I had a moment of sanity and stopped working through Assimil Spanish. It was not completely a waste of time, and I may shadow through it later. It's too easy.
Now for French...
Assimil: French without Toil and
French with Ease.
After a week of Assimil, I can feel it working. I've recently experimented with Pimsleur and Michel Thomas, and they are effective, but they are soooo sloooow.
I still would recommend Pimsleur or Michel Thomas to a complete beginner, but after a little study, they are really, really boring.
So is Assimil, at least in the early lessons, but it covers much more language and I'm pretty sure that it will lead to a much higher level by the end of the 140 lessons. You have to work to get through Assimil too, but I much prefer it. I'm doing
French with Ease in parallel with
French without Toil. I can get them done in an hour a day, and so far I'm OK.
The later lessons in these books look very exciting.
My current plans are to keep on with
Using French after I'm done with
French with Ease.
(mostly off topic)
I'm a strange person, I always have some weird thing or another that I'm interested in that tires everyone else. I'm also way, way behind whatever is currently hip. That's me. Medieval cathedrals, observing M81 from a city, Samoan, Yoga, Unix, amateur radio, Buddhism, Vikings, Tai Chi, whatever...
Watching "Breathless" , a movie that I ignored in film class as an undergraduate, I developed an interest in Jean Seberg and the whole French New Wave movement in France. I have a lot to learn, but interests like this lead to healthy things like reading books and articles in French that are way beyond my current French abilities. Seberg seems like such an appealing person, it is very sad to think how she was destroyed by the FBI and her own mental illness. It sets off all of my protective fatherly instincts. Who cares, but I have a creative, dreamy daughter, and it infuriates me that anybody, man or woman, could be subjected to such an abuse from a government (I realize that J. Edgar Hoover's FBI is a far cry from what many people face around the world).
(/mostly off topic)
Anyway, it gets me reading French, and listening to French, even if I'm not counting lessons, minutes, pages, or whatever....
Now, what did Romain Gary say in that interview about...
This has nothing to do with how I'm studying, but I'm not sure that it isn't important on how I'm learning.
A couple of minor edits, mostly for formatting.