Assimil: Would I ruin the productive phase?

[Afozo]

I have been studying French for some months now and I just bought the Assimil book with audio. I have done two lessons already and it is fun!

After lesson 50, the "productive phase" begins, in which you do lessons normally in the receptive phase and review older lessons, translating them from French into English.

Let's say I would already now, after two lessons and beyond, start reviewing older lessons by listening to the dialogues over and over again, practice them with flashcards, drill all the grammar and practice speaking the dialogues. Then, obviously, the active phase would become pretty easy and I would kind of be aiming for learning the whole book by heart.

Would this ruin the productive phase, if I started reviewing like this already? Someone wrote this:

"But wouldn't this put the knowledge rather on short-term memory, instead of long-term? I believe Assimil own method is much more effective, because you do forget certain things after reaching day 50. This gives a good chance to reinforce and recall the studied material."

Should I do it more difficult for me by not reviewing it already? Or can I do one lesson per day, and after that, reviewing all the earlier lessons, even though I'm not yet in the productive phase? What are the disadvantages of doing this?

[jeff_lindqvist]

"But wouldn't this put the knowledge rather on short-term memory, instead of long-term? I believe Assimil own method is much more effective, because you do forget certain things after reaching day 50. This gives a good chance to reinforce and recall the studied material."

Should I do it more difficult for me by not reviewing it already? Or can I do one lesson per day, and after that, reviewing all the earlier lessons, even though I'm not yet in the productive phase? What are the disadvantages of doing this?

Welcome to the forum!

I'm not sure that 50 is a perfect number. Elsewhere (seven years and two days ago), I wrote:

Something I don't know, is whether the 50 lesson delay is optimal, whether it worked better in older courses, whether the progress could be faster (but still not forcing output) if the delay was shorter (30 lessons?). In order for a second wave to work at once - to automatically be able to translate back from L1 to L2 despite not having studied the actual lesson for ~50 days - there has to be a lot of repetition throughout the course. My favourite example is from the Chinese course. 裤子 (the Chinese word for trousers) is never repeated (except for the active wave, some 50 lessons later).

In other words, review a lesson after a few days if you want to (or, feel that you have to). Many have found the material useful by following the instructions strictly, and others by tweaking the material / method to their own needs.

Which edition are you using?

[Afozo]

Thank you for interesting thoughts! I am trying to think about the purpose of the productive phase to arrive at a conclusion.
That person who wrote that it won't get stored in the long term memory if you review it a little later, well if you do NOT review it a little later, is that a guarantee for it to be stored in the long term memory?

The purposes of the productive phase should be to review so that you:
1. Know how to say things.
2. Know what other people say.

But why would it be a disadvantage having "cheated" by studying the stuff earlier? If the goal is to know how to say these things and know what other people say when they say these things, then there should be no problem.

However, perhaps we need to practice finding the expressions by searching in our brains a little longer.

I am just speculating here!

As for the edition:
Year: 2020
ISBN: 978-2-7005-0854-3

[jeff_lindqvist]

Exactly.

There is probably some research regarding learning curve (or is it forgetting curve?), but everyone is different. That's why I'm (sort of) questioning the cemented 50 days. It's one thing if you cram the vocabulary in the beginning stages, or devote a lot of time to overlearning. That (supposedly) defeats the purpose of delaying the lesson until you've almost forgotten it (the whole reason behind SRS - but Assimil isn't an SRS). But if you go back to a previous lesson by following another interval (or your instinct), fine. Perhaps some will call it cheating. But nobody is going to test you. Whatever way you're taking to reach your goal is wise as long as it works. (Just don't throw your books and watch TV instead for 2000 hours in a language you don't understand. )

As for your edition, I'm not familiar with that particular one. This is the one I have:

[ilmari]

I wouldn't take it too rigorously. Assimil itself encourages you to review past lessons when you have time, to write down margin notes and come back to them later, etc. Just take it easy, there's no need to overlearn the material, and while some words, expressions and structures are regularly repeated, some are not, and that's fine too, I guess.

After all, this is still basically the same method that was devised in 1929 by Alphonse Chérel, who had many genial intuitions regarding language learning, but was not a memory scientist or whatever. One of his basic ideas was to study half the book (through repetitions), and then study again that first half actively (through translations) while continuing studying (through repetitions) the second half, and then to complete (through translations) the second half. You don't really need to stick to that pattern if you don't like it, but this is the general idea. Enjoy the journey!

You can find an interesting blog entry (in French) on the efficiency of Assimil methodology here:
https://blog.assimil.com/pourquoi-la-methode-assimil-est-elle-efficace-les-sciences-cognitives-repondent/

[Ug_Caveman]

I used my own method in that I studied Assimil in 21-lesson blocks for Dutch:

I'd study seven lessons by themselves (one a day), then on lesson eight I begun the active wave for lesson one.

Once I reached lesson 21 for the passive wave I'd stop moving on and only do the active wave for the remaining lessons.

Repeat the process until the end of the course.

Working this way meant I studied it in month-long blocks and got early reinforcement and writing practise. I'm planning to re-use this method for French at some point in the future (but not for at least two years or so.)

[Diomedes]

[...]

In other words, review a lesson after a few days if you want to (or, feel that you have to). Many have found the material useful by following the instructions strictly, and others by tweaking the material / method to their own needs.

[...]

I agree with this. Following the instructions is usually good advice, but it is not a sin to subvert them occasionaly (or even frequently), and it could add more fun, which is also a very important element on language learning.

Frankly, if you have your own method, go for it. You will learn the content anyway.

[frenesie]

No miracle happens in the night where you pass from lesson 49 to 50. 'Active phase' itself is a great idea as an approach but many words appear just once or twice throughout the book so forgetting is an inevitable result if you stay and the pace of 1 lesson a day, 1 revuew a day.
If you really want to gear up, just force yourself to produce your own sentences as early as you can. Listening and loudly repeating helps pretty well for acquiring sentence patterns. I completed assimil german without relying on its instructions and studied lessons as bunches with countless repetitions. Reviewed and repeated earlier lessons not once but maybe 10 times. I think the real breakthrough for active production happens after lessons 85-86. Until then I couldn't feel at ease enough.

[Afozo]

Bonjour, my friends!

Thank you for all your answers.

It was a while ago I finished with Assimil.

What was good about it?
I think it really improved my ability to conjugate French verbs. It is much easier after Assimil. By the way, I want to recommend practicing with the French edition of Wiktionary. The conjugation tables on Wiktionary are great, very logical.

What could be improved?
The dialogues should be printed out in IPA. As for now, only certain words are phonetically written. And they don't even use the IPA. They use their own inferior system which fails to separate between different consonant sounds. Again, I would like to recommend the French Wiktionary here! For any words you are unsure of, check the IPA. Also, learn the difference between the different sounds (even those that might sound similiar, like ø and œ for example). Learn the theoretical difference!

Assimil is great for immersion but I think it is great to mix it with rigid theoretical phonology and grammar training.

Also, the productive phase didn't give me very much. If I would do it again, I think I would just listen to the same clip every 16:th day or something, while reading the target language text. One shouldn't waste so much time trying too hard to figure out how to say something, at least that's how I feel.

[jeffers]

I don't think the delay for the active phase has anything with the forgetting curve or SRS, it's more about the fact that there is a natural lag between anyone's ability to understand and ability to speak. As has been mentioned, Assimil courses often encourage learners to review previous lessons. The important thing is to use the course to learn the language in whatever ways is effective and stimulating for you.

(I've been planning to make a post asking people about their approach to the active phase... I guess this post has sort of covered that).