How Do You Do the Assimil Active Wave?

[diplomaticus]

I have a question for those who have finished an Assimil course. Or at least gotten to the active wave. What did you do, exactly? I am unsure how hard it is supposed to be made. Do we:

Just read the English and try to speak and/or write out the German just from that?

or

Play the audio and then read the English and try to speak and/or write out the German?

Something else entirely?

For what it is worth, here is how I've done the passive wave so far:

First, I review the prior 6 lessons to today's. I flip back to it and read the lesson aloud along with the audio for each one. Takes just a few minutes, but sort of gets my mind in "German" mode.

For the new lesson-
1. Listen with the book closed.
2. Listen and read silently along with the German, and then do the same with the English.
3. Compare the translations sentence by sentence, reading the German out loud.
4. Listen and read silently along with the English, and then do the same with the German.
5. Listen and read aloud along with the German.
6. Listen with the book closed.
7. Read the pronunciation and then grammar notes.
8. Listen to the exercises and repeat aloud after each sentence. Try to guess the meaning, and check against the answers. Then look at the 2nd set of exercises.

Sometimes, if a lesson seems tricky, I insert a step after #4 above whereby I listen, pause after each line, and repeat aloud. But I rarely do that.

Thanks for any input! My first instinct would be to just read the English, see if I can come up with a translation to German on my own, but then have listening to the audiobook as a fallback if I am stuck. Though that leaves me wondering what one is supposed to do if they "fail" the active wave.

I hope the mods don't mind this is a post borrowed in large part from my logbook. Just seemed like a thread on the active wave specifically might be worthwhile.

[diplomaticus]

Also, I have a German question. I don't want to spam the forum with threads, so will just ask this in here as well:

If one wants to say "You cannot come today," is it equally correct to say either of the following?

"Du kannst nicht heute kommen."

or

"Du kannst heute nicht kommen."

If one is wrong, why is it wrong? Thanks!

[SladeWilson]

That sounds like a good method! I've been doing something similar. I have also spent some time listening to the audio with a software called WorkAudioBook (I have never heard it mentioned at HTLAL). Basically, you can play the audio as a bunch of snippets, and you can move forward through each snippet if you need, or you can play the full audio. It really isn't necessary to do this with Assimil if I'm being honest, but it's a good help if you want greater focus at the sentence level. It's available for Windows and Android, iOS version is in development.

Also, on the active wave, the only thing I recall hearing (and I think it's in one of the Assimil books) is that you are supposed to translate. What exactly this entails, I'm not entirely sure.

My personal opinion is that if no one is posting, you can hardly be blamed for spamming the forum. But that's not up to me, all I know is that for the time being we're using the rules of the old site.

Here's the link to WorkAudioBook, if anyone is interested: http://www.povalyaev.com/Default.aspx

[sfuqua]

It's awkward to make links to the other forum, so just let me quote James29, if I remember right.
I think he just listened to the L2, then covered up the L2 side and tried to repeat the L2 from looking at the L1.
He also did a second active wave after starting about the time the first passive wave finished, if I remember right.

It always seemed like a good way to me...