United States
twitter.com/ladyling
Joined 5643 days ago

24 posts - 37 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Modern Hebrew, French

 
 Message 116 of 129
02 October 2012 at 2:03pm | IP Logged 
I studied the Assmil French with Ease course from Aug 2011 to Feb 2012 (I'm a native English speaker with, at that time, a very limited amount of French studies, but was about a passive low B1 at Spanish).

I completed the entire course, doing both the passive waves and active waves. I pretty much did the method that Assimil suggested in their Dutch with Ease course (see josht's post). But I studied 40 minutes to 1 hour per day (instead of the 20 or so minutes they suggest).

I'd say it got me to about a high A2/low B1 for passive skills (listening/reading) and high A1/low A2 for active skills (writing/speaking), after letting the language sink in.

I also feel like I could have completed the course in 3 months instead of 6, but I wanted to follow the Assimil method as much as possible.

I studied Living Language Beginner's French while doing Assimil for the first 2 weeks or so. Then I only did the Assimil with Ease.

5 1/2 months into Assimil, I started "Living Language Ultimate French Beginner to Intermediate" and was able to breeze though the course because I had learned so much with Assimil. Also, I had an easy time with Michel Thomas beginner's French course. But still those courses may have helped with my active and passive skills.

So, I guess I can say I already completed this experiment and those are my results!

Please note: My memory is horrible, so maybe others will fare better - especially with active skills!

Edited by langluv on 02 October 2012 at 2:35pm

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Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 4925 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 117 of 129
02 October 2012 at 5:51pm | IP Logged 
Will everyone be able to use the very same single log for the challenge? I wouldn't like to open a new log for a language I'm not sure I'm going to hold for long.
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kanewai
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/kanewai
Joined 4648 days ago

1386 posts - 3054 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese
Studies: Italian, Spanish

 
 Message 118 of 129
02 October 2012 at 8:50pm | IP Logged 
I think the idea of an passive then active wave is brilliant, but in my limited experience the active wave has never worked the way Assimil intended. i.e.: I've never assimilated enough that I can just go back and translate L1>L2. It'll be interesting to see the different approaches people take to the active wave.

Expugnator wrote:
Will everyone be able to use the very same single log for the challenge? I wouldn't like to open a new log for a language I'm not sure I'm going to hold for long.

I think that will be better - I'll open a collective log on November 1.

And I updated the Registration page to read Estimated finish time: four to six months. We'll all move at a different pace, especially once we hit the 'active' phase.

ChrisFord wrote:
I'm sitting here looking at a copy of Assimil's New French with Ease and considering joining, but I have a lot on my language learning plate already. Are the 20-30 minutes a day estimates accurate?

Assimil insists its lessons are designed to last 30 minutes. I have my doubts!   I don't have a lot of free time either, so I'll be forcing myself to hold to 30" sessions (maybe longer on weekends). We'll find out if it works.



Edited by kanewai on 02 October 2012 at 9:08pm

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tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
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Joined 4466 days ago

5310 posts - 9399 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

 
 Message 119 of 129
02 October 2012 at 9:09pm | IP Logged 
I will post in the central log thread, but these will be copies of my posts in my own
(multilingual) log. I hope to be able to write the entries in Breton by the end.
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fabriciocarraro
Hexaglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
Brazil
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989 posts - 1454 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French
Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese

 
 Message 120 of 129
02 October 2012 at 9:13pm | IP Logged 
Now I'm almost certain I'll do French!


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