Active Wave From the Start

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MichaelM204351
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Active Wave From the Start

Postby MichaelM204351 » Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:58 pm

Hello everyone!

I looked for a thread on this topic, but couldn't find one. Has anyone had any experience working with an Assimil course, doing the active wave from the get-go? Practically, it would look something like listening/shadowing the material in the lesson and entering it into anki from L1 to L2, staying on that particular lesson until you can produce the L2 from your L1. Any thoughts or links to similar threads?

Thanks,
Michael
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Re: Active Wave From the Start

Postby PeterMollenburg » Wed Apr 14, 2021 12:44 am

MichaelM204351 wrote:Hello everyone!

I looked for a thread on this topic, but couldn't find one. Has anyone had any experience working with an Assimil course, doing the active wave from the get-go? Practically, it would look something like listening/shadowing the material in the lesson and entering it into anki from L1 to L2, staying on that particular lesson until you can produce the L2 from your L1. Any thoughts or links to similar threads?

Thanks,
Michael


I'm not sure I can provide much useful information here, but I'll offer my experiences with Assimil, nevertheless.

I have basically always done active waves for Assimil for all waves I completed including the initial one. My use of Assimil is having completed New French with Ease, Using French, dabbled (not completed) the Norwegian course and a couple (English and French versions of same content) of Dutch courses. I have always tended to do active waves even first time 'round.

With the French courses I didn't move on until I could shadow each lesson in their entirety without pausing the audio and without making any pronunciation slip ups. Needless to say this took quite a bit of analytical work at times and I didn't get it right the first time most of the time. Sometimes this might take as much as ten goes until I could get through a lesson without an issue.

This method is definitely not for everyone, but it's how I liked to approach it. I didn't always enter the sentences into SRS programmes but for a while I did do this. I simply got tired of SRS after a while.

I cannot recall whether I completely translated every lesson from L2 to L1 with the French courses, as vague as that may seem. I made it a particular thing while dabbling in the Norwegian course to translate NO to FR and then FR to NO just to ensure my French was still getting some practise as well. Actually I did the same with the Dutch course translating NL to FR and FR to NL, which I found bizarrely to be some kind of fun in my language nerd brain. My overall experience was that of slow but sure progress with all the Assimil courses, but I developed very good pronunciation while being slowed down considerably with the rate of progression, which is certainly a negative as daily progression is essential in language learning. Still, I didn't want to end up with poor habits of pronunciation or an inability to produce decent sounding output.
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Re: Active Wave From the Start

Postby Sonjaconjota » Wed Apr 14, 2021 8:42 pm

I'm basically ignoring anything that Assimil suggests method-wise and just use the book as a source for content that I'm going to work with in other ways.
But I have to mention that I don't use Assimil as my main resource.
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Re: Active Wave From the Start

Postby David1917 » Fri Apr 16, 2021 3:50 pm

For a brand new language, no way. You'd be essentially testing your ability to "memorize" new sentences on day 1, not testing your ability to reproduce "internalized" sentences on day 50.

I would say that during the first wave, the exercises should probably be done L1 to L2. That is, after completing the lesson and reading through the notes, take a crack at the exercises.

For false-beginner status or if it's your second method after getting a grounding in something else, I like to start with an Active Wave and see how far I get until I'm failing miserably. You have to be reasonable here - obviously if they introduce a weird word in Lesson 3 but everything else is comprehensible, you might want to keep going. But a lot of the old courses especially will get into various tenses within the first 2 weeks of lessons so you'd probably end up starting at around 12-13. Either way, that saves you several days of "Hello, how are you?" and beginning a course thinking it's beneath you.

Edit: If you're using Assimil for Anki then you have to let Anki do its magic which takes a few days/weeks of repetition. At the rate of 2 weeks per lesson, that's 4 years for an Assimil course. Maybe put the sentences in each day, and when you get to Lesson 50 take a crack at the Active Wave for Lesson 1.
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Re: Active Wave From the Start

Postby Ccaesar » Fri Apr 16, 2021 4:56 pm

I am doing this and sensing improvement.
I make passive cards (recognize and recall) + a translation (type the answer card) that way it becomes "active" as well.
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Re: Active Wave From the Start

Postby Ccaesar » Sat Apr 17, 2021 9:37 am

David1917 wrote:For a brand new language, no way. You'd be essentially testing your ability to "memorize" new sentences on day 1, not testing your ability to reproduce "internalized" sentences on day 50.

I would say that during the first wave, the exercises should probably be done L1 to L2. That is, after completing the lesson and reading through the notes, take a crack at the exercises.

For false-beginner status or if it's your second method after getting a grounding in something else, I like to start with an Active Wave and see how far I get until I'm failing miserably. You have to be reasonable here - obviously if they introduce a weird word in Lesson 3 but everything else is comprehensible, you might want to keep going. But a lot of the old courses especially will get into various tenses within the first 2 weeks of lessons so you'd probably end up starting at around 12-13. Either way, that saves you several days of "Hello, how are you?" and beginning a course thinking it's beneath you.

Edit: If you're using Assimil for Anki then you have to let Anki do its magic which takes a few days/weeks of repetition. At the rate of 2 weeks per lesson, that's 4 years for an Assimil course. Maybe put the sentences in each day, and when you get to Lesson 50 take a crack at the Active Wave for Lesson 1.


So let me get it right.
You mean if you are a "real" and not fake beginner you shouldn't start the active way too quickly?
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Re: Active Wave From the Start

Postby David1917 » Sat Apr 17, 2021 6:39 pm

Ccaesar wrote:
So let me get it right.
You mean if you are a "real" and not fake beginner you shouldn't start the active way too quickly?


Trying to do the Active Wave as written from day one would just result in memorizing sentences, rather than developing the ability to know how to produce those same sentences from an L1 prompt. Waiting until you can successfully translate L1 to L2 would also needlessly delay the biggest benefit of the Assimil system which is daily exposure to new language.

I also think that trying to do so with Anki delays it even further because Anki requires a certain amount of time to do its magic.

Therefore, both the Assimil and Anki approaches require that you trust the process and keep going each day, not to focus on perfecting each lesson before moving on.

However, as with most grammar-translation courses, you might be expected to try and translate L1 to L2 within the first lesson. That's why I suggest giving a go at just the Exercises.

If you want to be focused on perfecting something, then a traditional g-t course would be the way to go. Something like 30 lessons can be turned into 30 weeks.

My caveat for false beginners is that people tend to look at the first handful of lessons and say "this is too easy!" so fine, go through and Active Wave until you can't. That gives you a refresher, and gets you past the hump of the boring/easy lessons with slow speech. I guess I should add that at that point, I would not continue Active Wave. Rather, begin your Passive Wave at Lesson 12 or 24 or wherever, and adjust the beginning of Active Wave accordingly.
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Re: Active Wave From the Start

Postby Ccaesar » Sat Apr 17, 2021 7:08 pm

David1917 wrote:
Ccaesar wrote:
So let me get it right.
You mean if you are a "real" and not fake beginner you shouldn't start the active way too quickly?


Trying to do the Active Wave as written from day one would just result in memorizing sentences, rather than developing the ability to know how to produce those same sentences from an L1 prompt. Waiting until you can successfully translate L1 to L2 would also needlessly delay the biggest benefit of the Assimil system which is daily exposure to new language.

I also think that trying to do so with Anki delays it even further because Anki requires a certain amount of time to do its magic.

Therefore, both the Assimil and Anki approaches require that you trust the process and keep going each day, not to focus on perfecting each lesson before moving on.

However, as with most grammar-translation courses, you might be expected to try and translate L1 to L2 within the first lesson. That's why I suggest giving a go at just the Exercises.

If you want to be focused on perfecting something, then a traditional g-t course would be the way to go. Something like 30 lessons can be turned into 30 weeks.

My caveat for false beginners is that people tend to look at the first handful of lessons and say "this is too easy!" so fine, go through and Active Wave until you can't. That gives you a refresher, and gets you past the hump of the boring/easy lessons with slow speech. I guess I should add that at that point, I would not continue Active Wave. Rather, begin your Passive Wave at Lesson 12 or 24 or wherever, and adjust the beginning of Active Wave accordingly.


It's a super interesting take on it.
I have been learning Japanese on and off for a couple of years, I went to and left assimil between my pauses.
For the first time I am being active and passive. I do the daily lesson, then I pick out phrases or words that I find useful and add them to my anki card mix. It has helped me a lot, because I can actually produce something now and some of the structures like 目黒駅から歩いて五分です。 that is very far from my native tongue now seems a lot more "logical" and understandable than when I used to do just a passive lesson a day. I had a similar experience with Italian. I basically did both passive and active daily. Thus I was conversational within one and a half month + I added a tandem partner to that mix, but now I am getting off topic.
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Re: Active Wave From the Start

Postby David1917 » Sat Apr 17, 2021 11:25 pm

Ccaesar wrote:It's a super interesting take on it.
I have been learning Japanese on and off for a couple of years, I went to and left assimil between my pauses.
For the first time I am being active and passive. I do the daily lesson, then I pick out phrases or words that I find useful and add them to my anki card mix. It has helped me a lot, because I can actually produce something now and some of the structures like 目黒駅から歩いて五分です。 that is very far from my native tongue now seems a lot more "logical" and understandable than when I used to do just a passive lesson a day. I had a similar experience with Italian. I basically did both passive and active daily. Thus I was conversational within one and a half month + I added a tandem partner to that mix, but now I am getting off topic.


I think your approach is not really what OP asked. Putting important parts of Assimil lessons into Anki is not putting each sentence into Anki until you could retranslate L1 to L2 (essentially memorization at the beginning) before moving on to a new lesson. I suppose it would be a fine approach, but not the intention of Assimil, and not the "Active Wave" as written. Sure, anyone can do whatever they want with the dialogues given in any Assimil course, especially as pertains to their own individual learning style. Just responding to the question asked.
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