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Is there any other program like Assimil? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| BrianDeAlabama Groupie United States Joined 4309 days ago 89 posts - 113 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 30 04 March 2014 at 7:52am | IP Logged | ||
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I've been trying to find other programs whose audio was all in the target language. Is Assimil the only company
that has enough sense to make such a program? I bought some Teach Yourself stuff and man their audio selection is extremely lacking compared to Assimil. I don't see how someone could develop an ear for a language using their program. Every week I'm getting more & more persuaded that I will have to tackle French so I can use Assimil's products to dabble in many other languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4455 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 2 of 30 04 March 2014 at 9:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Espagnol Débutant, which I am using to learn Spanish, is much like Assimil: based mostly around 90 dialogues and the audio is entirely in the TL except for one minute of French introduction in the first track. The dialogues are generally not as long as Assimil's, though. As far as programs in English, though, I don't know of any similar ones.
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4497 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 3 of 30 04 March 2014 at 9:55am | IP Logged | ||
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Linguaphone is reputed to be similar.
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| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6492 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 4 of 30 04 March 2014 at 10:30am | IP Logged | ||
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This is why Audacity is a popular program. It's a free audio editor that lets you cut out all of the non-target language material that's in your programs. It's a surprise sometimes how much or how little actual TL audio there is in some of these programs.
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| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5355 days ago 938 posts - 1839 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 5 of 30 04 March 2014 at 11:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Looking at my collection - Linguaphone (but not the All Talk or PDQ series), Cortina,
BBC language courses prior to very recently and FSI. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5052 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 6 of 30 04 March 2014 at 1:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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DLI Portuguese Basic Course has very little, I'd say less than 1%, English. I downloaded the French and Romanian courses too (maybe someday) and they have very little English as well, similar to the Portuguese course. Of course, these materials haven't been updated in 20-40 years.That's not an issue if you are following a multi-track approach. Still, I found the Portuguese course to be quite thorough and well organized with plenty of good, useful content and drills. Best of all, it's free! DLI (Defense Language Institute) Courses
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6995 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 7 of 30 04 March 2014 at 1:23pm | IP Logged | ||
it says there are 6 CDs. How is it the dialogues are shorter than Assimil and they have 2 more discs? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5165 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 8 of 30 04 March 2014 at 1:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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The Living Language Ultimate series and Living Language Beyond the Basics series are very similar to Assimil... and very good programs. The audio is all in the target language. There are fairly lenghy dialogues and then a lot more grammar notes and exercises than Assimil. The Ultimate-Advanced Spanish course has about 1.3 hours of pure Spanish dialogues (plus a ton of vocabulary and additional CDs for "on the go") and the Beyond the Basics Spanish has slightly over 1 hour of dialogues. I never did the Ultimate-Beginner course.
Some of the advantages of these courses over Assimil for Spanish are the more in depth grammar notes and exercises. Also, the quality of the audio and the speakers is noticeably better. It sounds like you are listening to professional voice actors. Also, if you prefer Latin American Spanish this is a perfect Assimil alternative. I note, however, that while the dialogues are very practical they are definitely not as interesting, fun or funny as Assimil's dialogues. You can pick up the Living Language series for almost nothing in the US and they are widely available in libraries. Edit: also be careful to make sure you are not buying one of Living Languages inferior courses. They recently have re-done all their offerings and I understand they are not nearly as good as the older ones. Edited by James29 on 04 March 2014 at 1:55pm 9 persons have voted this message useful |
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