How to use Assimil Perfectionnement series?

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pratishabda
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How to use Assimil Perfectionnement series?

Postby pratishabda » Tue Apr 18, 2017 2:34 am

I'm just about to finish Assimil German and will be following it up with Perfectionnement Allemand, but I'm wondering how others have used such courses before.

When it comes to using Assimil, I more or less follow the usual passive and active wave recipe, including translating the review lesson into German in the active wave. Anything I get wrong or struggle with gets put into Anki for more exposure and work.

I can continue with my usual way of working through Assimil with the new book. But has anyone worked through one of the Perfectionnement courses before, and do you have any suggestions on how to make the most of it?
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Re: How to use Assimil Perfectionnement series?

Postby zenmonkey » Tue Apr 18, 2017 7:25 am

I use the Perf. Allemand material. Like you said: passive / active wave & any vocal or struggling gets put into an Anki deck.
Because this material is more advanced, I also use it for longer shadowing - where a single dialog will be used over two or more days of listen and repeat.

I tried entering entire dialogs into Anki - that was just a waste of time.

And I'm very inconsistent with this - I have a lot of other material so I tend to come back to the same lessons after a break of working with something else. Seems I've been doing this program for years. No, wait, I have been. Maybe I'm not the best model for this. Good luck.
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pratishabda
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Re: How to use Assimil Perfectionnement series?

Postby pratishabda » Tue Apr 18, 2017 2:32 pm

zenmonkey wrote:I tried entering entire dialogs into Anki - that was just a waste of time


Yes! I'm realizing the further I go that a flashcard app works great for "house," less so for "I had not been invited to such a good concert for such a long time." I'm reaching a point where sentences seem to be the best bet in learning word order, fixed expressions, or most grammar points.

As you also mention, the idea of doing a lesson a day already doesn't work for me at this point either; there's simply too much material to translate, correct, enter into Anki, and review on a daily basis to keep that up. It's clear to me that the Perfectionnement course is going to be done at a significantly slower pace given the additional length of each lesson.

I'm fine with that. But at the same time I feel like I need to be putting more of the sentences into Anki, which doesn't seem to be its best use. Maybe I'll stick with putting vocab and such into Anki, then try my luck with Glossika's German course to internalize more of the sentence structure, but without trying to memorize complete, random sentences. (I haven't tried Glossika before, but it sounds promising.)

Thanks for your input, und viel Erfolg!
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Re: How to use Assimil Perfectionnement series?

Postby Steve » Tue Apr 18, 2017 4:05 pm

FWIW,
I've got the French to Spanish Perfectionnemente course. I don't know French. I've been using google translate on the explanatory notes and the text as needed. It's not 100% but adequate for most sentences and phrases.

My initial approach to each lesson is to listen in Spanish without the text. I use Audacity and a text editor. I select a sentence or phrase to listen to (over and over) and then type what I think I am hearing. Then on to the next phrase or sentence. Once I've done that, I check what I did against the actual text. Depending on the lesson, I might check my work every sentence or two or wait longer. It depends if I feel like I'm understanding it or not. Even if I don't know particular words, I'm finding my ability to hear different phonemes is improving. I'm also learning what sounds I tend to confuse when I'm listening.

After doing that, I go into "normal" Assimil mode for the lesson.

I started doing this with the last 30 or so lessons of the Spanish with Ease course and found it a worthwhile exercise for me. Indeed, a big part of why I picked up the French to Spanish version was to have more quality audio and texts to do this with.
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Re: How to use Assimil Perfectionnement series?

Postby pratishabda » Wed Apr 19, 2017 4:16 am

Steve wrote:I've got the French to Spanish Perfectionnemente course. I don't know French.


You're braver than I am! I feel pretty comfortable with French, but I worry a bit that it will be a little too weak once sequence of tenses or fine points on the 2nd subjunctive come up. Nevertheless, it's always good practice. While learning Spanish, hopefully you will end up learning some French for your trouble.
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Re: How to use Assimil Perfectionnement series?

Postby Steve » Wed Apr 19, 2017 8:09 pm

:) Actually, I didn't set out to do this. I bought the previous generation English to Spanish book from Schoenhofs and separately ordered the previous generation audio. However, Assimil had updated the audio to the new ones and I ended up with the old book and the new audio. Schoenhof's couldn't special order the old one. I decided rather than return the audio I'd just bite the bullet and get the French to Spanish book so I could get the Spanish text for the audio I had.

I'm glad the error occurred. I probably wouldn't have bought the new book and audio otherwise. I am getting a benefit from it.
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