Combine Assimil?

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weissnichtgenau
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Combine Assimil?

Postby weissnichtgenau » Fri Aug 12, 2022 5:19 pm

Hey guys,

I know many of you love Assimil. As you know, Assimil is about NOT making word lists and learning vocab. Well, I wonder if it's actually a good idea then to combine Assimil with other books, apps or websites? Doesn't this actually ruin what Assimil is trying to do?

What are your experiences with Assimil? Have you ever started learning a new language SOLELY with Assimil or are you one of these people who say "no vocab, no language learning"?
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jeff_lindqvist
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Re: Combine Assimil?

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Fri Aug 12, 2022 7:48 pm

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sirgregory
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Re: Combine Assimil?

Postby sirgregory » Fri Aug 12, 2022 10:45 pm

Assimil's main strength imo is that it has a significant amount of target language text and the audio is all in the target language. This is an advantage of bilingual text with audio in general. The target language is front and center, unlike other methods where the instruction language often predominates. You don't need Assimil to get bilingual texts with audio as nowadays you can find this fairly easily, often for free. But usually these will be native texts whereas Assimil is didactically structured with explanatory notes as well. Having the prepared texts with the translation, notes, and audio recordings all prepared for you is not so easy to find and it can save you a good bit of time.

Where some people might find Assimil a bit lacking would be explicit grammar/instruction and exercises/drills. Therefore a potential complement (if you feel like need one) might be a book that presents you with a more comprehensive view of the grammar and gives you exercises to reinforce the explanations (e.g., old generation Teach Yourself). Or, alternatively, some people might prefer something with lots of audio drills.

Another thing with Assimil and similar methods is that it's much harder with more unfamiliar languages. I think they try to account for this to an extent but it's still a standard method across languages. Personally, for the harder languages, I would prefer to start with something else first.
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