|
 |
To understand or to produce with Assimil | ||
Tags: Assimil | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| markmsb Newbie United States Joined 3716 days ago 16 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 16 12 March 2014 at 4:51am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Hi,
I am a relatively new member of the forum and have browsed here intensively over the past several days. I know these questions may have been answered in a number of ways but, I would like to get clarity on a few things. I am on lesson 17 of French with Ease. 1)During the passive wave, in each lesson should be understand the broad meaning of each sentence or understand the meaning of each word and how the sentences are structured. I find myself understand the meaning of each sentence to a degree of 100% but I do not always remember what each word means when I am listening to the recordings. It's only after I listen when I think about each word do I remember what it individually means. Should we intensively understand each word as heard at this point two. 2) While shadowing the texts while playing the audio I find that my understanding of the material goes down a bit even though I can perfectly parrot and pronounce correctly what the speakers are trying to say. this is not to say that I can not understand anything. My comprehension of each sentence goes down. 3) I usually am satisfied with a lesson and decide to complete it when I can comprehend 95 percent of what is being said and can shadow the audio with minimal effort and have read and understand all of the notes as well as upon completion of the exercises. Putting it all together, is this enough at this stage in the program for me to be doing right now or should I be doing something differently? What I forgot to add is that I am using both French with Ease and French Without Toil. Thanks, Mark 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7003 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 16 12 March 2014 at 8:06am | IP Logged | |||||
|
That level of understanding will get you by. The most important thing is to come up with a pace and method that you can sustain. You're method may vary as the course goes on, but keeping up the lesson per day pace is the most important factor for Assimil the first time through.
In second and subsequent waves, your comprehension and understanding will improve. French Without Toil introduces a 3rd wave or "troisième vague". What you can accomplish with each wave depends partly upon the time you can give a lesson. If you can give each lesson about 60 minutes and are inclined to write it out, that will help. If you only have 15-20 minutes and a "listen and review" sessions later in the day, your progress may not be a bit shakier, but with persistence and follow-up waves, you will succeed. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6395 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 3 of 16 12 March 2014 at 10:33am | IP Logged | |||||
|
This depends on what you plan to do after the passive wave. And on when you plan to introduce native materials. Also, you may want to make your requirements more strict when you're done with the basics, around lesson 50 or so. And I highly recommend listening to completed lessons every now and then. Like, randomly throughout the day.
luke, what are the official instructions for a third wave? in this case is the 2nd supposed to be different too? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| osoymar Tetraglot Pro Member United States Joined 4534 days ago 190 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English*, German, Portuguese, Japanese Studies: Spanish, French Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 16 12 March 2014 at 5:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I would recommend going back and forth between listening, shadowing, and possibly
repeating until you can shadow the texts while understanding the meaning. Otherwise it is very easy to, as you say, parrot what the characters are saying without absorbing the meaning. Being able to read the lines like an actor and feeling what they are communicating will really help bridge the gap to the second wave, and to your further studies. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| markmsb Newbie United States Joined 3716 days ago 16 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 16 12 March 2014 at 5:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Thanks Osoymar and to everyone who posted. I think I will follow what osoymar said to do. I find that when I read the texts the next day I can understand everything that is written and their meaning. And if I heard the individual words said understand their meaning but i think the reason why I might get lost is that my mind is still translating from English to french and is falling behind the recordings. I also realize that I can remember pieces f the texts after I leave them but not everything, but when I come back to the texts my memory of what they were returns almost perfectly.
My passive understand is improving a great deal, but my ability to reproduce is not good. IS this normal for this point in the course? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7003 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 6 of 16 12 March 2014 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
Always verbs! - Verbs embarrass you still and it was not surprising. Within the twenty lessons that we have left, we will make a final effort to tame them. You just need a little patience and perseverance to reach the goal. We recommend that you especially don't forget to review not only the lessons and exercises, but also the "additional exercises" during the second wave. By the way, how is that "second wave"? We believe it's easy and only fifty lessons ago; what scared you at first now seems quite natural. Have courage then! Continue to study regularly (whenever possible ) adding a new lesson in the second wave each day. If you find yourself in trouble, don't hesitate to leave on a "third wave", in which you will enter your own number for each new lesson, repeating from the first. Edited by luke on 12 March 2014 at 8:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4052 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 7 of 16 12 March 2014 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
It worth keeping in mind, that a big part of how Assimil works, is that you learn things slowly over time by re-using the vocabulary in different contexts. A lot of times when I work through an Assimil course successfully, each lesson it feels like I've just barely comprehended all the new content, and I'm unsure how well I've mastered it. But once I've gotten further into the course, I notice I have a really strong command and understanding of all the essentials that got taught much earlier from re-using them in later lessons.
Not all the vocabulary in Assimil sufficiently re-appears enough times to completely learn everything, so many learners have used more intensive study techniques to extract as much as they can out of an Assimil course. And plenty of the old Assimil courses encourage you to review old audio or write out the lesson if you feel the desire to. I've used more intensive studying techniques at times, and found that doing so often does produce better results than going through the course with a minimal routine. Just remember to try and keep the course fun and if doing extra exercises feels like a burden, you should feel free to drop them or change them up. Also since you're using the old French without Toil course, at some point it will start offering you supplemental exercises to do with the course. I think these are mostly activities, like challenging you to write out the lesson in a different tense, then providing you with an answer key of all the verbs, so you can evaluate yourself. I personally skipped these for French, and ended up learning this stuff elsewhere, but working through the old Russian course, I've found these supplemental exercises incredibly useful for consolidating my knowledge of the language. Usually the main warning sign that I'm not properly learning from the course is that the lessons will start getting more and more confusing and I'll start feeling lost. At this point I like to check through some the older lessons and see where my problem areas are, and then perhaps start over again from that point using some more intensive study methods. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| markmsb Newbie United States Joined 3716 days ago 16 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* | Message 8 of 16 12 March 2014 at 10:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
YnEos, I was thinking the same thing about barely comprehending the new content, but then understanding future contents more and more from what i learned before in previous lessons. often times so far my listening comprehension has really gone up with each listen and I know what each word and sentence means when said, but when it is time to produce the language on my own I have to think before I talk for a long time. Would you say this is normal for someone only on lesson 18 or so?
French without out toil does seems to have very intensive exercises from what I have seen. I like that they are included to the degree that they are in this course. thanks 2 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
