Re: PM's 2021 Log - The Norwegian Resistance - Target 1000 hrs +++
Posted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 5:34 pm
I think I was unnecessarily brusque. I have just noticed a pattern where it seems like every time PM starts a new thread, he will say "these are the 20 beginner's resources I'm using" and people will come out of the woodwork and say "nooooo you can't do that!" But I shouldn't have singled you out, apologies for that. And of course my personal "fixation" does not represent a fixation of the entire forum.Gustav Aschenbach wrote:PeterMollenburg wrote:Gustav Aschenbach wrote:Ah, so you're saying that my above comment was unsolicited advice? Peter, do you agree?
It is unsolicited advice, in a way, yes.
Okay, sorry, will not happen again. I didn't know about the forum's fixation on giving you unsolicited advice.
The following is NOT advice, it's just my personal opinion:Just Assimil is not enough IMO.
Enough for what would be the question. Of course it's not enough for "learning a language", no textbook and no series of textbooks ever is. My thinking was that when learning a relatively easy, closely related language with many cognates and a similar grammar (English and Norwegian for instance) Assimil plus another textbook with grammar explanations and drills is already a good basis to dive into "native material"., e.g. take a newspaper article and read it with the aid of a dictionary.
For a difficult language (e.g. Mandarin for native speakers of English) just finishing Assimil is absolutely not enough to start with "native materials".
My particular strong reaction to your suggestion of using one or two beginner's courses plus a grammar supplement and then diving into native materials is because that is more or less what I did with German, and as a result my German ability is very imbalanced. I completed Pimsleur and did about half of the German Duolingo tree and also used a German grammar book, and I stayed reading children's books and news articles very early. Because I had good resources for the active skills, I got very confident in conversational speech and simple writing. But because I didn't have a good resource like Assimil to train my receptive skills, I never got even to the level where I could comfortably read YA novels, and while I can get the gist of most news articles I will usually lack the vocabulary for a full understanding.
I imagine that someone who tried to learn a language with only Assimil and a grammar resource would have a similar problem to what I faced, but in the opposite direction. They would probably have good receptive skills but they would also have very limited speaking and writing skills, and poor speaking skills may cause spelling mistakes due to confusion of minimal pairs.