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Assimil: when to move on/passive phase? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6038 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 1 of 8 28 August 2012 at 9:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am currently working through my passive phase using Assimil Vietnamese.
I'm confused about when one should move on to the next unit? I spend about 30 minutes each day on one unit then the next day I move on to the next unit. I do mostly shadowing the conversation and try to understand as much of it as possible. I can understand pretty much 95% listening to the conversation and 100% reading it by the end of the day. Unfortunately, trying to re-create the sentences going from English back to Vietnamese is not as good (maybe 60-70%). Is it OK to move on to the next unit after 1 day even though I can't recall many of the words going back to Vietnamese? Is translating English (well, French actually) back to Vietnamese better done in the Active phase? Just confused since I'm not used to the Assimil method! Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5262 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 2 of 8 28 August 2012 at 10:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes. it is OK. The passive wave should be done "with ease", "without toil". :-)
That's what the active wave is all about: Translating from base language back to target language. Edited by tractor on 28 August 2012 at 10:06pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bjorn Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 4677 days ago 244 posts - 286 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: German, French | Message 3 of 8 28 August 2012 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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According to Assimil courses I have, translating from L1 to L2 should be done in active phase.
I guess its same for Vietnamese. Edited by Bjorn on 28 August 2012 at 10:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5341 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 8 28 August 2012 at 10:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
Let me chip in my two cents. I used Assimil for French (successfully, doing just the basics) and for Egyptian (so far so good, doing lots of effort-intensive "overlearning" with Anki). Yes, you can safely leave Vietnamese->French for the active wave. Your numbers sound just about perfect: 30 minutes, 95% listening comprehension and 100% reading comprehension. You should be able to cruise ahead like that, sticking to one lesson per day, and make really solid progress in a month. It's definitely a good idea to maintain the pace, because Assimil tends to reinforce key concepts at regular intervals, and if you slow down too much, you may forget things before they get reinforced. If you want a sanity check, flip back about 30 lessons. If most stuff seems ridiculously basic, except for a couple of words you've forgotten, you're doing great. If not, you may need to add something extra to your routine. If you have some spare time, and you want to occasionally do some extra work, here are some things that I've found particularly helpful with Egyptian: 1. Re-read the review chapters, and optionally make flashcards for any conjugation tables or grammar examples that seem useful. This will help you notice the grammatical details during the lessons. (I've been doing this for Egyptian, and my grammar is much "crisper" than it was at this stage of French, because I notice more.) 2. Make flashcards from the end-of-lesson exercises. These tend to be much more manageable and distilled than the lessons themselves. Anki is perfect for this, if you're so inclined. 3. Review old passive lessons. Note that (1–3) are optional extras. If you don't have time, or you want to watch TV, I think it's better to forget them and move on. The same goes for "rough spots": do what you can, and move on. For example, lesson 26 and 27 of Assimil Egyptian were pretty evil, but lesson 29 and 30 are fun and useful. Basically, there's a sort of "Assimil intensity" knob that you control. You can safely leave it near the lowest setting, but if you want to turn it up, you can probably save yourself some grammatical cleanup work between B1 and B2. But all the intensity in the world won't do you any good if you don't keep moving ahead to the next lesson. Anyway, I hope this helps. If you encounter something worse than the occasional rough spot or doubt, then it's worth considering more drastic modifications of Assimil's instructions. But for the most part, it sounds like you're doing it right. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4975 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 5 of 8 28 August 2012 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't do the passive phase with Assimil. I always translate into the target language. I'm not very fond of reviewing, and if I notice Assimil wasn't enough, I start another textbook from scratch. Well, that's just what works better and keeps me motivated, but it also happens that sometimes I can formulate sentences better than understand them.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6038 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 6 of 8 29 August 2012 at 4:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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Great advice!
It is just strangely different for me with Assimil. It goes against everything I have done in the past. FSI/DLI in particular recommend "over-learning" the material before going on to the next unit. It is weird "half-knowing" the material before moving on. I like the idea of the "Assimil intensity knob" though. That really puts it in perspective. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6718 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 8 29 August 2012 at 9:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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I like both over-learning and half-learning but in different ways. Then there's this question of definition. Does over-learning equal being able to recite the dialogue by heart/writing all the words (including in a different script, if that applies)/knowing the grammar inside out? How long would you spend on a lesson? (The recent discussion I feel like I am the only one! comes to mind) Does half-learning equal "just" being able to get the gist of the lesson?
I think this half-learning is good for motivation since it allows you go to the "sanity check" that Emk mentioned above. If perfection is a goal, it might take "forever" before going on the next lesson. By the way, the first lessons of any Assimil course are so short so you basically over-learn them anyway, without effort. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4516 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 8 of 8 29 August 2012 at 1:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I use FSI as if it's Assimil anyways. The dialogues lend themselves to that very well and
I just don't repeat drills 5000x because after 2 goes I get the trick. If I don't, I'll bother with a repeat until I get it. Assimil is great because yes, it works really intuitively and I always miss something the first go round. But that's okay. I've never had trouble translating more than "I forgot this word in lesson 87" when I was in the active wave. Except the Lermontov poem Assimil threw at me, but that's poetry and a different ball game anyway. If you don't understand a word, leave it for now - you'll come back to it later. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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