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Assimil Experiment Group Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4497 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 337 of 344 18 June 2013 at 6:54pm | IP Logged |
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O Novo Francês Sem Esforço - Leçons 91-99:
WEEEE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, MY FRIEEEEEND!! Ahahaha I've finally finished an Assimil book! I mean, it was only the passive wave so far, but it's still reason to celebrate! Well, what can I say after this? I'm starting to feel comfortable with French. As you've seen in my last French log, I was able to maintain a conversation in French with a girl from Quebec for about half an hour, and now I can read people's logs in Frech here and the news without much trouble. Of course, my native Portuguese and my Italian help me a lot with vocabulary, so if you come from another linguistic root, don't expect to have the same result (as well as I wouldn't expect to be this comfortable in Swedish in the same amount of time, probably an American or a German person would have advantage over me). Anyway, I love Assimil and their lessons. This French book in Brazilian Portuguese is almost a direct translation of New French With Ease, and it's really great. It still has that Assimil "issue" of useless words, but it's overall an awesome method for those wanting to learn French. The main question is: where to go now? Assimil supposedly has an advanced French course in English (according to lesson 99), so that might be an option. Of course I'll try to watch as many movies as I can, since I'm a confessed cinephile. Also, there are always a lot of French speakers at the CouchSurfing meeting I attend every week, so that's definitely gonna help a lot. I think I still have to work a lot on my listening skills, that means, understand daily French, since reading is not actually a problem right now. I'll continue now with the active wave to the end of the book, and then I'll just figure it out I guess. If you guys have any advice, I'd appreciate it! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4948 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 338 of 344 18 June 2013 at 7:11pm | IP Logged |
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Do proceed to Using French/La Pratique du Français. Its vocabulary is varied and will feel in all of your gaps. Then there is Le français des affaires which is even better!
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| JSBR_C Newbie United States Joined 4097 days ago 19 posts - 38 votes Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 339 of 344 06 January 2015 at 9:20pm | IP Logged |
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I'm going to wake this thread up after a year and a half of dormancy and use it as a log for my new Assimil experiment, Spanish with Ease. I did Chinese and logged it in this thread. I was thrilled with the amount of progress I made using the program. I continued studying consistently for a solid 6 months afterwards. I followed that up with another maybe year of half hearted study. I'm not fluent, but overall it was a great experience for me. I'm well on my way with Chinese and plan to get back to it at some point. But I realized just near Christmas here that I'm not getting it done like I need to with Chinese at the moment, so I'm going to move to the second language I've always wanted to learn, Spanish.
The beauty of Assimil for me is that it sets a bar for me that I feel obligated to achieve on a daily basis. You have to get through your lesson, and the way I do it it's about an hour of time. One of the keys to success I think for language learning (though I still haven't successfully learned a second language to fluency) is you have to figure out a way to spend time with the language. You can debate one method vs another, but at root time is key. When I finished the Chinese program I no longer had that feeling of obligation to complete a certain set of tasks. I just did whatever I wanted without a specific target I was aiming for. That's tough for me and I feel ultimately is what has caused my improvement rate to decline so much. My plan here is to do the whole of the first book and follow that immediately with "Using Spanish", which is the Assimil Spanish advanced level. I'm a stubborn guy, the kind that will plod through even if I'm lost, and so I expect to finish both of these books on schedule. I'm a few weeks in already, so I'm on lesson 25 today. Wow, this program throws you into deep water quickly. I would suggest that for a total noob this could be overwhelming. In fact I would say the same about Chinese. I did Pimsleur 1-3 of Chinese prior to Assimil, which allowed me to ease in to Assimil. About 5 years ago I did Pimsleur 1-3 of Spanish. So for me there is some familiarity already, and I'm very much glad for that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| JSBR_C Newbie United States Joined 4097 days ago 19 posts - 38 votes Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 340 of 344 18 January 2015 at 1:54pm | IP Logged |
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Just a quick comment to note that everything is proceeding smoothly. Today is Lesson 38.
I'll add also a word about how I use it. Usually in the morning I try to listen to the audio for the day without having read it just to see what I can understand. Whereas with Chinese there wasn't much I would grasp, with Spanish I do get the general outline of what's happening. Later I'll look at the text. Then re-listen a few times. I usually go back about 10 lessons and listen through them until I reach my current lesson. Another thing I do is I write out the sentences that contain words I don't know or aren't obvious. Then I go to Anki and add that word as the front of the flash card, then the full sentence as the back of the flash card. That way my flash cards are Spanish only. The context of the sentence jogs my memory and allows me to recall the meaning if I'm having trouble with the word while doing my review. I continue to be blown away at how much more quickly this sticks to me then Chinese did. I have to say Benny is kind of full of crap on this. I've always wanted to learn Spanish for a few personal reasons, but when I was reinvigorated to learn a language I went with Chinese for a couple of reasons. First I had plenty of people at work to practice with. Second, from reading Benny, I got the sense that Chinese wouldn't be so bad as compared to Spanish. Benny acts like it makes no difference. I didn't quite believe that, but I thought maybe the disparity in learning curve is a bit exaggerated. For me if anything it's under stated. Benny is ever the optimist I think. Not a terrible thing. But he's quite wrong on this in my experience. It's worked out for the best though. If I went in with my eyes open I'd probably have never bothered to try with Chinese. I'm glad I did because I made a lot of progress and think I'll get there one day. On the other hand I'd probably be fluent in Spanish already had I known what was really up. But it's all good. I believe I'll be comfortable calling myself fluent before the end of the year. In the mean time I continue to have casual conversation in Chinese at work all the time, and I've made a lot of great friends. I can't complain. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| JSBR_C Newbie United States Joined 4097 days ago 19 posts - 38 votes Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 341 of 344 05 February 2015 at 2:41am | IP Logged |
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Today was P58/A9. Generally things are going fine. I find that I have some difficulty when I attempt to speak with native speakers. For some reason words don't come to me very easily, though listening doesn't seem as bad. Really it's the opposite of Chinese. For Chinese it seemed I was good at formulating sentences in my head and speaking them, whereas listening was extremely difficult. For Spanish it's the opposite. Maybe it's the conjugation. Chinese doesn't have conjugation. "To have" for instance is "you3". In Spanish it's tener, tengo, tenemos, tuve, etc. I think that causes me to freeze a bit when I'm speaking, though when I'm listening I can get it.
But as I said before overall this is going much more easily. Hopefully the speaking will come. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| liam.pike1 Groupie Australia Joined 3536 days ago 84 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto, French | Message 342 of 344 05 February 2015 at 12:39pm | IP Logged |
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I am currently working through my first Assimil book... 'Assimil New French with Ease'. However, I have lately been quite lazy and haven't been doing it daily (despite the fact that Assimil takes nearly no real effort anyway, which is one of its real strengths I have found).
Perhaps some Assimil users want to create a new 'Assimil challenge', even if it's just very informal? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| JSBR_C Newbie United States Joined 4097 days ago 19 posts - 38 votes Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 343 of 344 05 February 2015 at 7:58pm | IP Logged |
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Why not just log your experience right here in this thread? That way we have this master thread that contains the experiences of many different people all in one place. In my case this one thread will contain both my experience with Assimil Chinese and Spanish.
I understand the advanced French program from Assimil is quite good. Are you planning to do that as well? I am planning to do the advanced Spanish, though reviews on that are more mixed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Vestis2 Newbie United States Joined 4589 days ago 13 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 344 of 344 26 December 2015 at 12:27am | IP Logged |
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So.....how'd it go?
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