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Difficulties with Assimil Active Wave | ||
Tags: Assimil | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Antanas Tetraglot Groupie Lithuania Joined 4612 days ago 91 posts - 172 votes  Speaks: Lithuanian*, English, Russian, German Studies: FrenchB1, Spanish | Message 9 of 10 07 February 2013 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | ||
An excellent distinction! Assimil is great for gaining a passive knowledge of a given language. But, perhaps, it's hard to sell a method which teaches only/mostly understanding and not speaking. That's why one needs the myth of the "the active wave". So, I would suggest just to take it easy and progress towards the second volume of Assimil Spanish, enjoy it, and take it for what it really is: a set of "often very funny dialogs" that enables you to gain a very good passive knowledge of Spanish. You will need real people or at least Pimsleur or MT to achieve some of the goals of the "active wave". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4709 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 10 of 10 11 February 2013 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with those that say you should take a chilled out approach. It's not as hard
as trying to translate from English sight unseen. The book tells you to listen to the dialogue first, then read the target language out loud, and then to try to produce the target language from the English. As to the passive/active concept, I think it is actually one of the things that makes Assimil great, because it takes some of the pressure off. The exercises in traditional language courses like Teach Yourself require you to translate example sentences from your target language into your own, which is easy enough. But then they ask you to translate equally complex sentences into your target language, which is a lot more difficult when you've just learned something. It is quite natural to understand a lot more than you can produce. The Assimil method just takes this fact into account. In fact, when I return to my Teach Yourself Hindi book, I'm going to use the active/passive method and see how it goes. I will only do passive exercises until I finish the whole book, and then I'll go and do all of the active exercises from chapter 1. I will also try to recreate the chapter dialogues from the translation (which is something the course never asks you to do). I've not tried this yet, but my experience with Assimil tells me that I will have a less stressful first pass through the book, and then get to know things a lot better on the second pass. Edited by Jeffers on 11 February 2013 at 8:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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