Assimil – Lessons per Course?

[Speakeasy]

… German is more complicated than French, yet both GWOT and (N)GWE have shorter lessons than their French counterparts, FWOT and NFWE (126 vs 140 and 100 vs 113 respectively). Would anyone want to speculate why Assimil did that? …

I have copied/pasted SkyNet’s musing, above, from his log.

En guise de réponse, I will speculate that this publisher has, for much of its existence, relied upon the judgment of the numerous authors of the Assimil courses to include a predetermined quantity of information (vocabulary, grammatical structures) in the form of dialogues, exercises, and notes, which are to be presented in approximately 100 cumulative lessons. However, were an individual author to believe that 113 lessons provides greater balance, whereas another individual author were to believe that 108 lessons better achieves the desired goal, then the publisher was quite willing to live with the final results; Gallic temperament, quoi?

There does seem to be, however, a tendency in recent years to strive for exactly 100 lessons, a matter which I ascribe to interference from Brussels.

Would anyone have a better explanation?

EDITED:
Typos, bien entendu

[PeterMollenburg]

Also from SKYNET’s log-

German is more complicated than French, yet both GWOT and (N)GWE have shorter lessons than their French counterparts, FWOT and NFWE (126 vs 140 and 100 vs 113 respectively). Would anyone want to speculate why Assimil did that?

I don’t strictly have an answer for you, but..,

GWOT: 126 lessons, 2 hours 52 min audio
FWOT: 140 lessons, 2 hours 14 min audio

So which course is bigger?

Just out of interest-
Spanish WOT: 111 lessons, 2 hours 56 min audio

As far as the above demonstrates, less lessons = more audio.

Although....
(N)GWE: 100 lessons, 3hrs 2min
NFWE: 113 lessons, 3 hrs 11min

Some other numbers:
Dutch WOT: 132 lessons, 1hr 55min

Dutch with Ease/ Le nouveau néerlandais sans peine : 83 lessons, 2hrs 55min

Le Néerlandais : 100 lessons, 3hrs 16min

Le norvégien sans peine : 100 lessons, 4hrs

L’Arabe sans peine (1975): 100 lessons, 4hrs 29min
L’Arabe (collection sans peine): 77 lessons, 3hrs 15min

Awesome progress on your French, btw!

[Brun Ugle]

More audio isn’t necessarily more audio. Some courses give each dialogue twice in the early lessons, once very slow, but straight through, then once with long pauses after every line so you can repeat. Some courses do it for the first seven lessons, some for the first 14. The French course doesn’t have it at all. Each dialogue is given only once. But they are a lot longer than the dialogues in the other Assimil courses I’ve seen. The early lessons in the other courses I’ve seen can be as short as five lines and are mostly well under ten lines. The early lessons in the French course are often ten or twelve lines long. However, the French review lessons are pure grammar review whereas the other courses I’ve seen have a short dialogue included in the review lessons.

I suspect the reason for the more thorough treatment of French is just that they are a French company. French people, like many others, tend to think their own language is the hardest in the world. And many French think their language is of particular importance as well. And of course, it was probably the easiest language for them to do so thoroughly.

[David1917]

The German lessons on Without Toil are a bit longer than the French ones overall - I have both with the silent gaps removed and the French ones around lesson 100 are still in the :55 to 1:10 range, German more like 1:25-1:50 range. That's a few more lines per lesson, longer exercises, etc.

Another hypothesis is that the German course was originally designed for French speakers, who probably had some knowledge of the language; whereas the French course was first designed for the notoriously ignorant Anglophone world. Therefore, a couple extra weeks of lessons, albeit in shorter, more digestible chunks might have been better.

Sidenote, 100 lessons is maddening to me because it is not readily divisible by 7...