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Is there any other program like Assimil? | ||
Tags: Assimil | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4707 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 9 of 30 04 March 2014 at 2:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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FSI courses are essentially all native language. There are dialogues for each lesson,
but most of the content is either repeating sentences from the dialogue (good for improving your ear and your accent), or filling in words in drills. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Antanas Tetraglot Groupie Lithuania Joined 4610 days ago 91 posts - 172 votes Speaks: Lithuanian*, English, Russian, German Studies: FrenchB1, Spanish | Message 10 of 30 04 March 2014 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, almost any textbook with audio that uses immersion or communicative method and does not contain any language except its target language would fit your requirements. However, since they are made for classroom use, they are not very effective for an independent study, especially at the beginning. On the other hand, they might be useful later. I use them, among other thing, to check my level of comprehension. There is a plethora of choices for any "bigger" language. For instance, in Spanish there are various levels of En Accion, Prisma, etc., and their audio recordings usually have transcripts. En Accion, for example, has also Cuaderno de actividades with audio which makes it in some respects comparable with FSI.
I believe that, except audio, another beauty of the Assimil is that because of a translation on a facing page you can immediately understand the meaning of a rather complicated piece of target language you are reading. Practice & Improve your German/Italian/Spanish as well as Practice & Improve your German/Italian/Spanish Plus series by Passport books are, perhaps, the best ones you can get in English that contain audio only in the target language. Yet, its level is more advanced than that of Linguaphone. There is also a very nice book The French Language of Today in 90 lessons (Methode 90 series, the only one in English, all others are in French), but its audio is very hard to find. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4505 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 11 of 30 04 March 2014 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
DLI Romanian uses the old pre 1990 orthography so be sure to replace all Î in words with  unless at the beginning, and to write sunt/suntem/sunteți 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5060 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 12 of 30 04 March 2014 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks, tarvos, I know that, but that won't stop me from using an amazing, free resource when the time comes. My way of not just using one course and a multi-track approach- not just depending on one single course- means that any outdated, orthography issues are not a problem. Congratulations on your upcoming stint in Romania! I am looking forward to following along in your log. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4505 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 13 of 30 04 March 2014 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
I know, just keep it in mind (Assimil Romanian has the same problem). Nowadays I don't care, I'm used to the new orthography (and half of Romania never writes the diacritics anyway). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4463 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 14 of 30 04 March 2014 at 9:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
After each dialogue there is a slow version (really more "spaced out" than simply "slow") of the same dialogue, plus several review questions (all in Spanish as well). One disadvantage of this course, especially for someone who has never touched Spanish before, is that the dialogues proceed at a good clip right from the very beginning, so the slow versions can certainly be useful. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5358 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 15 of 30 05 March 2014 at 6:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That sounds like quite a promising course then. I've always thought that the main weakness of Assimil was the unnatural way in which the dialogues are spoken. Most other modern courses seem to have more natural sounding speech. (Not that I'm good at comprehending naturally spoken dialogues or anything, but you've got to start sometime, and the sooner the better)
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4626 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 16 of 30 05 March 2014 at 7:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
What language(s) are you initially seeking to learn by the programs you are looking for?
Well, there are pros and cons to this approach. As you yourself point out, one has to know the base language in which the course is written for it to make sense to you: French, or some are available in German (e.g. Danish, which I have); are some also coming out in English now? Anway, the fact that the audio is all in the target language means that (for a beginner anyway) there has to be some base language somewhere to make the target language meaningful for you, and for Assimil, this is a book. So you are switching between reading and listening/speaking (which is one potential problem), and you are having to use a base language which you might not be perfect in (which isn't necessarily all bad, since it gives you practice in that language, but is it as optimal as if the base language were your native language?). I can't defend the audio on the TYS courses ... it's pretty disappointing in my recent experience, but there are some other approaches which are potentially as useful as Assimil. Michel Thomas, of course. Say Something in (Welsh, Dutch, Spanish, Cornish (not much there yet); other languages hopefully coming. You Speak German. All of the above present you with a series of "challenges" in English, which you are then given chance to produce in the target language, and you then hear a "correct" version by an expert speaker (native speakers of each gender for SSiW; Native speaker for listening practice only in YSG). So for SSi, you hear twice as much native speaker TL as there is English, and there is no need to switch from reading to listening/speaking; it's 100% audio. I have a feeling Pimsleur is along similar lines, but I've never used a Pimsleur course myself, so I don't know for sure. I'm not knocking Assimil. It's pretty well respected around these parts, and praised by none other than Professor Arguelles, but on the other hand, I don't think it's a forgone conclusion that theirs is the best or only approach, and one to be followed by other course-providers. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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