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How beneficial is the Assimil active wave | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| The-teacher Newbie Canada Joined 4268 days ago 17 posts - 21 votes Studies: English* | Message 1 of 8 31 August 2012 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good afternoon,
First off just want to say thanks for the advice people have given in other threads I've already posted regarding several different questions. Now I had a quick question related to assimil - I'm approaching the active wave of nfwe and while I can look at old lessons and get the gist minus a few words here and there I was hoping to ask what your experiences have been with the active wave. 1) Did you find it was quite beneficial to begin writing and did it consolidate your knowledge well? 2) when you started the active wave did you feel more confident/help with conversation too? Any input would be great, I'm actually excited to bein the active writing part of assimil! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4434 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 2 of 8 31 August 2012 at 7:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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fdsfsdfsdf Edited by sillygoose1 on 01 September 2012 at 1:13am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4505 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 3 of 8 31 August 2012 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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The active wave is important because it forces you to repeat what you know, thus making
it stick. Repetition is the mother of learning! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6155 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 4 of 8 31 August 2012 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Reading, writing, speaking, and understanding a language are four separate skills (with
some overlap, of course). To get good at any of the four, you need to practice them. Writing: If you don't do any writing practice, and you later attempt to write in the language, you will probably have a *lot* of mis-spelled words. Being able to read the language well (which takes practice) is one thing, because it's all there written correctly for you to read, but trying to spell and punctuate it well without writing practice will probably not be easy. As to whether or not writing it will help you "consolidate your language well," yes it will, but you'd have to weigh that benefit to the time and effort it takes you to practice writing, to see if it is worth it. Active wave: If you only practice foreign language-to-English in the Passive Wave, then for sure the Active Wave will help immensely with speaking in the foreign lang, since you'll be practicing expressing your English thoughts in the foreign language, which is what you'll be doing when you attempt to converse. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5173 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 5 of 8 01 September 2012 at 1:11am | IP Logged | ||
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I highly recommend doing two active waves. On my second active wave everything fell into place. My second active wave was more valuable than the passive wave or my first active wave.
6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4469 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 8 01 September 2012 at 7:23am | IP Logged | ||
Personally, I think you will get more out of writing, but I'm pretty sure it's not required by Assimil. The L1 to L2 translation can be done in your head, or spoken. I got a lot out of the L1 to L2 translation, but was really disappointed with Assimil for two reasons. 1) The L1 in the book didn't have enough info for me to know exactly what L2 I was supposed to be translating to 2) The grammar explanations were so poor and disorganized that I had to study it with a different text in order to do the translations That being said, I'm a native English speaker learning Russian. I'm sure it would have worked much better for Spanish or German, for example. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Antanas Tetraglot Groupie Lithuania Joined 4610 days ago 91 posts - 172 votes Speaks: Lithuanian*, English, Russian, German Studies: FrenchB1, Spanish | Message 7 of 8 03 September 2012 at 3:59pm | IP Logged | ||
No, almost never. I usually felt that my vocabulary was still so underdeveloped that I was not able to say anything meaningful except from "hello" and "bye". Only later, after I have finished an advanced German Assimil course, could I translate, for instance, the 16th lesson of the German with Ease without much effort. But if you don't feel bored and/or doing the active wave, then, I think, it may and even must be useful. I, personally, prefer listening to the recordings as much as I can. (And not only those of Assimil.) Translating is not my cup of tea. It's so frustrating, especially at the beginning. IMHO, doing anything that involves your target language and does not lead to frustration (or boredom) is beneficial for the language study. By the way, in "Le serbo-croate sans peine", it's author explains Assimil's method by comparing learning a foreign language to achieving an ability to hum a melody without being able to give oneself an account where one has got it from. So, according to him, in order to learn a language the learner has to listen to the recordings in the background while doing other things (perhaps, such as eating, walking, etc.). In this way, a language will stick to your mind like that silly melody you can't get rid of. If this interpretation of Assimil method is correct, then the second wave must be more like another passive one rather than a substantively different "active" one. Perhaps, the "activeness" of "the active wave" has more to do with marketing than with the real nature of Assimil's method. I know that there are many "Assimil Catholics" (I don't mean to offend, I am myself of Roman Catholic descent) out there who believe that that if they follow the rules and do the active wave they will be able to hold a conversation in the language they study, but I don't believe it. That misses the real nature of the real conversation. During a conversation one has to be able to respond immediately, without any long delay. The active does not help to avoid those delays. And it cannot do that because a learner has not yet acquired a sufficient active vocabulary. One needs more input. A month (as in Danish) or two (as in others) is not enough. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4469 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 8 of 8 04 September 2012 at 7:07am | IP Logged | ||
Assimil Apostles maybe? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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