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Assimil Learning methods | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 6942 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 57 of 96 17 February 2007 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is an unfortunate and unjust remark about Assimil. Most of the frustration and problems connected with Assimil are from users not using the program the way it was designed to be used. I didn't use Assimil according to the instructions on my first course. It went against the grain to continue to the next lesson before before I had completely mastered the current lesson. It still worked but not as efficiently as it could have done. If I had used Assimil the way some members describe I probably would have given up. When Assimil is used according to instructions it is the most efficient and pleasant method of learning a language that I am aware of. It does depend to some extent on your learning style. I have already written of my results using Assimil, doing public speaking in the target language after using Assimil as my learning program. Ardaschir has written countless times of the outstanding results he and his students have achieved. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Vinnie Groupie England Joined 6320 days ago 65 posts - 66 votes Speaks: English* | Message 58 of 96 17 February 2007 at 6:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Fanatic i really do admire you for the ammount of languages you have learnt, but how the hell did you find a way around the bad translations? without going insane.
I do not feel its an unjust statement, look what it done to me. Edited by Vinnie on 17 February 2007 at 6:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 6942 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 59 of 96 18 February 2007 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
Vinnie, I haven't had any of your problems with bad translations. Most of my Assimil courses are the old "Without Toil" programs. I have found a couple of spelling mistakes (obviously typos) in my old German Without Toil program but no translation errors that I recall. I have the new French and Dutch With Ease courses and have found no problems with them. As for the bad translations that have been cited, they refer to colloquial translations rather than literal, they are taken from lessons well into the program when the learner is capable of making his/her own literal translation and needs the colloquial meaning. At the beginning of each course a literal translation is given. This is when a literal translation is necessary. That is why I liked the old Lewis Robins programs; they gave a literal and a colloquial translation for every sentence throughout the course. (I think I do recall one translation mistake in my old German course but it was so obvious that it caused no problem and certainly didn't confuse me.) Edited by fanatic on 18 February 2007 at 6:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 6942 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 60 of 96 18 February 2007 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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One of the best language courses I have used is Russian For Everybody. I loved it right from the start. I had already worked my way through My First Russian Book and halfway through the second. They were excellent, but meant for school children to learn Russian.
Russian For Everybody came with 10 long play records and six or seven books, a textbook, grammar, reader, activity book, a dictionary and a couple of others. Here is the crunch. They gave no translations at all. You had to work it all out for yourself. The major textbook didn't have a word of English except for the preface. It listed the new words for each lesson and gave the meaning by context and illustration. If you couldn't work it out you looked up the meaning in the dictionary. The course consisted of narrative, dialogues and exercises. It was friendly and had a sense of humour. You got to know people in the program. I wouldn't normally recommend a course without clear explanations in your own language but this course was brilliant. Now, I haven't had any problems with the Assimil translations but how would the members cope with a course with no translations? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Farley Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6888 days ago 681 posts - 739 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanB1, French Studies: Spanish | Message 61 of 96 18 February 2007 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
I have used resources like that in the past before and I found them to be just as effective, if not more than dual translations, because I had to work to understand the meaning. Often the effort to done to “get it” was what drove the lesson home. I have used resources like this for German and French. My way of going at it is to go end to end with the lessons a couple of times in until I have an intuitive grasp of the material. Usually these target language resources will give you clues or keys to unlock the meaning. I call it “guided immersion”, I term I picked up from French in Action. With Assimil, the translation is the guide; with target language only courses the guide is something else. Another good question to those who are having problems with the translations is: if the Assimil active-wave back-translation does not prove to be the miracle method you were hoping for, then what does? I think then answer is a worthwhile lesson in introspection. My father used to admonish me with the quote, “An ass can’t look into a mirror and expect an angel to look back”. I spent a fair amount of time trying to answer that question myself because my first reflection was not quite the “angel” I wanted to see. The passive wave was great, but neither shadowing nor back translating really worked as an “easy” method. I wanted the results and the persistence paid off in the end. Instead, I found, that recreating my own dual translation is the “salt” that ads taste to Assimil, as Ardaschir used to say. It took months of trying this and that before it dawned on me what worked. I suspect it has something to do with years of grammar-translation coursework. It is ironic that after years of looking for “the method” other than grammar-translation, that such a simple tweak to Assimil would prove so effective and make Assimil’s “guided immersion” work. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6414 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 62 of 96 19 February 2007 at 12:36am | IP Logged | |||||
I have never felt the need for translations when working with language learning materials. I simply used the wordlist at the end of the lesson, or at the back of the book, plus whatever explanatory language notes were provided, to understand the language in the dialogues or readings. The goal was always to read and/or listen to the dialogues or readings until I could understand them, and until the language in them became very familiar to me, so familiar that I could begin speaking the language. Edited by Linguamor on 19 February 2007 at 12:44am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 6942 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 63 of 96 19 February 2007 at 2:32am | IP Logged | |||||
That is interesting. I just realised that My First/Second/Third/Fourth Russian Books by Arakin and Samoylova don't give any translation either but just a vocabulary for each lesson at the end of each book. Learning Russian by Nina Potapova doesn't give translations but word lists after each lesson. The same goes for my Indonesian course. In fact, many of my older courses and most of my Russian courses don't give translations. (I bought a lot of cheap but excellent Russian courses from a couple of Russian bookshops in Melbourne.) It is not something that I recommend in a language course as a rule. I don't know that you learn better because you have to put in some work to achieve your goal.; I just think that some of the programs are excellent in spite of the fact they give no translations. Sorting out the translation with Assimil has never been an effort for me. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Roger Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6388 days ago 159 posts - 161 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Indonesian | Message 64 of 96 19 February 2007 at 8:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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Assimil, to be honest, has also caused many a problem for me, and I don't feel vinnie's comment's were unjust. Everyday I try and find a way to use assimil to my learning style (and try to adapt to the assimil style), but perhap's assimil will never suit my learning style, I seem to get much more from learning from a grammar book a dictionary and some Italian paragraph's which I translate into english, which was recommended here, and it works. Im not about to say assimil is useless for every body(It seems to be the case with me though), and it may even be one of the best learning material for some learner's because it suits their learning style. It has done wonders for yourself fanatic, and many others, but not for me and others who find it a very difficult language program.
But now, instead of my complaining about assimil, and trying to adapt to it, im simply not going to use it anymore. it's time to get down to the way of learning language's which best suit me (and others should do the same if they have the same problem's with assimil as me), which is clearly not with assimil. And I already know learning out of grammar books does a good job for me, aswell as translating from TL to native, using a dictionary. Now im going to experiment with word lists aswell. If there is one thing I have learned throughout my language learning, it's that there is NO one way to learn a language and NO one way will suit everybody. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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