Post: #1

How many of you have used the Assimil courses for language learning? I've heard many good things, but only ever glanced at them. I've started the french and the russian courses, and they seem pretty legit.

The courses consist of about 100 lessons. Each lesson has a short dialogue which introduces new material in the target language, with a translation on the opposite page, and phonetic pronounciation underneath. There are notes on culture, idioms, and weird things the language does compared to the native language. The dialogues are also recorded in an audio format by a native speaker. Every 7 lessons there is a review lesson that goes over all the important stuff to keep it fresh in your head. Seems like a pretty comprehensive course overall

So far, I've done about 1hr 45 on french and about a half hour on Russian over the last couple of days. Seems like they actually have a focus on using the languages in conversation, rather than tourist necessities. Looking ahead, the literal translations in the russian course seem as if they are going to be very helpful.

If anyone else is currently, or plans on, taking on an Assimil course, post your progress here and your thoughts

Post: #2

The Assimil language courses are highly praised in the language learning community. If you've heard of Luca Lampariello, it's what he uses. Most language courses out there suck, but Assimil (along with perhaps Colloquial and Teach Yourself, which I do also moderately recommend) is among the passably decent ones.

Assimil lays out a specific method to use the course (consisting of a "passive" and an "active" wave), which many find to be effective. It's not something I follow, so I don't have personal notes on this, but you might want to try it out and see if it works for you.

Literal translations are VITAL for understanding a language because how else will you be able to reproduce something even slightly different? A huge part of language learning is about detecting patterns, so the fact that Assimil helps facilitate this is wonderful.

Another important aspect of language learning, exemplified by Stephen Krashen, a respected second language acquisition researcher, is comprehensible input. You can only learn what you understand. Having lots and lots of audio is important, and Assimil definitely provides a good amount.

One key aspect of Assimil is that they don't concentrate on or organize "chapters" based on grammar, which is what 95% of the shit out there does. Too much grammar without material is impractical and will cause material to quickly leak away from the brain. Instead, Assimil concentrates on presenting a decent amount of material while introducing only tiny bits of grammar at a time, making things more manageable and relevant.

Personally, I don't really use Assimil as a "main" source because I'm quite picky as to exactly what vocabulary and aspects of grammar to learn. It's still definitely a good tool in the arsenal.

I have a few Assimil courses lying around, so I might just start one for kicks and see where it launches me in 30 days.

Post: #3

1 month challenge to see who can get the farthest/put the most hours into a language?

Post: #4

So where do you get these for a reasonable price? I've been crash coursing Portuguese for a couple of months now. I've been using Pimsleur for the spoken part of it, but I think they're too slow, and have plenty of reason to believe Rosetta Stone isn't worth the additional cost. Michel Thomas is the best I've used, but they only have European Portuguese, and it's totally different...

Post: #5

(09-21-2013 12:49 AM)Capitán Peligroso Wrote:  So where do you get these for a reasonable price? I've been crash coursing Portuguese for a couple of months now. I've been using Pimsleur for the spoken part of it, but I think they're too slow, and have plenty of reason to believe Rosetta Stone isn't worth the additional cost. Michel Thomas is the best I've used, but they only have European Portuguese, and it's totally different...

PM sent

EDIT: Portuguese doesn't come in English, come to think of it, but if you speak French, Polish, Spanish or German there are editions available

Post: #6

(09-21-2013 12:49 AM)Capitán Peligroso Wrote:  So where do you get these for a reasonable price? I've been crash coursing Portuguese for a couple of months now. I've been using Pimsleur for the spoken part of it, but I think they're too slow, and have plenty of reason to believe Rosetta Stone isn't worth the additional cost. Michel Thomas is the best I've used, but they only have European Portuguese, and it's totally different...

http://www.duolingo.com/

I believe Duolingo uses Brazilian Portuguese.

Post: #7

(09-21-2013 12:49 AM)Capitán Peligroso Wrote:  So where do you get these for a reasonable price? I've been crash coursing Portuguese for a couple of months now. I've been using Pimsleur for the spoken part of it, but I think they're too slow, and have plenty of reason to believe Rosetta Stone isn't worth the additional cost. Michel Thomas is the best I've used, but they only have European Portuguese, and it's totally different...

Piratebay.......

Post: #8

(09-21-2013 12:49 AM)Capitán Peligroso Wrote:  So where do you get these for a reasonable price? I've been crash coursing Portuguese for a couple of months now. I've been using Pimsleur for the spoken part of it, but I think they're too slow, and have plenty of reason to believe Rosetta Stone isn't worth the additional cost. Michel Thomas is the best I've used, but they only have European Portuguese, and it's totally different...

Piratebay.......

Post: #9

Progress:

So far I've done about 105 minutes on the Russian course, and 135 minutes on French. Would have spent more time on it this morning, but was more focused on not puking all over the bus (literally made it about 3 steps away at my stop, before violently letting loose all over someone's lawn lol). I quite like the speed that the courses are progressing at, and the content certainly doesn't disappoint for relevance and variety so far. Hopefully it stays this way.

Post: #10

(09-21-2013 12:36 AM)Architekt Wrote:  1 month challenge to see who can get the farthest/put the most hours into a language?

Lol. Are we in the how-to-learn-any-language forum or something?

I'm in China right now, and I really ought to be concentrating on Chinese, but I'm just so bored of this language, so what the hell - I'll squeeze out 30 minutes a day and see how far I can get with Romanian via Assimil. I've put in about an hour so far.

Consistency and regularity is the key here. It's very easy to fall behind, so hopefully this will add a layer of accountability.

Post: #11

(09-22-2013 11:01 AM)theArbiter Wrote:  Lol. Are we in the how-to-learn-any-language forum or something?

Checking out a couple of TAC and 6WC logs may have had a small influence on that suggestion.

I was thinking about adding in Mandarin, but I get the feeling I'll get overwhelmed and lose focus. Do you speak French as well? I've heard Romanian is actually a fairly easy language to learn, but I don't recall there being an English edition of Assimil for Romanian

Post: #12

Indeed, there isn't an English edition of Assimil for Romanian. I know Assimil is a French company, but I'm still surprised that there isn't a large selection for English as a base (whereas, there's a lot more for Dutch, for example). I do speak French pretty decently, so as you may have guessed, I am using the French version to learn Romanian (Le Roumain Sans Peine).

I used to be scared of Romanian because it's the only "major" romance language with cases, and after dabbling with Russian, I thought that'd be a nightmare. However, it's not that bad. For example, the "5" cases can essentially be reduced to 2: nominative/accusative and genitive/dative (the vocative is so much less important, so ignore that).

Another sigh of relief comes from the fact that the verb system is SO MUCH SIMPLER than Spanish and even French. The only actively used tense with a distinct inflection paradigm is the present tense (maybe the subjunctive, too, but this is identical to the present in 1st and 2nd person)! Everything else is either not normally used in speech or formed synthetically (like in English), so you basically do a present tense conjugation and then use a participle with only one form.

The spelling/orthography is also regular. It's also a fun language to pronounce due to the English "ch" sound and the "j" sound when you have c followed by an e/i or g followed by an e/i, respectively. not found a lot in other Indo-European languages, and even then, it's so fun pronouncing it. It's pretty much the same as the Russian Makes it sound like Portuguese or Italian. There's only one vowel Ы sound, so you probably are familiar with it.

Anyways, I'm going a little bit overboard with my analysis of Romanian. I haven't really gotten that deep in the language, so I may be missing some difficulties, but from my experience with language learning, Romanian seems to be very very manageable.

Studying too many languages at the same time usually leads most people off track, so I wouldn't recommend it except for hardcore language enthusiasts. On the flipside, I disagree when people say you should only concentrate on 1 language or die. You should have a designated main language where you spend the majority of your language learning time, but having a second(ary) language, I find, helps in breaking the monoticity when the first language is beginning to feel too burdensome. It makes returning to the first language feel so much fresher. 2 should be max, IMO, barring any very very occasional divergences to a third language.

EDIT: Also, if you haven't checked out Michel Thomas, I think it's a good supplement because you actually get active drilling, which sticks a lot more than just Assimil, where you're in charge alone with the audio, a few exercises, and what to do with the text in front of you, which feels a bit more "passive".

Post: #13

I've got 2 on the go at the moment. I've done the German and French courses in the past, and they are great, but I want to at least get up to the active wave of Assimil and see where I'm at. Previously I've found I could often construct fairly complex sentences, but barely understood anything after using MT. Hopefully Assimil helps in that regard with the sheer volume of target language only content.

And fully agreed with having the second to break the monotony. Strongly considering adding in Mandarin or another language (possibly in French) after I hit the active waves, providing all is going well at that point

Post: #14

Yeah, MT is mostly for active skills.

Out of the four aspects of language learning (listening/reading/speaking/writing), listening is BY FAR the hardest, and there's no easy way around it. You could bullshit the other skills, but not listening. Exposure is really the only thing that you can do (more importantly, exposure to material within reach; otherwise, understanding nothing means you learn virtually nothing). Part of that exposure could be just audio, but some of it needs to be fixed material where you have a transcript or at least are able to listen to it again and again, and actively study it.

Assimil definitely helps in listening, but I wouldn't say it's enough because the text is synthesized and not exactly real. In addition, the enunciation tends to be overly clear and slower than average. It's a good start, however, but slowly branch out.

A secret, however, that not a lot of people mention, is that certain listening environments are easier than others. The good news is that one-on-one conversation tends to be the easiest (and it's usually the most satisfying part/main goal of langauge learning). Thus, if you end up feeling discouraged that you don't understand crap after studying a language for a long time, try a one-on-one conversation with someone. It's a great motivational booster. I'd say broadcasts/documentaires/clearly enunciated texts are next in difficulty, followed by casual, group conversations (movies, included) as the hardest (there is an FSI report corroborating my claim here, just to give some confidence that I'm not talking out of my ass).

Post: #15

Yeah, I'm pretty keen on getting some skype or something like italki conversations going once I'm at least part way into the active wave. When it's just one on one, you can go slow and ask questions all the time. I'm gonna try dig up some good tunes to listen to as well. Been pretty out of the loop when it comes to music lately anyway, so may as well just get weird with some Russian folk or something lol

Post: #16

Update:

Just finished 25 minutes of active French study. Earlier I did some passive listening but I'm not going to count that towards my total since it's not really structured (nor have I kept an eye on the minutes spent).

For Russian, I'm fairly sure I did some reading&shadowing this morning but there's nothing written down, so I'll just treat it as passive for now. Aside from that, I reviewed the first 7 lessons of Russian to try consolidate my knowledge.

Probably going to stick to 1 lesson/day for Russian and 2 for French for now. Quite happy with the progress so far. Almost all of the material is sticking. The book says not to worry too much about remembering everything, but I'd rather get it right the first time and have a solid knowledge. Language learning does require a lot of exposure after all.

French: 150 mins (2.5 hours) active study
Gone through the first 14 lessons. I can understand and even repeat some of the dialogues without any AIDS from the book, which is encouraging. New material is also being picked up from lessons 10-14 reasonably quickly. Had an interesting click earlier where a lot of it just made sense, which is extremely encouraging

Russian: 140 minutes (2hrs 20) active study
Finished the first 7 lessons and almost all of the material is solidly tucked away in my head. Again, quite happy with progress so far. Also had a bit of a sneak peak at the next few lessons whilst shadowing the audio (haven't attempted to translate much of it).

Post: #17

babbel for android is great for learning Spanish vocabulary and pronunciation, they have other languages and its available for ios and windows mobile as well.

they let you download the packages you need,,, all for free.

Post: #18

Been in a shitty mood all day, so didn't get as much as I would have liked. Just reviewed first 14 french and 7 russian lessons. Might go make a coffee and see if I can get through a couple more in a bit.

Russian: 160 mins (2 hrs 40)
French: 180 mins (3 hrs)

Post: #19

Not quite sure on the exact time, but I'll underestimate at 2 hrs 30 minutes for Romanian. Got through most of the first 7 lessons and skimmed a few more in front since there's some more interesting vocabulary up front I'd rather have.

My meat and potatoes of language learning is translating the dialogue from English to L2 and then checking how close I am (a suggestion if you don't already do this). I don't buy into that crap that one has to avoid your native language when learning another (I still throw in some monolingual Anki flash cards from time to time, however).

Not worrying about forgetting too much because the more you forget a certain word/phrase, the more it sticks the next time. Especially if you use a structured course like Assimil, you're bound to encounter it again during review or subsequent dialogues.

Post: #20

(09-25-2013 11:38 AM)theArbiter Wrote:  I don't buy into that crap that one has to avoid your native language when learning another

I just like having the native material flowing - it helps me get thinking in the l2, which helps with comprehension etc..

Quote:Not worrying about forgetting too much because the more you forget a certain word/phrase, the more it sticks the next time. Especially if you use a structured course like Assimil, you're bound to encounter it again during review or subsequent dialogues.

Definitely need to loosen up in terms of worrying about every single word. Obviously, it's beneficial to know everything off by heart, but it burns me out faster and ultimately slows down the learning process. Probably much better off just cruising through the course, so I've at least familiarised myself with the language. At that point, I can hopefully make good use of some actual native materials, and go back to refine my skills with the knowledge of where my weaknesses lay

Post: #21

Last night, went through and listened/shadowed the next 7 lessons for both a couple times each. Understood a fair bit already, without having to look at the book. Felt like I wasn't making much progress for the last couple of days, but seems like it was worth the extra couple of days reviewing the material.

Russian 190 mins (3 hrs 10)
French 210 mins (3 hrs 30)

Post: #22

Trying a different approach this week. Hammering just a couple lessons at a time, over and over until I remember them, or a half hour is up.

Russian 220 minutes (3 hrs 40)
French 210 minutes (3 hrs 30) - Haven't done any yet, might do some listening when I head to bed

Post: #23

Has anyone taken the German (as an English speaker) course? How was it?

I have been playing around with Duolingo for a few days, and it seems alright - is this course better?

Post: #24

(09-30-2013 03:54 PM)MHaes Wrote:  Has anyone taken the German (as an English speaker) course? How was it?

I have been playing around with Duolingo for a few days, and it seems alright - is this course better?

I've heard the German course is solid content wise, and also has entertaining dialogues. Apparently the older "without toil" course is a bit more comprehensive than the new "with ease" courses, but some of the language might be a tad dated. You could easily do both at the same time, though, for a really solid base

Post: #25

Yeah, I torrented the "with ease" one. It seems to have glowing reviews, but this system is completely different than any other way I have learned a language. Regardless, I'll try it out and report back in 97 days.