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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| The Law Newbie United States Joined 6173 days ago 31 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 191 28 June 2007 at 6:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/faq/programs-assimil. html
Assimil is not the worst book you can buy, but it's totally insufficient to learn a language and will take you as much time as another, better program. The pity is that they are so marketable, a real bookseller's dream. But don't get caught if you think that with an Assimil book it will be "easier to learn the language". It just won't. On the tapes they only have somebody reading the dialogs, no drills nor any oral exercise. And the phrases in the dialogs are not that useful. One day I was at the French/Spanish bookshop in the Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, and I asked the owner if he sold FSI or Pimsleur tapes. He answered that no, he did not, but that they had better tapes. As he actually had some FSI material, I thought I was on something hot until I saw this nice gentleman show me his "fantastic tapes", Assimil, one of the worst rip off you can find. I pointed that I knew the tapes and that they just did not work, because they have no drills, few tapes and unusable dialogs. He satisfied answer was that they were "very popular" and that he sold quite a lot of them every year. What could I say, he was right, after all most people that buy language books will never speak their target language, so what's the matter? What's the deal with this? Edited by The Law on 28 June 2007 at 6:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6237 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 191 28 June 2007 at 6:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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The administrator initially had an extremely negative opinion of Assimil. It has since softened to some degree, but he remains firmly on the FSI side of the 'FSI vs Assimil' debates. The Forum Glossary has a much more neutral summary of it.
Here is a post where he merely says it takes more self-discipline to use than many other courses. I'd agree with this assessment. Here is a reassessment of it. Edited by Volte on 28 June 2007 at 6:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| brian00321 Senior Member United States Joined 6396 days ago 143 posts - 148 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 3 of 191 28 June 2007 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Kind of harsh but it's just opinion. If he thinks it sucks it doesn't necessarily
mean that it does to other people also. Personal preferences man. He gave his reasons too. I think Windows, Paris Hilton, and paint-ball suck. But again it's just opinion. I'm sure you'll find more positive reviews about Assimil than negatives. Or else it wouldn't be deserving of all the praise that it gets. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6463 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 4 of 191 29 June 2007 at 4:14am | IP Logged | ||
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I really like Assimil, I learned Italian using Assimil exclusively and I progressed rapidly. The same goes for Swedish (but I haven't completed the whole course and I'm not fluent yet).
The problem with Assimil is that you don't see your progress immediately, which might be bad for motivation. You spend quite a lot of time learning the language without actually being able to say anything really. When I did the Italian course, my active skills took off when I was between lessons 60 and 70 (i.e. two weeks after the beginning of the 'active phase') and I went from zero to intermediate proficiency in a couple of weeks. In my opinion it's the most painless method there is, as there are no grammar drills (which I can't stand!) and the reading texts are interesting and funny (at least for some of the courses, especially the older ones). Look at the posts from Ardaschir, he's learned a lot of languages and used Assimil for many of them. FSI is the most horrible course I've ever tried (for Turkish), those endless repetitions gave me a headache; I had to stop after two or three lessons, otherwise I would have gone crazy. Edited by Marc Frisch on 29 June 2007 at 4:15am 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 5 of 191 29 June 2007 at 5:30am | IP Logged | ||
It's helpful if the the specific Assimil courses are mentioned. Ardaschir lamented about the declining quality of all courses, including Assimil. He also mentioned that the best courses were available with a French or German base. As I understand it, most of Ardaschir and Fanatic's language learning was with the pre-new versions of the courses. (Please note this comment is not a criticism of Marc's post, which I've always found helpful, but rather a general comment that I think would help others in all references to Assmil and FSI courses, unless we are simply discussing the general "assimilate" versus "drill centered" approaches). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Zorndyke Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6756 days ago 374 posts - 382 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Czech | Message 6 of 191 29 June 2007 at 6:44am | IP Logged | ||
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This link might also be of some interest.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6463 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 7 of 191 29 June 2007 at 6:58am | IP Logged | ||
Yes, there are significant differences. I found Assimil most efficient when the target language is easy (that is transparent with respect to another language you know). My experiences with Assimil courses were the following (with French as base language): I really liked the Swedish, Norwegian and Dutch courses (I didn't do the Dutch and Norwegian courses, but looked through it at the library). 'Using French' (in English) is very good, too. The Spanish and Italian versions are pretty good, but not excellent (both the newest version and the preceding one). The 'Perfectionnement Italien' course is a bit outdated and the reading texts are sometimes a bit boring (to much focus on traveling). The Turkish course is pretty good, but didn't prove to be as efficient. Maybe for difficult languages, one should at least supplement it with another course that demands more exercises in order to get used to the radically different grammar. (The Persian course was written by the same author, so I assume it should be of good quality as well.) Modern Greek seems to be good, too (just by looking through it at the library and doing the first 3 or 4 lessons). Russian (the newest version) is okay, but there are some inconveniences, the speed is too high for me, so it takes much more effort to understand a new lesson (they're not i+1 but i+2, so to say). And there are many additional exercises, small poems/sayings/writing exercises which are not included in the recordings, which is especially frustrating at the beginning stages where you still struggle with the cyrillic alphabet, as you're not sure if you read/pronounce it correctly. The following are really bad: Esperanto: worst Assimil I've ever seen, the dialogues are awful Japanese & Chinese (I only looked through them): they use the Japanese/Chinese alphabets (with a transcription) but I think it's impossible to 'assimilate' the writing systems just like that. Latin: the dialogues are ridiculous and the speakers on the tapes have very French accents Edited by Marc Frisch on 16 July 2007 at 4:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sheetz Senior Member United States Joined 6175 days ago 270 posts - 356 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Mandarin | Message 8 of 191 29 June 2007 at 9:23am | IP Logged | ||
Both the Japanese and Chinese courses offer a third volume to teach writing. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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