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Assimil notes: what use to make of them? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4964 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 1 of 7 01 April 2014 at 9:35pm | IP Logged |
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I've written at my log on how often I go through Assimil textbooks that has short,
friendly, graded texts that focus on assimilating, that is, getting acquainted with the main features of the language mostly through exposure and comparing the translation, but, on the other hand, have notes that outnumber the paragraphs of this text. Some things I've noticed about those notes: - They not only outnumber the paragraphs: they are also longer. They go way beyong an explanational purpose, as they tend to elaborate on similar words from the same root as well as similar idioms with the same or other words. - As a result, they come out as an attempt to make some grammar/vocabulary aspects explicit in a rather chaotic way; that is to say, Assimil's notes combined with the actual content of a lesson end up equal to one lesson from Living Language, for example. The drawback is that Assimil's notes aren't systematic while it would be better to explain systematic things in a linear, systematic way and leave the non- linear layout for the intuitive, non-systematic content of the lessons. - By having so many notes scattered through the lessons, Assimil ends up having the worst of both worlds - you get grammar and wordlist-focused textbook's content scattered through notes. I don't know about you guys, but I have a hard time focusing on the main theme of a lesson when there are so many notes that go so much further 'off-topic'. It is like teachers decided to explain 3 or 4 essential topics but for each they'd delve into dozens of exceptions, parallels and vocabulary spin-offs before moving on to the next one. So, I'd like to know how you guys deal with Assimil's notes, especially when they start getting too long and too 'off-topic'. a) Do you skip them overall? b) Do you read them before going through the text? In this case, I'd not worry if there would actually be any sort of enlightment to the main text that I'd miss by reading the notes first; I'd rather rely on the translation and on my experience at language- learning in order to figure out the details. c) Do you read them after going through the text? d) Do you read them as you go through the text, stopping at each note? (At one point today I've seen 3 notes for each paragraph). e) Do you ignore them almost all the time, only going for a note if there's something you actually don't understand? I've had my worst time with the books Russian without toil (old edition) and Perfectionnement Allemand, but the other Russian books weren't far behind and so wasn't 2nd generation beginner's German (which happens to belong to the same generation as Perfectionnement, so perhaps that explains). It is worse when you're a false beginner in the language: the grammar explanations are too obvious and the vocabulary, on the other hand, represent a distraction from the main words that suit better your current level. In my opinion, the issue with the notes totally makes one miss the point with Assimil's, methods. Therefore, I'd like to know how you people deal with them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mutant Groupie United States Joined 3709 days ago 45 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German | Message 2 of 7 01 April 2014 at 10:25pm | IP Logged |
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I read them a few times after I go through the text, just to make sure I understand everything. Yes, they're chaotically laid out, which is why I supplement Assimil German with Ease with Hugo German in Three Months. However, when I went through the Assmil Spanish With Ease course I noticed that they slipped a lot of vocabulary in the notes that would show up later during the exercises.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6457 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 3 of 7 01 April 2014 at 10:58pm | IP Logged |
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Aren't they there just in case you're curious and want to know how it actually work? Isn't the thought of Assimil that
you shall just, eventually, equate the foreign sentences and idioms with their meaning rather than translate according to a set of rules? I do recall reading several times in an Assimil course that there was no need at all to memorize what was being explain and that it was merely provided in case I wondered how it all fit together. 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 7 01 April 2014 at 11:21pm | IP Logged |
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I usually do (c), but I treat them with the same spirit of "assimilating," i.e. not
really stressing it. Usually the notes are confirming a suspicion I had by reading the text originally. In any case, I only focus on them enough to understand passively what is happening in the text. I do agree that supplementing an "assimilation" course with more of an explanatory course is very helpful. In that case you could even ignore the notes, if you can't convince yourself to treat them more casually. The only case where this would really cause trouble is in lessons presenting dialects, but if you have the audio I'm sure you'd recognize that something is awry! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4964 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 5 of 7 01 April 2014 at 11:25pm | IP Logged |
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You're right about that osoymar, but what annoys me the most is when the notes present
too much info that isn't directly related to the lesson, so it's actually forcing me into learning stuff that wasn't appropriate at that time. 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 7 01 April 2014 at 11:55pm | IP Logged |
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Some of the notes are more helpful than others. At times, I skip them, at times I read them. If I don't have time to read them, I figure I may look at them in a later wave. The notes are more important in early waves than middle ones. Late waves, there may an obscure note tip or word to pick up or use to look at something from another angle.
To me, the notes are things that a teacher might throw in to fill out a lesson. 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 7 02 April 2014 at 12:10am | IP Logged |
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I always thought of the notes as being there to help you disentangle things you didn't understand, whereas the parallel text is where the actual learning takes place. And most of the courses are well formatted so that the notes don't get in the way of using the parallel texts and are only there for reference when needed.
Usually when approaching a text for the first time I'll read it straight through twice (translation and then target language), just to get an overview of what the lesson is about. Then I'll go through the text slowly, read the notes an make sure I understand what I need to understand. Then I'll start actually working with the parallel text until I've absorbed it to a sufficient level. I'll only refer back to the notes if I need to re-check something. For the most part I find them helpful more often then frustrating. Generally the time I spend working through the notes is overall is a lot smaller than the amount of time I need to actually work through the text to absorb it. With Assimil Hungarian I think the course needed more notes, as there were a lot of sentences where understanding how the translation corresponded to the text wasn't obvious and some additional explanations would've significantly reduced the time I needed to unravel everything on my own. The only time I found notes to be a nuisance was with Using French, due to how long the dialogs were and how they seemed to try to fit in as many notes as possible, I read through them all but after a while I just started reading them all at once instead of going back and forth between the text and the notes. If I feel I already understand most of the grammar and I'm using a second assimil course of the same level from another generation I'll typically skim through the notes or only refer to them in instances where I'm confused or want more clarification. Edited by YnEoS on 02 April 2014 at 2:00am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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