A language learners’ forum

Assimil has released a new €24.90 French course (book only) for English speakers with ISBN 978-2-7005-0854-3. The course comprises 100 new lessons with sample lessons (lessons 1, 2, 50 and 100) which are freely available here: sample lessons.

I compared lessons 50 and 100 of the new course to those of NFWE and FWOT and let me just say that the new course will get someone to an A2 at the very most. The B2 stamped on the cover is purely for marketing purposes.

They seem to prefer streamlining the books these days. To be fair I don't think a more casual learner would or could tolerate FWOT as a first approach, because it is very densely printed by comparison. I don't think the last edition of NFWE - or the one from 1998 - is anything like dense, but I suppose there's nothing wrong with tweaking and adding colour to the page so long as they retain information. There still seems to be quite a lot of supplementary notes.

Why do you think it will only take someone to A2? I don't think it has shown all the lessons in full in that extract. I also don't think it's a bad thing to take people up to A2+, but they should definitely put A2/B1 on the cover. It's actually difficult in self-study to measure the fine line between a good A2 and someone hitting B1

Out of interest...the beginning of that lesson 2 (lesson 3 in the old one), do people no longer say 'messieurs-dames/monsieur-dame'?

At least some honest info has been provided within the assimil.com website itself



Finally they changed the dialogues after 20 years!
The Italian version still has the same dialogues from 2001, when the "euro" was a new currency.

Le Baron wrote:They seem to prefer streamlining the books these days. To be fair I don't think a more casual learner would or could tolerate FWOT as a first approach, because it is very densely printed by comparison. I don't think the last edition of NFWE - or the one from 1998 - is anything like dense, but I suppose there's nothing wrong with tweaking and adding colour to the page so long as they retain information. There still seems to be quite a lot of supplementary notes.

Why do you think it will only take someone to A2? I don't think it has shown all the lessons in full in that extract. I also don't think it's a bad thing to take people up to A2+, but they should definitely put A2/B1 on the cover. It's actually difficult in self-study to measure the fine line between a good A2 and someone hitting B1

Out of interest...the beginning of that lesson 2 (lesson 3 in the old one), do people no longer say 'messieurs-dames/monsieur-dame'?

FWOT and GWOT (German) are just the best Assimil books ever. SWOT (Spanish) is a distant 3rd. I said that FWOT would only take someone to A2 after comparing lessons 1, 2, 50 and 100 across all three versions. The A2/B1 line is nebulous but the B2 is definitely NOT. I've never heard younger French speakers say that, but the older ones still do.

Agorima wrote:At least some honest info has been provided within the assimil.com website itself

assimil.PNG

Finally they changed the dialogues after 20 years!
The Italian version still has the same dialogues from 2001, when the "euro" was a new currency.

Odd how the book still has B2 on it despite being filed under "A1-A2."

Althought I'm not learning French now, I'm planning to learn French some point in the future (because it's the assimil language)
Anyone think that it's a good idea to buy the current book before it is out of print?
Seems like for the same amount of money the older one is denser and with more content.

Le Baron wrote:Out of interest...the beginning of that lesson 2 (lesson 3 in the old one), do people no longer say 'messieurs-dames/monsieur-dame'?

For what it's worth, I don't think I've really ever heard "monsieur-dame"*. "Messieurs-dames" (or "Mesdames, messieurs" if you want something less casual) means several men and several women are present. In the lesson, I guess there is only one female and one male character.

*Strangely enough "M'sieur-dame"/"M'ssieurs-dames" can be heard but it sounds very casual. It combines both respectful form of adress and familiarity so it is maybe better not to use it. In my mind, it conveys something like "OK, I have to greet you politely but I actually couldn't care less".

As always, just my two cents. I guess these things vary tremendously from one speaker to another.

Skynet wrote:Odd how the book still has B2 on it despite being filed under "A1-A2."

It's odd also to see that Assimil is still selling the course with audio CDs in 2021

Agorima wrote:It's odd also to see that Assimil is still selling the course with audio CDs in 2021

Odd it might seem to many people, but I'm very happy that they still produce CDs. I prefer them by far and I guess that I'm not alone.

kelvin921019 wrote:Althought I'm not learning French now, I'm planning to learn French some point in the future (because it's the assimil language)
Anyone think that it's a good idea to buy the current book before it is out of print?
Seems like for the same amount of money the older one is denser and with more content.

Yeah, buy NFWE before it's out of stock and you have to pay extra on Ebay.

guyome wrote:

Le Baron wrote:Out of interest...the beginning of that lesson 2 (lesson 3 in the old one), do people no longer say 'messieurs-dames/monsieur-dame'?

For what it's worth, I don't think I've really ever heard "monsieur-dame"*. "Messieurs-dames" (or "Mesdames, messieurs" if you want something less casual) means several men and several women are present. In the lesson, I guess there is only one female and one male character.

*Strangely enough "M'sieur-dame"/"M'ssieurs-dames" can be heard but it sounds very casual. It combines both respectful form of adress and familiarity so it is maybe better not to use it. In my mind, it conveys something like "OK, I have to greet you politely but I actually couldn't care less".

As always, just my two cents. I guess these things vary tremendously from one speaker to another.

I like it. I asked this because my mother and her siblings were all born in Belgium and when I used visit my uncle and we went to places he would always say it when he entered a room of mixed company. A friend of mine here told me his grandfather used to say it even when he was on holiday visiting his daughter here in the Netherlands, like in the waiting room at a train station. I think I should revive it. I'm not bothered about making a fool of myself.