Assimil for iOS, Android, MacOS and Windows!

[ilmari]

Assimil is moving its e-methods to iOS, Android, MacOS and Windows! You can find the announcement here, together with a short demo video. http://fr.assimil.com/blog/nouveau-les-coffrets-applivres/

The content seems to be a clone of the old e-methods in a nicer user interface (the developer is the same, Mantano), but I find it exciting to be able to have complete Assimil courses on my iPhone or iPad.

Assimil will also sell 'applivres', a physical package containing app access codes and a 60-page booklet of the first seven lessons. This is for people who wish to gift the apps, and to support real bookshops.

For now, seven titles are offered: 'anglais, allemand, italien, espagnol, russe, perfectionnement anglais et perfectionnement espagnol'. They will all be available on 25 January.

[ilmari]

The Assimil apps are now available on the App Store.
Nice surprise: the first seven lessons are free!

[Cainntear]

The Assimil apps are now available on the App Store.
Nice surprise: the first seven lessons are free!

/me goes straight to app store....

[Stefan]

I'm limited by the app being in French but isn't there any dialogs? I'm only getting 5 standalone sentences for each lesson. Maybe you have to buy the full edition to get additional sentences and the full dialog? I like the idea but would prefer one button to repeat the audio, like Anki. Now you seem to have to scroll and click on each sentence.

[ilmari]

These are the full dialogues (this is week 1, and the first lessons are quite short in nowadays Assimil books), but it seems indeed that some functions are missing from the smartphone version, especially the ability to listen to the whole dialogue. All functions work well on a tablet (at least on an iPad, I have no Android devices). I noticed someone already mentioned this fact in a comment on the official Assimil blog, so let us hope for updates.

By the way, you move through the different parts of the lesson via the top navigation bar.

[Cainntear]

That's a weird design. You can get the whole dialogue on screen, line by line, and then click on individual lines to hear them, but you can't see the translation.
Or you can see each line individually on a page with it's translation and listen to it and record yourself for comparison, but still no whole dialogue mode.
I also can't see what the price is for the in-app purchase of the full course... I clicked buy to see, but it presented a "terms of sale" to agree to with no mention of price, and I wasn't going to click "agree" to that just in case that was taken as a purchase.

I assume it's the same as the bookshop version of the app -- €49.90 or thereabouts.

At the moment, I'd prefer to pay €20 more and get the book and MP3 files.

[ilmari]

Yes, the design is a bit weird. It is a clone of the e-methods, and the apps are developed by the same company, Mantano.

Despite these flaws, I find it convenient to be able to use Assimil on my iPhone. I also like the fact that you can listen repeatedly to each separate sentence. This makes possible intensive repetition practice, which I think is a good way to work on pronunciation.

Altogether, I would like to see more functions incorporated into the apps (for example: audio for fill-in-the blanks exercises, audio for revision lessons example sentences, dictation exercises for the second wave, etc.), but I am in doubt Assimil will ever move into that direction. But the apps do have a vocabulary section which is absent from the books. So who knows...

As for the price, it shows up only after you create an account. It is indeed the equivalent of 50 euros (depends in which country you are).

[Cainntear]

Despite these flaws, I find it convenient to be able to use Assimil on my iPhone. I also like the fact that you can listen repeatedly to each separate sentence. This makes possible intensive repetition practice, which I think is a good way to work on pronunciation.

I like the fact that you can, but I dislike the fact that the default isn't to go through it in a oner.

This is a radical divergence from the core Assimil method, which is about short dialogues that provide a natural context for language. If you're not listening to it in sequence, the whole idea of context is gone. And if there's no easy, one-click way to listen to it in sequence, most people won't.

[ilmari]

And if there's no easy, one-click way to listen to it in sequence, most people won't.

There is a one-click way to listen to the whole dialog, but only on the iPad. The function is missing from the iPhone. I guess (hope?) this will be amended in the next update.