Using Assimil in reverse - eg using Assimil Italian for English speakers to learn English?

[Lysander]

It pains me to see learners of major languages use suboptimal learning material as much as it pains me to see kind and beautiful women refusing to leave their violent and abusive husbands. They think the husbands love them. They think the husbands are worthy. You don't understand.

Are you less pained when ugly or mean women have violent and abusive husbands?

[rdearman]

We talk about languages here. Let's not be distracted by an analogy.

[Xmmm]

This plan only makes sense in the context of the #1 goal being having a shared activity.

Why not do some thing like this instead?

Week #1 -- Pick a show or movie in Italian. You both watch it with Skype or some kind of chat open. You're learning Italian, so you can stop the show any time, and then this person has to explain to you what's going on in dumbed down Italian that you can understand. All conversation has to be in Italian.

Week #2 -- Pick another show or movie in English. Reverse roles.

You say she already is capable of basic conversations in English ... how much extra is she really going to get out of an Assimil course that has no grammatical or cultural explanations for her?

Unless there's some huge disparity in your levels, like you're an A0 or A1 in Italian and she's a B1 in English ... in which case the burden is really on you to bring your Italian up to B1 ASAP, and 30 minutes a day of Assimil will get you there but is hardly the express train ...

[zenmonkey]

No.

Bad idea. The material is intended to introduce grammatical context and the notes are for the L2 (here Italian). There is specific material for learning English. Use that - Assimil or other programs exist. It’s not a rare language which lacks material.

I was just thinking earlier today about how much I love zenmonkey’s opinions and I agree with everything you say! Now here you are totally disagreeing with my opinion above! No big deal, of course.

Maybe you are right but I actually don’t think it’s too big a deal that you miss out on the grammar notes - you still get graded, srs-like reading and listening content, nicely sliced into 100+ small units of study - and that much of what I like about Assimil.

Zenmonkey, you are absolutely right of course that there is plenty of material for an Italian wishing to learn English - I just thought that these friends were trying to save some money on resources and work together on their language learning.

If you try it jacobe, do let us know how it works out.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, I'm sorry about my imperfections!
I hesitated to post because I do get the 'save some money point' and that makes sense since Assimil is getting more expensive.

But, having said that, I have here a dozen Assimils (but not the Italian) and it's not just grammar, content is also culturally referenced, related to some colloquial usage in the target language - these are going to be missed or incorrectly structured.

But the real reason is that I image that the person learning English has, as posted in the op, already struggled with the language. They have built in disillusions and here they are going to work with material that has not really been prepared for that purpose. I like the idea of sharing material and finding something inexpensive but I'D suggest something more specific to English. (Ebay or abehbooks might have the assimil English for Italian speakers....)

Here is a version for $6 https://www.amazon.com/Assimil-LInglese ... 8886968426 that needs help for the sounds, too!

[smallwhite]

It pains me to see learners of major languages use suboptimal learning material as much as it pains me to see kind and beautiful women refusing to leave their violent and abusive husbands. They think the husbands love them. They think the husbands are worthy. You don't understand.

Are you less pained when ugly or mean women have violent and abusive husbands?

I'm also pained but I'd understand they think they have no other choice than that abusive husband. Likewise I'd understand people learning rare languages think they have no other choice than the suboptimal resource. That's where the kind and beautiful came from.

[iguanamon]

There's also the Book2 website which has free bilingual US or UK English/Italian beginner audio files. I don't know anything about them but since they're free, maybe you both could transcribe what you hear in your L1 for each other, thereby creating your own transcripts for each other. No cost means all you're out is time. The lessons are not customized to culture. It could be an interesting activity for you both. In your case, listen to the Italian and the English, transcribe the English and try to transcribe the Italian and vice-versa for your language partner... maybe 2, 3 or 4 minutes of audio per file- one or two files per voip session. Transcribe in a text file and you can easily copy and paste or email the results to each other. You can be each other's check against comprehension as well as practice listening, pronunciation and writing. I like Xmmm's and zenmonkey's suggestions too. Please let us know what you decide to do and how it works out.

Edit: Just checked out some of the files and they're the same both ways IT-EN; EN-IT.

[Cainntear]

You raise a good point about needing an extra person to narrate the dialogue. But I'm thinking I can just record everything, making a different recording for each sentence. We communicate through whatsapp so I could send her a different voice message for each sentence and it doesn't really matter if the voice is the same. And sending voice messages in whatsapp is very quick so it shouldn't be much work.

But Assimil is not just a series of sentences. The best Assimil lessons consist of a dialogue, story or anecdote that is designed to catch the attention and be listened through from start to finish. Record the whole thing as individual sentences with a single voice and you’re no longer doing Assimil.

Add to that what others have said about the ordering of the lessons being based on a staged introduction of the target language, meaning there’s no real logic in the ordering of the base language, and overall, I’m struggling to see the point.

One final thought: do you really want to be at the same point as each other anyway? That way you’ll be able to have the same conversation in two languages... but you’re not going to do that. You’re going to have different conversations in different languages, so it’s perfectly ok to cover different material.

[kanewai]

I’m another unequivocal “no.”

I’ve used French-based Assimil to study both Ancient Greek and Turkish. The French in these books was insanely tortured and difficult. They did not help my French much. As others noted, the L2 translations in these books is designed to help you in the L1.

For example, I just opened Assimil Italian randomly. Here’s the beginnings of the dialogue translation for chapter 27:

1. Take note of (do attention to) these ways of saying:
2. In Italian, one says for example:
3. I have (do) breakfast early (quickly) in the morning, then I take (do) a shower.
4. To a girl, one can say:
5. (Will) you come with me for a ride in (with) my car?

These translations of Italian>English are too literal; they’re good for the English speaker learning Italian, but are the exact thing an Italian learning English should avoid!

[jacobe]

Wow thanks so much for your detailed replies! I'm now convinced it's a bad idea.

I like the idea of watching movies together - might give that a try.

This forum is really great.

[zenmonkey]

Wow thanks so much for your detailed replies! I'm now convinced it's a bad idea.

I like the idea of watching movies together - might give that a try.

This forum is really great.

And I really wish you both success in learning together/each other's languages further. That's such a great adventure.