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Assimil Experiment Group Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| jeronz Diglot Newbie New Zealand Joined 4645 days ago 37 posts - 79 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Yiddish, Latin, German, Italian | Message 105 of 344 26 November 2012 at 9:43am | IP Logged | ||
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El Nuevo Frances sin Esfuerzo
Lessons 43-49 Milestone reached, 52 days of French and from tomorrow I start the active wave. The course is starting to get harder, although some lessons are still fairly straight forward. Things are continuing to come together and gel. It is still enjoyable and often humorous. French is definitely growing on me. If I look back to where my Spanish was at this time I'd say that my passive reading ability is far ahead (I picked up a box of French tea today and could understand about 95% of the three or four paragraph blurb), but I think this is mainly due to my knowledge of Spanish. However my active production of French I think is worse than what my Spanish was. I was already bumbling my way through conversations by this stage in Spanish. Although I did take a different approach: I completed Michel Thomas as a first and then practiced a lot through Skype, verbling and the like. I mean I was doing Assimil but it was always a side-endeavor. Anyway this is still an interesting experiment, we'll see where it takes me. I learned a lot of bad habits through early speaking in Spanish that took me a while to iron out. I've been starting to come across Spanish words that I don't know, which has begun to add that extra layer of difficulty, although on the other hand I feel the process is now beginning to improve my Spanish at the same time. In the last 7 lessons I had to look at the English version of the Assimil course for three or four of them to clarify a couple things. Again no outside sources used this week. Well except for some odd French music which I've been listening to, but not studying the lyrics or anything. I've also been doing a cooking course through The Great Courses, and there is a whole heap of French terminology in it, which I'm finding really interesting. Edited by jeronz on 26 November 2012 at 9:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Roman Diglot Groupie Spain Joined 5239 days ago 42 posts - 52 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: German, Italian, French | Message 106 of 344 26 November 2012 at 11:30am | IP Logged | ||
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New French With Ease + O Novo Francês Sem Custo: 15-21
I'm a couple days late on my progress, because I got a flu and for two days I couldn't even think about learning a language :). BUT since then I'm not with the same inspiration to learn French. Many things running through my mind, one of these things is questioning about what's the point of learning a new language, being it French or my two others: German and Italian. I'm afraid I'll not finish this experiment and it's not Assimil fault, but mine. Having said that, when I'm in the process of doing a lesson I actually like it and so far I think I'm doing fine with French. When I listen to a new lesson I can already understand many things and that's great. Of course knowing Portuguese and a little bit of Spanish really helps, but before NFWE I couldn't understand much of French, so it's helping for sure. Let's see if I can remain alive until the end of this experiment... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4502 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 107 of 344 26 November 2012 at 12:18pm | IP Logged | ||
Be strong, Roman! I'm facing the same problem, but I'm sure we can make it! Brazilian force! =P 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Roman Diglot Groupie Spain Joined 5239 days ago 42 posts - 52 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: German, Italian, French | Message 108 of 344 26 November 2012 at 12:54pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm a little bit stronger on maintaining German (47 lessons done). With Italian I'm 4 or 5 days without touching it (lesson 31 on Assimil). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5669 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 109 of 344 27 November 2012 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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El Catalán sin esfuerzo - Lessons 8 to 14
Total time required for this group = 3.1 hours. Listening: Though it was clear from the beginning that Catalan is an easy language for me, it wasn't so easy to listen and understand the initial lessons, but now I'm much more comfortable about it. Reading: It is really easy. It is even hard to resist the temptation to read articles on Wikipedia in Catalan. However, I'm sure that reading at this point could harm my "ear to this language". Writing: I'm not yet writing, but I'm scanning every lesson, which implies some necessary corrections due to imperfect processing. This way, I'm also paying some attention to writing details. Speaking: So far, I haven't recorded myself, but it seems that some huge improvements on accent are still necessary, although I'm not a "perfect accent freak" :-)) Grammar: The pronominal and verbal patterns seem different enough from other Romance languages I know and this makes learning Catalan even more interesting. General comments: Assimil is an easygoing method, and I'm sure that funny lessons will come. Of course, I have chosen an easy language, but this is also the point. If they claim that you will learn Chinese sans peine, learning a language close to the ones you know should be a breeze. Daily (so far) reports on my log. Edited by Flarioca on 27 November 2012 at 1:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 4996 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 110 of 344 27 November 2012 at 1:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Italian with Ease.
A quick note to say that I've just started my Italian. - Had a few moments of alarm and frantic searching when I found the dialogue and printed text didn't match, "Oh no, they've sent the wrong disk!", but it turned out that I'd just clicked on the wrong lesson in my iTunes folder. (Phew!) The typeface for the Italian book seems much smaller than the French, and the dialogues seem longer. This is the first language I'm trying to learn through self-study. I'm amused to notice that a tiny part of my brain seems to find it disconcerting hearing Italian, not French, coming out of the headphones when I'm holding an Assimil book. Edited by songlines on 27 November 2012 at 2:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4953 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 111 of 344 27 November 2012 at 4:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Il Nuovo Italiano Senza Sforzo - Lesson 28
I'm pretty much used to using Italian as a source language. Now for the Russian: it starts to get harder and I'm getting a lot of information, but I like the way the review lessons are structured at this Il nuovo russo senza sforzo. They even have exercises, which is good for remembering vocabulary. I think Assimil introduced loads of cases at once. I'm not worried about active knowledge now, because that would drive me mad. I'm focusing on recognition, and for this I don't have to memorize all declensions. I'll really have to use something more systematic after Assimil. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4676 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 112 of 344 28 November 2012 at 5:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Le Grec ancien
Lessons 8-14 The "Dutch" method (the Assimil instructions that have been passed around HTLAL) has not worked for me at all with Greek. The structure of the language is to different from French or English, and there are all these ... these things ... that aren't even translated into French or English. There's even a word for punctuation marks like ":" . As in, you would actually say word the word "colon" as part of the sentence. I wasn't retaining much at all by listening and reading along. What I do now is study and decipher the Greek until I kind of get it, and then go and listen to the recording. It's working better. The revision lesson is much more intense than in the other Assimil I've done! The recent one reviews three genders (or are there four? There seem to be two feminine patterns), five cases (nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, and dative) and the present tense indicative of one type of verb. I'm tempted to at least write out some declensions by hand just to get a better sense of them. At this point Assimil is still saying not to memorize, and to just understand what the parts of speech are. These are hard, but I dealt with similar concepts in high school Latin. It's the "particules" that are challenging. Many can't be translated, and others change their meaning or nuance depending on where they are in the sentence. There is a bit of Assimil humor, though it's subtle. My favorite so far is from an exercise: houtos ou theos estin, all'anthropos - "that one is not a god, but a man." There was also a lesson on nude oil wrestling, which, according to Aristophane, will give you a big chest, broad shoulders, and healthy skin tone. Like others have noted, I think this is going to take me well into the summer to finish! The passive wave is still enjoyable; I can't imagine what the active wave will be like. Edited by kanewai on 28 November 2012 at 5:29am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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