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Your Experience with Adv. Assimil | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4436 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 1 of 12 03 December 2012 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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As the title says, what is your experience with it?
Personally, I'm debating if its worth going over instead of hopping into native materials. I remember when I went through Using French, I didn't learn much vocab as opposed to how well I learned to nail down the conjugations and other grammar points better. What do you guys think from your experience? Is it worth going through the next Assimil or just hop into native materials? Both concurrently, maybe? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5007 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 12 03 December 2012 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've worked through a couple of them: Using French and Perfectionnement Italien.
I found that with both, the first half was great: lots of useful expressions, conversational examples, and grammar points, a bit like a continuation of With Ease. But as it goes on, the lessons get more specialised and go into areas like literature, art, fashion, politics... I suppose the point of that is to give a broad overview of the language in different contexts, since obviously an advanced-level course can't be all things to all people. Once you get to that point in the book, I think it's best to start just focusing on the lessons and vocabulary that interest you instead of trying to study it intensively and learn everything like you might for a beginner course. As for your question of whether it's more efficient to work through it or just get stuck into native materials... I'm not sure, I can only speculate based on my experience, particularly my recent experience with Italian. I'm very grateful for the first half, and I think it taught me a lot of things that I might not have learnt so quickly otherwise, but at the same time it's obviously missing a lot of things that I did learn from native materials, so I can't say whether I would have learnt more or less useful language had I skipped it and focused on, say, films from an earlier stage. My recommendation would probably be to go for the Assimil, as it's worth it just for the first half of the book, but not hesitate to take it less seriously or even drop it if you start to feel that it's getting less helpful. Also, the active wave gets very difficult and ineffective as you reach the more specialised lessons; at that point I just started going passive-only and putting some select phrases into Anki - essentially treating it like native material rather than a course. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4689 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 3 of 12 03 December 2012 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I did Using French, but also only a passive wave. A lot of the language was too
specialized; it didn't seem to be worth the time to actively try to remember everything in a chapter on, say, Parisian acronyms. My experiences were similar to Garyb. I wasn't quite ready for native materials after the first book. The second was just enough to help me make the transition. I just finished the passive wave of Spanish with Ease, and have half the active wave to go, and I think it'll be the same. I tried to pick up some Spanish literature a few weeks ago, and it was a struggle to read even a full page. I think I'll do the advanced Spanish also. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4966 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 4 of 12 03 December 2012 at 7:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've worked through both Using French and Le Français des Affaires.
Using French looked just like a plain sequel to New French with Ease. Lessons were still short and had plenty of nonsense; they lacked a linear, coherent text/dialogue that in my opinion is necessary when you get more advanced on a language. Le Français des Affaires was much better. There was consistency, there was a plot. Dialogues didn't start out of nowhere in random situations, like comic strips. They had a beginning and an end. On the other hand, this may be typical of Using French because at Using Spanish I've seen that lessons are way longer. So, it was Le Français des Affaires that brought me into Advanced French, not Using French. So, while in some Assimils we get longer lessons when unnecessary (Norwegian for example), in Using French we keep getting shorter, nonsense lessons while the could be already elaborating on them. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5007 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 12 04 December 2012 at 11:17am | IP Logged | ||
I actually thought that some of the Using French lessons did get pretty damn long, especially the literature ones and the ones about the areas of France if I remember well. I forgot to mention that in my post, and it's another reason I'd advocate taking a more passive approach towards the end of the book. When I first worked through the book, I did a lesson every morning before going to work, and I found myself arriving at work later and later... 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5682 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 6 of 12 04 December 2012 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I finished the passive phase of "Perfectionnement Allemand" and this was one of the best decisions I took this year. Almost all lessons are very funny and full of cultural content. I'll repeat below my little review of this course:
Above all, it is a pleasure to listen and read the Assimil Lessons and this is possibly its strongest feature. I'm listening to all lessons (in random order) again and again during my commute time. Moreover: 1) The main idea of this course seems to be almost consensual. a) Listen in the target language. b) Listen and read in the TL. c) Listen in the TL while reading in your native/well known language. d) Compare and study TL-NL texts. The passive phase alone is already very helpful. 2) The vocabulary is very well chosen and I've often encountered the just learned words elsewhere. 3) The grammar explanations are well devised and associated with the lesson's text. Besides, they are often reinforced in the next lessons. However, it seems that both the alleged levels B2 to the "Sans Peine" and C1 to the "Perfectionnement" are exaggerations. I would bet that the "Perfectionnement Allemand" could bring most people to an intermediate B2 level. I haven't gone into the active phase, because at that time I was having some private classes and we decided that I should write about other stuff. Anyway, it should be no surprise that few people would agree that using Assimil alone would suffice for everybody. It certainly isn't enough for me. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Antanas Tetraglot Groupie Lithuania Joined 4612 days ago 91 posts - 172 votes Speaks: Lithuanian*, English, Russian, German Studies: FrenchB1, Spanish | Message 7 of 12 04 December 2012 at 11:19pm | IP Logged | ||
Absolutely. An advanced Assimil course is useful to ensure that you make a little step forward every day. It's also good for mental hygiene, avoiding falling into despair that you make no progress, etc. I don't like "second waves" either, and never do them. I listen to the recordings often instead. I edit them so that there are no exercises left, just the dialogs (as it was already suggested on this forum). On the other hand, one has to bear in mind that those courses are not all created equal. I have used Perfectionnement Allemand (1st ed.), La pratique de l'Allemand, and Using French. And I have been using Perfectionnement Espagnol, La pratique de l'espagnol, and La pratique du Neerlandais. I enjoyed Perfectionnement Allemand very much. After completing it (and listening to the recordings for about couple of months) I felt (subjectively) that I can understand almost everything in German. Then I did La pratique de l'Allemand which also seemed to me to be very useful. What concerns Using French, having completed it I still was unable to understand "almost everything" what is being said on French radio or TV. I had to listen to about 20 audio books in order to achieve something close to this ability. I guess because French vocabulary is much more complicated and less predictable than that of German. I'm only at the beginning of Perfectionnement Espagnol (10 lessons) but it's level is much higher than that of the second generation elementary Assimil. And recordings are made at almost radio speed (which is very fast in Spanish). But the recordings of La pratique de l'espagnol are even faster (and very expressive, too). That's my favorite advanced Assimil (together with German ones.) I find La pratique du Neerlandais (I'm still on lesson 55) also to be very useful if not a little boring. I wonder how far advanced Arabic would take me? Would I be able to understand at least 80% of what they say on an Arabic-speaking radio station? Edited by Antanas on 04 December 2012 at 11:46pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7005 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 8 of 12 04 December 2012 at 11:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Part of the answer depends on which advanced Assimil course you are talking about, and what the base language is. The translations in Using Spanish are sometimes terrible, bad enough that I bought the book in French to come back to the course.
I've got higher opinion of Using French. There are a lot of notes, and I think they are helpful. Whether to use an advanced course depends on what your goals are. For me, if the long term goal is to get to an advanced level, a higher level course supports that ambition. I completely empathize with wanting to use native materials rather than doing an advanced course. It really doesn't have to be an all or nothing choice. One can focus on an advanced course and supplement with native materials, or focus on native materials and supplement with an advanced course. As far as experience, I didn't feel advanced Assimil helped that much, but when I used it I already had been through a good portion of FSI Basic Spanish, so it wasn't going to help much with grammatical structures. There were definitely some new words and idioms, but the new words weren't necessarily in the most frequently used category. The idioms would have probably been more helpful if the translation wasn't so poor. I'm using Using French in parallel with French Without Toil, and I find it useful. Since I'm doing the courses in sequence/parallel, I find the advanced course very beneficial. Edited by luke on 04 December 2012 at 11:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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