Assimil courses

[5ampunkrock]

Hey

Comments

[foudebassan]

I've used Assimil for French -> Czech, German -> Czech, French -> Dutch and French -> Esperanto, loving it each time. It's the perfect method if you are busy elsewhere and can only devote half an hour or so to it every day, on your own. If you're looking for something more intensive, or are following a structured course with a teacher, it might not be so good, even as a complement, as it works a bit on the assumption that you don't know anything else than what they've just taught you, if you see what I mean. Also, it gets old pretty quickly if you go to the country / start taking classes / start reading in the language, as it doesn't have a dictionary and it's hard to find precise words again, and the grammar notes are a bit sketchy at times. That said, if you're learning on your own I really don't know a better method. After six months of Assimil you can easily get into an XXX for intermediates class.

[5ampunkrock]

Hmm that sounds interesting. I'm mostly gonna be teaching it to myself, and the only experience I have with Italian and Portuguese is that I know both Spanish and French, so I can intuit the written language pretty well and just need to learn the different grammar structures and pronunciation (for Portuguese specifically). I'm doing this to avoid formal classes, as I tend to find that they go way too slow for me, so would you recommend it in that case?

I wish there were a way to flip through the book without having to spend $100 first!

Thanks!

[foudebassan]

It doesn't really go the analytical route (grammar decomposition). Each methods has two parts, about 50 lessons each (you need about half an hour per lesson, and it's not really wise to do more than one lesson or two a day - though you do need to go back in the book and review a couple of lessons every now and then): in the first part, you have a text written in the foreign language (recorded on tape / CD if you buy those too), its translation in the other language, and a few grammar notes; then a couple of random sentences whose grammatical structures / vocabulary is close to those in the main text, but slightly different (other pronouns, plural,...). Then you have a few exercises, like fill in the blanks, or conjugate a verb - all very easy. The aim is to get a "feeling" for the language - to understand it as a whole and not as dissected tidbits. Part 2 is essentially the same, except that the accent isn't on understanding any more but on expressing yourself

[dadi]

An Italian friend of mine has used Assimil to learn Romanian, and very satisfied with it.