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Assimil Experiment Group Log

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Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 4947 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 129 of 344
05 December 2012 at 6:37pm | IP Logged 
I've just finished lesson 35 of Il nuovo russo senza sforzo! That is half of the book! (and at the same time a relief, knowing how i've got assimil-sick lately). I must say it is an appropriate book. It does recover vocabulary previous vocabulary in the upcoming lesson, in a way that you end up assimilating it. It does what the Norwegian one doesn't at this respect.
1 person has voted this message useful



Emme
Triglot
Senior Member
Italy
Joined 5128 days ago

980 posts - 1594 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, English, German
Studies: Russian, Swedish, French

 
 Message 130 of 344
05 December 2012 at 9:44pm | IP Logged 
This post is in great part copied from my log.

Il nuovo russo senza sforzo, Italian edition of Le Nouveau Russe sans peine

I totally agree with Expugnator, Il nuovo russo senza sforzo has been nicely thought-out as far as the built-in review of vocabulary is concerned. The most important words come up time and again in successive lessons, so in the end you should manage to learn them without too much effort.

I’m not as convinced about the quality of the review lessons, though. Case in point: today I did the review lesson 28 but it turned out to be just a list of grammar points covered during the past 6 lessons with some examples but no real explanation, so I didn’t find it all that useful.

For instance, one of the points covered was the prepositions we’ve encountered up to now: за, по, перед , под, and к. For each they gave the case it is followed by and a couple of examples, but I’ve yet to see an explanation (even a temporary, simplified one) of what morphological changes the various cases require in the following nouns. How can I learn these prepositions then? Just by rote memorizations? That’s not really my learning style.

Anyway, the important fact of Assimil is that thanks to it I’ve been studying a little bit of Russian every day for the past 35 days and hopefully I’ve learnt something. I’ve been especially encouraged in the past couple of weeks by my second passive wave (what I’ve called a 'First & ½ Wave' in my previous post) of the first 7 lessons: things do start to make more sense the second time!

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sabotai
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5663 days ago

391 posts - 489 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French

 
 Message 131 of 344
05 December 2012 at 10:09pm | IP Logged 
Chinese With Ease - Lessons 15-21

I lost some days mainly due to a move that was supposed to happen by the end of October but has just become far more of a project that I thought it was. It was supposed to be quick and easy....of course it wasn't.

Anyway, I'm pretty much with the crowd on using Assimil in isolation. I thought it would be a bit lacking - every resource is lacking in something - but not this much. With my experience with Assimil German and Assimil French, I think those courses are great. This Chinese one is....well, it's good, but not to the level of German and French courses. I've dabbled in the ChinesePod lessons in the past. They are shorter but have many (MANY) more lessons than Assimil and to this point, I prefer that to Assimil Chinese.

Doing lessons 1-7, I was a bit optimistic. Lessons 8-14 brought me down some and lessons 15-21 have me downright pessimistic now. There's just too much here to really absorb it all. The pronunciation, the vocab, grammar, Chinese characters...

This experience has illustrated for me just why it is I learn languages the way I do. I like the variety of using multiple sources and I like building in a lot of review into my routine. Assimil says the reviews for grammar and vocab are built in, and that's certainly true. I'm seeing the same vocab and grammar from time to time - it was frequently, but now that it's introducing more new words and grammar points per lesson, it's down to "from time to time" - but I don't think it's enough for me to really get it. Not with the amount of material presented in the form of characters, meaning, grammar and pronunciation and not in the amount of time they claim. Maybe if I spent an hour a day on each lesson rather than 30 minutes and maybe if I did each lesson 3-4 times, I could see myself really absorbing much, if not all, of the content here. But that's not the "Assimil method". 1 lesson a day, 30 minute a day. I don't see it working for Chinese. At least not for me.

I'm going to keep going forward, because I still feel like I'm getting some of it, and some is better than none and it does give me a nice break most days from learning Korean. But the idea that I will get to B1 or higher using Assimil Chinese the way Assimil says to is just not going to happen.
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6378 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 132 of 344
06 December 2012 at 12:50am | IP Logged 
OMG I'm so behind... only listened to the 10th lesson so far.
I've done 8 lessons of Assimil Norwegian properly. Or semi-properly - I didn't do the exercises, I just listened, read the translations and the explanations, listened more, shadowed a bit. Liking Norwegian a lot:-)
However this was done in three sessions, so I *just* need more sessions hehe. I hope to have listened to about 35 lessons by the end of the year, even if in many I don't do more than this.
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kanewai
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
justpaste.it/kanewai
Joined 4670 days ago

1386 posts - 3054 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese
Studies: Italian, Spanish

 
 Message 133 of 344
06 December 2012 at 12:56am | IP Logged 
Le Grec ancien - Lessons 15-21

I'm having a similar experience to others; I don't feel like I'm retaining
anything. I remember a lot of the vocabulary, but can't conjugate or decline a thing,
and still have no idea what all those particules are doing scattered about.

I'm also used to jump-starting language study with some intense work up front for a
couple weeks, and then settling into a routine. It feels strange to start slow.

Assimil seems to be anticipating this; here's what the latest révision says ...

Il ne s'agit pas d'apprendre par coeur des règles de grammaire, mais bien de
comprendre les mécanismes de base grâce à un petit classement méthodique. Rappelons le
principe: beaucoup de pratique et un peu de théorie ... considérez-la d'avantage comme
une visite guidée que comme un "marathon". Alors, suivez le guide!


I'm not worried yet. When I start a lesson it looks almost totally incomprehensible,
though by the end of the thirty minutes it does make sense. Instead of feeling
pessimistic, I'm trying to let go and "trust the guide." And as long as I can make
sense of a lesson in thirty minutes, I think I'm on track.

I am enjoying it. The lessons are following a basic narrative about two students as
they go to grammar class, then to the music, and then the palestre for
wrestling. The students are more scared of the pedotribus, the wrestling-master,
than they are of getting hurt during combat. It's all kind of silly, but kind of fun.

I've noticed that the exercises will have words that weren't in the lessons; so I'm
taking this to mean that we don't need to do the exercises until the active wave.

Edited by kanewai on 06 December 2012 at 12:56am

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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6378 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
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Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 134 of 344
06 December 2012 at 1:13am | IP Logged 
Expugnator wrote:
Today's Assimil Il nuovo russo senza sforzo's lesson confused me.

First they say that отдыхать is imperfective and отдохнуть is perfective.
Then they bring the sentence Где вы отдыхали? (imperfective) and translate it in Italian as "Dove vi siete riposato?". I assume that "siete riposato" is perfective, and if I wanted to say something imperfective, I'd use the imperfect tense, either "voi riposavate" or "stavate riposando". So, this is really confusing!

EDIT: Later on the same exercise 2, they bring on another sentence with the perfective Russian verb: Бы хорошо отдохнули ? So, the problem is that both sentences get translated with passato passato remoto, regardless of aspect. As a Portuguese speaker, I could accept both sentences with past perfect indeed, but since the sentence is meant to be asked in contrast, it would make more sense to use imperfect or either imperfect continuous for the russian imperfect.
This just shows that the Russian aspect isn't the same as the Romance tenses:) I went to a lecture a couple of months ago about the Italian tenses, actually.

Technically, your translations are correct, but in most contexts it would be siete riposato. We just don't really say ??Где вы отдохнули? It kinda implies a very short rest, like Мы приехали в Москву, отдохнули и пошли гулять. Like resting at the hotel for an hour or something.

Kinda hard to explain but как вы отдохнули? is "how was your vacation?" and как вы отдыхали? would be "what did you do on your vacation?", with a possible implication of doing crazy things XD or just an assumption that there was nothing to do.

Basically, this stuff just needs to be assimilated. It's the trickiest part - when technically a different form would be better but we use the other one. The perfective vs imperfective is simply the traditional terminology for that, because it comes closest. So trust the translations.

LOL about "...rioca", I didn't even realize :D I don't have a favourite team in Brazil but I mostly watch Internacional because of Forlán.

Edited by Serpent on 06 December 2012 at 1:48am

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jeronz
Diglot
Newbie
New Zealand
Joined 4639 days ago

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

 
 Message 135 of 344
06 December 2012 at 11:10am | IP Logged 
El Nuevo Francés sin Esfuerzo
Passive wave: Lessons 53-56
Active wave: Lessons 4-7

Two months have passed since started now. I have made a personal two month video and
there is a marked improvement and although I am still speaking completely broken French
it is encouraging.

I don't really have anything new to add, just logging my progress.

Edited by jeronz on 06 December 2012 at 11:11am

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Flarioca
Heptaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5663 days ago

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

 
 Message 136 of 344
06 December 2012 at 2:09pm | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
LOL about "...rioca", I didn't even realize :D I don't have a favourite team in Brazil but I mostly watch Internacional because of Forlán.


Serpent, don't listen to Expugnator ;-))

You may even enjoy this great site in Russian!!!


1 person has voted this message useful



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