A German Assimil Experiment Recovery Log and Going Ahead for DALF C1.

[zimorki]

A German Assimil Experiment Recovery Log and Going Ahead for DALF C1.

GERMAN: A few years ago, on HTLAL forum I had joined to an assimil experiment of which I couldn't go until the end. I had no prior knowledge about German before and had gone through 80ish lessons of first level German course L'Allemand. I was pretty glad about the course itself but due to my school&work conditions I had to quit this challenge and I haven't used or reviewed German so far.

Now I plan to re-study assimil German courses rapidly and intensively. I have L'Allemand and Perfectionnement Allemand sets in my hands. Many forum members shared amazing experiences about their assimil challenges in Chinese, Spanish, French so I want to give it a try it with German, or more precisely, continue the trial I began before and see where it'll take me.

After Assimil sets, I'll use Lagune 1-2-3 textbooks as supplement. My goal with German is to reach a solid B1 for the moment. B2 would be a realistic and better goal but French takes the priority now. German has never been an attractive language for me. I learn it for possible professional opportunities concerning my career in Germany. This lack of interest may lead me to a rupture in persistancy to study, that's why I wanted to motivate myself with challenges and intensive study in a short term.

FRENCH : Mon amour éternel. My favorite foreign language, the one on which I invested most of my spare time, the one that cultivated my language learning love. Last February I passed DELF B2 exam and I'm now aiming for DALF C1 in the end of May. I'll use Alter Ego 4&5 as my mainstream textbooks. I'll get prepared to DALF C1 with Didier Réussir le DALF C1 and 100% Réussite.
I listen to French music, watch French TV and programmes, talk to French friends almost daily.

Let's go. On y va!

[zimorki]

First update. Last 2 days have been quite fruitful as I had plenty of spare time to spend on languages. Most of this time was spent on French and partly on German.

FRENCH : Here we go with Alter Ego 4 ! There are 9 "dossiers" in this volume. Each dossier focuses on a different topic and is about 20-25 pages. I managed to study one dossier a day. So I'm almost at the quarter of my way through it. The methodology I use for unknown words are:

1. Have a look on Turkish-French online dictionary.
2. Look on Larousse Français monolingue French-French dictionary.
3. Enter the unknown word with a sample sentence on Anki.

This takes a lot of time, I know, but it works as the best way for me. On the other hand, I have to do it since my native language (Turkish) is way different from French or any other Indo-european languages. Hence, word-to-word learning fails after B1 threshold, words don't match exactly or concepts differ deeply.
Sometimes while I'm looking for a word, I browse also an other word in the monolingual French explanation and the process lengthens. Mais lorsqu'on apprend le français, ça vaut la peine.

Listening comprehension: I have FranceInter app on my phone. I usually happen to find something interesting to listen shorter than 5 minutes. France Inter helped me a lot with DELF B2 and I have to keep this habit for DALF C1, as well.

GERMAN : Back to Assimil L'Allemand. This time, I'm re-studying this book as 7-lesson packs to recover quickly and when I pass to Perfectionnement Allemand, I'll do again 1-lesson-a-day classical method. I flipped through the wordlist/dictionary at the end of the L'Allemand and it seems like to have 1900-2000 words in it. I thought that I should have forgotten German in consequence of quitting this language for a few years but listening first lessons of Assimil has just waken up dormant cells quite well !

A bientôt.

[Ren_Lei123]

Bonjour zimorki et bon courage! I am interested in your German Assimil experiment. I just received my assimil package and am not very sure about how to start it . And like you, je suis passionnée pour le français! Alter Ego+ is really fantastic, but there are too many new words to remember. My methodology is similar with you, yet I don't refer to French-French dictionary. I believe it is a good idea to read French explanations. I will try it next time!

[zimorki]

I couldn't send an update on this log for more than a month. I'm back.

Assimil update:

As I explained in my previous posts, I had studied assimil until 80-sth lesson and 40-45 of them were well-studied studied. The rest was unfortunately just quick reading.

I'm re-studying the book as 7 lesson packs. Recovery has been really easy until 30th lesson. I found that I remember well.

Currently I am at 63rd lesson and I feel like the pace is getting faster after the 50th lesson. It's especially more challenging in the aspect of sentence syntax, a subject for which German is famous.

Until this point the only issue I had was adjective. declensions. The guide in the book recommends me to let it go and I would assimilate it naturally but I just couldn't assimilate ) I found an excellent short video on YouTube about German adjective declensions and the issue is fixed.

[zimorki]

FR

"Un jour je parlerai couramment cette langue" c'était bien ce que je me disais; ce que je me suis promis au début de mon aventure avec le français. J'ai obtenu le diplôme DELF B2 et je pense à tenter le DALF C1 bientôt. Est-ce mon but ultime? J'sais pas. Il est difficile de trouver des gens pour pratiquer le français ici et même l'Institut français dans ma ville semble loin d'avoir envie d'organiser des rencontres ou des réunions pour accueillir les francophones de la ville.
À l'époque où j'ai commencé à apprendre le français, ma seule langue étrangère était l'anglais que je apprenais au lycée. En fait, je n'avais aucune véritable motivation pour apprendre le français. Ni les rêves de partir en France ni les pensées de faire une carrière de langues. Ce qui m'attachais à l'auto-apprentissage, c'était simplement l'envie de découverte d'une langue étrangère. Comme une tentation qui s'est évoluée en envie, cette activité est devenue mon loisir. Car c'était une langue qui se situe bien loin de ma langue maternelle dans tous les aspects linguistiques. C'est à la fois fatigant et éblouissant. Fatigant, parce que dans la langue apprise vous ne trouvez rien à imiter. Tous les éléments introduits sont neufs pour vous. Et à la fois éblouissant: d'un côté le turc, une langue exceptionnelle qui n'a pratiquement pas d'exception grammaticale et qui vous offre un océan des suffixes pour définir les temps et les modalités dans une richesse, et d'autre côté le français, avec son vocabulaire gigantesque que l'on peut se croire qu'il y a un mot unique pour chaque conception que l'homme peut réfléchir.
Je suis ravi d'être sur ce forum et de voir les amateurs des langues de quatre coins du monde. Et oui, nous apprenons les langues car tout simplement nous les aimons.

[zimorki]

DE

Das ist das erste Mal, dass ich versuche, etwas in Deutsch zu schreiben. Heute habe ich bis zur fünfundsiebzigsten Lektion von Assimil L'Allemand gestudiert. Ich konnte zehn Lektionen pro Tag studieren aber nach dem sechzigsten Lektion habe ich angefangen, es ein bisschen anstrengend zu finden. Deshalb lese ich jetzt fünf Lektionen pro Tag. Das Buch gefällt mir ziemlich gut.
Zögern Sie bitte nicht, hier zu antworten, wenn ich falsch schreibe. Also bis später !

[zimorki]

DE

Assimil L'Allemand : COMPLETED.
Yay, today I did the 100th lesson. Finally I could complete the old assimil challenge I'm quite glad with the results. I'll write this post as a review so that future language amateurs who consider using L'Allemand may benefit.

- I used French based German course with DELF B2 under my belt. My mother tongue is Turkish. So we can say that both L1 and L2 are quite away from my native language. I see many people ask on the forum "can I use French based assimil with a little knowledge of French ? I think, at least a solid B1 is a must to avoid disorientation from text.

- Quality/price ratio was pretty satisfying. Grammar, reading and listening. all in one. Recordings are high quality. Total duration of recordings sums up 3 hours. I trimmed "erste... zweite.. dritte Lektion.. announces, unnecessarily long gaps between sentences and repetition of dialogues in first lessons. I ended up with 2h06m long pure non-stop recording.

- I could have learnt neither faster nor less expensively if I had attended a conventional language course instead. Long live self-learning !

- Word count: I didn't keep an Anki desk but dictionary at the end of book contains about 1900-2000 words. Give or take a few hundreds.

- Useless words, or let's call it better "inconvenient for beginner level". This is again one of the most discussed issues for some assimil books. For L'Allemand, I can say that they are very few. I didn't feel any interruption coming from this issue.

- B2 claim?... No, I passed French B2 exam just a few months ago and I know what B2 level is. Not only with Assimil, but also with ANY OTHER language book solely, you can not achieve B2 level. B2 is a level where you can maintain a conversation and defend your point of view on any topic without great difficulty. What you feel after Assimil is a vocabulary gap. What kind of gap? You may know plate, dish, salt, knife but not spoon and fork. Because Assimil's approach is not theme-based like Kursbuchs.You feel confident as if you can talk almost about everything in German and your knowledge about German grammar and syntax complexity variety really falls somewhere between B1-B2. You know how to build up your sentences, but there is a lacking vocabulary so you face the fact that you need to improve your word count.
In overall, I can say achieved level is around A2/B1 for me. Today I had a quick look on A2 and B1 level Kursbuchs and listenned to their dialogues randomly. A2 was easy and B1 dialogues weren't "very" challenging. Same applied both to listening and reading abilities. Before I started this challenge, my realistic expectation was about A2 but being able to approach towards B1 made me happy.

- Grammar : In-lesson notes and revision lessons' notes were enough. I used external resource just once for adjective declensions.

- I did an intensive study. I feel a little bit overloaded like on dawn before final exams now. I'll continue with Perfectionnement L'Allemand but I decided to digest the book beforehand. I'll repeat and repeat. Assimil's one lesson a day approach may excel after lesson 60 but at the beginning of the book, study as you go. Lessons aren't overchallenging.

- I recommend strictly to keep an Anki desk or a notebook if you plan to follow a slow pace. Plural forms are important and referring to dictionary to learn a noun's plural from after 100 days may be frustrating.

My German journey is to be continued...

[Skynet]

Assimil L'Allemand : COMPLETED.

Congratulations!

B2 claim?... No

Agreed! A2 at best with L'Allemend, B1 possible with German Without Toil.

Grammar : In-lesson notes and revision lessons' notes were enough.

I had no issues with French and Spanish Assimil grammar explanations, but the German ones seemed woefully inadequate for a language that is as complex as German. I'm redoing both L'Allemand (I have the English version) and GWOT and I understand the grammar points because of DLI German Basic's stellar notes.

Oh, and I have been meaning to ask, what happened to the Russian that you listed as being A2?

[Anna]

DE

Das ist das erste Mal, dass ich versuche, etwas in Deutsch zu schreiben. Heute habe ich bis zur fünfundsiebzigsten Lektion von Assimil L'Allemand gestudiert. Ich konnte zehn Lektionen pro Tag studieren aber nach dem sechzigsten Lektion habe ich angefangen, es ein bisschen anstrengend zu finden. Deshalb lese ich jetzt fünf Lektionen pro Tag. Das Buch gefällt mir ziemlich gut.
Zögern Sie bitte nicht, hier zu antworten, wenn ich falsch schreibe. Also bis später !

Wow, das ist wirklich gut geschrieben! Ist das wirklich dein erster Versuch?

* Heute habe ich ... studiert.
* Es ist nicht direkt wirklich falsch, aber in Foren ist es üblich sich zu duzen. Wenn Dir aber "Sie" lieber ist, sag das bitte.

[zimorki]

Wow, das ist wirklich gut geschrieben! Ist das wirklich dein erster Versuch?

* Heute habe ich ... studiert.
* Es ist nicht direkt wirklich falsch, aber in Foren ist es üblich sich zu duzen. Wenn Dir aber "Sie" lieber ist, sag das bitte.

Ja, das war wirklich mein erster Versuch.
Ich habe vergessen, dass die Verben, die am Ende -ieren haben, ihr Partizip 2 mit -iert machen. Danke ! Es war eigentlich in einer Lektion erklärt, aber man muss siebenmal vergessen, um einmal wirklich zu lernen.
Assimil benutzt zu oft "Sie" Höflichkeitsform im Buch, ich glaube, deshalb habe ich mich daran gewöhnt. Auf Youtube habe ich auch bemerkt, dass die Deutschen im Alltag diese Form benutzen, weniger als die Franzosen. Stimmt es, oder ?