Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Assimil Experiment Group Log

  Tags: Assimil
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
344 messages over 43 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 31 ... 42 43 Next >>
Marishka
Newbie
United States
Joined 5008 days ago

25 posts - 56 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, French, Dutch

 
 Message 241 of 344
10 February 2013 at 2:26am | IP Logged 
Dutch With Ease

Active Wave: Lessons 43-49

I had a random Assimil moment this week while watching a tv news program. One of the stories was about the discovery of the bones of King Richard III. They showed a clip of a scene from a film version of the Shakespearean drama with the famous quote, "A horse! My kingdom for a horse!" I instantly realized that I could say that in Dutch. "Een paard ! Mijn koninkrijk voor een paard !"

I knew that only because in lesson 34 there was a joke about going to see Richard III at the National Theatre of Antwerp and that quote was included in the dialogue. Remembering how to say it in Dutch was a real confidence booster.

Unfortunately, my week with Assimil went downhill from there because I've reached the active wave lessons starring Mia and Dora. I didn't like the Dora and Mia bicker fests during the passive wave and I like them even less the second time around. And because I've already been down this road, I know that they'll also be featured in next week's lessons. I think I may be starting to lose the will to live. ;-)

Even though this group of lessons wasn't particularly difficult, I had to give myself little pep talks just to get through them. Besides the fact that I don't like the way the subject matter of these particular lessons is presented, I think I'm also just plain bored with using only Assimil. It seems like it's taking forever to get through both waves of this course.

For anyone else experiencing boredom or burn-out, what are you doing to stay motivated? Are we allowed to watch films, listen to music or read books in our target language during this experiment?
1 person has voted this message useful



Flarioca
Heptaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5642 days ago

635 posts - 816 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian
Studies: Catalan, Mandarin

 
 Message 242 of 344
10 February 2013 at 4:01am | IP Logged 
Marishka wrote:
For anyone else experiencing boredom or burn-out, what are you doing to stay motivated? Are we allowed to watch films, listen to music or read books in our target language during this experiment?


I would say: Absolutely! I've already started to read "Sandàlies D'Escuma". Once there is nothing more new to read or listen on Assimil, getting other stuff is the only way. Moreover, this is how we'll find out how much one already knows. Of course, since some languages are much easier, the difficulty levels of this extra material will be different for each of us.
3 persons have voted this message useful



Arekkusu
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Canada
bit.ly/qc_10_lec
Joined 5141 days ago

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

 
 Message 243 of 344
12 February 2013 at 1:45pm | IP Logged 
A quick update on Assimil Romanian:

Passive 72 / Active 22

I've definitely slowed down as you get a sense that there is so much information piled on that you have to
slow down in order to digest it all. On the upside, I can feel that active use of the language is getting a bit
easier, which doesn't mean that I get the active wave translation perfect. I usually get around ten mistakes
per lesson (counting everything).
2 persons have voted this message useful



Mareike
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5984 days ago

267 posts - 323 votes 
Speaks: German*
Studies: English, Swedish

 
 Message 244 of 344
12 February 2013 at 1:51pm | IP Logged 
Do you use a dictionary for the active wave translation?
1 person has voted this message useful



Arekkusu
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Canada
bit.ly/qc_10_lec
Joined 5141 days ago

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

 
 Message 245 of 344
12 February 2013 at 2:00pm | IP Logged 
Mareike wrote:
Do you use a dictionary for the active wave translation?

Me? Never. But you are meant to review the lesson first, so there is no need.
1 person has voted this message useful



Flarioca
Heptaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5642 days ago

635 posts - 816 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian
Studies: Catalan, Mandarin

 
 Message 246 of 344
13 February 2013 at 2:34am | IP Logged 
I still want to write a review of the passive wave, but this is what I want to say now and, maybe, some of the more important conclusions that I could contribute to this experiment. It comes from my own log, but I want to repeat it here because, well, there are way too many personal logs here but only one Assimil Experiment log :-))

After the passive wave of Assimil, I've been reading the book "Sandàlies D'Escuma" and it should be added that I've been also listening to radio through the internet. Assimil works.

At the beginning of this course, say, during the first 10 lessons, I could barely undertsand it. Let me quote myself:

Flarioca wrote:
Assimil Experiment: El Catalán sin esfuerzo - Day 7 - Lesson 8 (Lliçó vuit)

Once more, even after listening twice and listening while reading Catalan, I couldn't understand all words, though I've got the general meaning of all phrases.


Indeed, only in Lesson 15 I could finally say that I've understood it already through listening.

Flarioca wrote:
Assimil Experiment: El Catalán sin esfuerzo - Day 14 - Lesson 15 (Lliçó quinze)

While listening, I missed five words in this lesson, which makes one word every other entry, one of them I didn't know also in Spanish (escollera). In spite of that, for the first time, I've got the meaning of the whole dialog through listening, before reading the Catalan text.


Which doesn't mean that later on it couldn't become harder again:

Flarioca wrote:
Assimil Experiment: El Catalán sin esfuerzo - Day 27 - Lesson 27

This has been a hard to understand lesson just by listening, but it became easier after reading the Catalan text and by the end of the lesson you even ask yourself, why was it so hard at the beginning? I've already seen that tomorrow's review lesson will be very easy, but let's not rush!


and again

Flarioca wrote:
Assimil Experiment: El Catalán sin esfuerzo - Day 38 - Lesson 37

Comprehension, of course, is not only linked to number of words or speech pace. This was a short lesson at the same pace of the last one, and I didn't understand about 20% of it until reading the Spanish text.

Anyway, it seems that I'm getting comfortable with some of the grammatical points that were more complex for me.


and again

Flarioca wrote:
Assimil Experiment: El Catalán sin esfuerzo - Day 55 - Lesson 51

The speech pace reaches again the maximum level so far, but it seems that some gramatical structure and new vocabulary have been the main reasons of my incomplete understanding until reading the Catalan text. The reduced form of pronouns are not only grammatically complex, but it also makes the listening comprehension more difficult.


The last quote is from 08 January 2013, but now, only a bit more than a month later, I can listen and understand radio stations, long interviews about different subjects, and even some jokes.

Of course, as many times repeated ad nauseam, Catalan is an easy language for speakers of Romance languages, even more so for those who speak some combinations of them. This must be even more true for pairs of even closer languages, which I'm not going to mention because some people feel like this reduces the value of their knowledge.

My improvement in German has been, so far, the hardest to achieve. But all languages that I've studied have helped me as much, introducing me to books, music, history and people that I couldn't understand as well if not through the knowledge of their languages.

Edited by Flarioca on 13 February 2013 at 7:37pm

2 persons have voted this message useful



JSBR_C
Newbie
United States
Joined 4075 days ago

19 posts - 38 votes
Studies: Spanish, Mandarin

 
 Message 247 of 344
13 February 2013 at 6:24pm | IP Logged 
Chinese With Ease

Active 8-14
Passive 57-63

Active translations were once again not difficult. I think I missed 3 words all week. For Chinese the first two weeks of dialogue are spoken twice on the CD's. Next week starting with less 15 it was only spoken once and correspondingly the dialogues start to get a bit longer. So I expect a bit more time will be required.

For the passive wave I always listen to the dialogue several times, trying to understand what I can, before looking at the translation. I usually don't get much. Something about a book. Something about traveling. That sort of thing. It would be interesting to hear a dialogue that is new but only uses words I've already been exposed to and just see if I can understand, even if that meant pausing the audio at the end of each sentence.

In any case it's clear to me that I'm making progress, and that's the key for my motivation. I have to say that I kind of dread going to Anki. I've loaded about 630 words/phrases. I load every new word I'm exposed to during the passive study. Yesterday I had over 70 to review in addition to the new words added due to the new lesson, which was an unusually few this time, only 9 or 10. I know there will be a lot of words I won't know. It takes a bit of time. I do load new words that I find in the notes, and I do notice that if it comes from the notes rather than a dialogue it's tougher for me to remember it. Learning it in a context works a lot better, which is probably why so many people like the Assimil method.

Edited by JSBR_C on 13 February 2013 at 9:04pm

1 person has voted this message useful



jeronz
Diglot
Newbie
New Zealand
Joined 4618 days ago

37 posts - 79 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French, Yiddish, Latin, German, Italian

 
 Message 248 of 344
14 February 2013 at 3:32pm | IP Logged 
El Nuevo Francés sin Esfuerzo
Passive Wave: Lessons 85-91
Active Wave: Lessons 36-42

Things are going fairly smoothly. I've been on holiday for a week and so I've been managing to do one lesson
of passive and one of active a day, but this will again likely fall off once I start work again on Monday. I
feel like things are gelling and getting a conversational level of French seems achievable before I go to
France on holiday in June (for three weeks).

I have had a couple positive French experiences since the last update. I ran into a copy of L'Étranger in
French in a language bookstore, had a look at the first page, and I was really surprised to see that I could
understand roughly 90-95% of it. This was a big confidence booster. I also made friends with a French girl
while holidaying, and while we spoke mainly in Spanish, my conversational French has definitely improved
since the last road test.

I don't have much longer to go until I finish the passive wave. The Spanish version of the course has 99
lessons while the English version goes on until lesson 113.

I'm starting to wonder exactly what steps I should take next once I've finished the passive phase. I think
what I will do is do the five or so lessons in the English Assimil version before lesson 99 that don't
correspond to the Spanish Assimil, and then I will go on to do lessons 100-113 in the English version. This
will extend the completion of the passive wave

After that I need to make a decision whether to go straight on to FSI or do the second volume - Francés
Perfeccionamiento - which has a further 70 lessons (as does the English version Using French). Both seem
like they would be very valuable. I also would like to do the advanced michel thomas course and finish the
FSI pronunciation course. And also do the original Assimil French course!


1 person has voted this message useful



This discussion contains 344 messages over 43 pages: << Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43  Next >>


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.3594 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.