Studying Assimil without audio?

All about language programs, courses, websites and other learning resources
Ug_Caveman
Green Belt
Posts: 460
Joined: Fri Nov 16, 2018 2:58 am
Location: England
Languages: English (N), Dutch (A2 - July 2021), working towards B1
x 1075

Studying Assimil without audio?

Postby Ug_Caveman » Wed Dec 12, 2018 2:43 am

A friend of mine acquired me a second hand copy of Assimil Dutch without Toil (1978?) as an early (and really well appreciated) Christmas present. As I’m approaching the end of Dutch with Ease (I think I have about 19 lessons left before I finish totally), getting some new material (and by some I mean 133 ‘new’ lessons worth) has been a very welcome surprise as I quite like the Assimil method.

However, I only have the book and no audio – has anyone ever studied Assimil without the audio here? And if so, how do you think your learning experience was changed as a direct result? I have several other courses with audio – MT Basic and Advanced, Hugo in 3 months and Colloquial 1 (soon to be joined by Colloquial 2), not to mention my growing collection of Dutch music of varying genres – so I’m certainly not short on stuff to listen to, but was just wondering if not having audio basically screwed up the usefulness of Assimil (or if anyone knows where I can *legally* acquire the audio)?

In a similar yet almost opposite situation, I’ve also managed to acquire a copy of La Pratique du Neerlandais (at least I hope I have, a friend of mine found it in Europe and is sending it over to me), complete with audio cassettes – hopefully these are still playable, and I will try to get them digitised so I can break them down into single tracks for lessons (although it will be nice to return to the memories I had as a child playing around with tape recorders).

My issue here, is that I simply am not a very good French speaker/reader, and I’d say that while I have a basic grasp of some school French, I doubt it’s enough for me to base language learning through. I was thinking of potentially translating the lessons into English inside a notebook and just going between the English hand transcriptions/Dutch text with audio (especially if I reach a level in my French where this could be a valuable exercise in itself)? But if this proves too arduous, is there still some value in using the course as Dutch text and Dutch audio alone?

Finally, do the old Assimil “X des Affaires” courses have associated audio? I’m currently on the hunt to see if I can get a copy of the French-based, Dutch edition of this course for future use, but didn’t want to be in a situation where I have neither the audio at hand nor the maternal language firmly embedded within my brain if it would royally screw me up trying to use it (although of course if my earlier transcription from French to English plan proves useful this point is basically moot assuming Assimil can work for me without audio).

Sorry for the semi-essay sized post everybody :)

PS: Does anyone know where I could get a copy of (or if anyone is selling privately) Assimil “Zweeds Zonder Moeite” – everywhere on the internet seems to be sold out :cry: and I’d much rather use a Dutch based Assimil than a French based one :D
0 x
Languages: English (N), Dutch (passed A2 exam in May 2021, failed B1 in May 2023 - never sit an exam when you have food poisoning!)

Seeking: Linguaphone Polish and Linguaphone Afrikaans

Speakeasy
x 7658

Re: Studying Assimil without audio?

Postby Speakeasy » Wed Dec 12, 2018 4:23 am

I have “played around with” a couple of ancient Assimil German courses, as well as a number of course books in which dialogues figure prominently, for which the audio files are no longer available. At the time, I had already entered the lower-intermediate level in German and was simply reading through the dialogues and, from time-to-time, internally vocalizing the texts. Nevertheless, in the absence of audio recordings, my interest level soon plummeted (these were, after all, dialogues) and I abandoned this type of study. In contrast, I do not experience the same lack of enthusiasm when reading narratives, novels, newspapers, magazines, or other non-conversational scripts for which there are no audio recordings. Your experiences could easily differ from mine.

I am under the impression that Assimil sold the audio recordings to the “X des affaires” courses at the time that the latter were introduced. Regrettably, this publisher does not seem to have adopted the practice of archiving their older materials and, as a result, the “X des affaires” audio recordings have taken on the allure of the Holy Grail.

Finally, while it is obviously your decision whether or not to proceed, I suggest that you reconsider your project to study Swedish from an Dutch base as: (a) the translations of the dialogues and the accompanying notes of the “Zweeds Zonder Moeite” course will have been prepared from the perspective of an educated native-speaker of Dutch, not those of an A2 level student of the language, and (b) completion of Assimil Dutch alone is unlikely to be sufficient preparation for taking on the rigours of this type L2-L3 study. In other words, you’d be biting off more than you can chew … at this stage.

EDITED:
Expansion of the text.
1 x

User avatar
neumanc
Orange Belt
Posts: 134
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 11:19 am
Location: Düsseldorf (Germany)
Languages: Speaks: German (native), English, Dutch
Studies: French (advanced), Spanish (false beginner)
Mostly forgotten: Italian, Latin
x 441

Re: Studying Assimil without audio?

Postby neumanc » Wed Dec 12, 2018 8:03 am

It should be possible to study an Assimil course without audio, at least they were intended for this, since the audio recordings were very expensive in the old days. However, you need to use a different study technique. Assimil "witbout toil" or "with ease" courses were named this way, because it should be esay to study them, without intensive grammar-translation studies and without (conscious) memorizing. Some of the first generation Assimil courses, at least in the original french version, describe the study technique you are considered to use:

First, you should read aloud through the lesson and compare each sentence carefully with the translation and the pronunciation. Also, read carefully through the notes. After that, you read each sentence aloud and immediately thereafter you repeat it from memory until you are able to do so fluently. Then you proceed to the next sentence until the end of the lesson. Repeat often the older lessons in the same way. After 50 lessons, you begin again with lesson one, repeat the same process first and then try to re-translate the sentences from the teaching language into the target language. This will be possible without any problems, since you will have internalized, if not memorized, the sentences by then.

I used this technique in spite of having the audio (to which I listened first and at some other occasions). I got quite good results. It's a way of study that certainly can claim to be "without toil" or "with ease", respectively, because you are essentially only reading and repeating what you just read.
6 x

Ug_Caveman
Green Belt
Posts: 460
Joined: Fri Nov 16, 2018 2:58 am
Location: England
Languages: English (N), Dutch (A2 - July 2021), working towards B1
x 1075

Re: Studying Assimil without audio?

Postby Ug_Caveman » Wed Dec 12, 2018 10:51 am

Speakeasy wrote:I have “played around with” a couple of ancient Assimil German courses, as well as a number of course books in which dialogues figure prominently, for which the audio files are no longer available. At the time, I had already entered the lower-intermediate level in German and was simply reading through the dialogues and, from time-to-time, internally vocalizing the texts. Nevertheless, in the absence of audio recordings, my interest level soon plummeted (these were, after all, dialogues) and I abandoned this type of study. In contrast, I do not experience the same lack of enthusiasm when reading narratives, novels, newspapers, magazines, or other non-conversational scripts for which there are no audio recordings. Your experiences could easily differ from mine.


Even though you lost interest eventually, while you were studying this way, did you find that you still added to your knowledge of German in a meaningful capacity?

Speakeasy wrote:Finally, while it is obviously your decision whether or not to proceed, I suggest that you reconsider your project to study Swedish from an Dutch base as: (a) the translations of the dialogues and the accompanying notes of the “Zweeds Zonder Moeite” course will have been prepared from the perspective of an educated native-speaker of Dutch, not those of an A2 level student of the language, and (b) completion of Assimil Dutch alone is unlikely to be sufficient preparation for taking on the rigours of this type L2-L3 study. In other words, you’d be biting off more than you can chew … at this stage.


Oh, I can assure you my intentions are not to hop right in at the deep end with Swedish from a Dutch base. I asked about the Dutch version of Assimil Swedish mainly because I'd like to add it to my collection for study at a significantly later date, but also because I can translate Dutch to English much more comfortably than French - so if my intentions of translating French Assimil based courses were to prove a useful tool, I figured it would make more sense than buying "Suedois San Peine".
0 x
Languages: English (N), Dutch (passed A2 exam in May 2021, failed B1 in May 2023 - never sit an exam when you have food poisoning!)

Seeking: Linguaphone Polish and Linguaphone Afrikaans

DaveAgain
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1968
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:26 am
Languages: English (native), French & German (learning).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... &start=200
x 4050

Re: Studying Assimil without audio?

Postby DaveAgain » Wed Dec 12, 2018 11:55 am

neumanc wrote:It should be possible to study an Assimil course without audio, at least they were intended for this, since the audio recordings were very expensive in the old days.
In some cases, they used to broadcast the dialogues on public radio at set times. (25m40s into video: Assimil – a century dedicated to language learning)
2 x

Speakeasy
x 7658

Re: Studying Assimil without audio?

Postby Speakeasy » Wed Dec 12, 2018 12:19 pm

Ug_Caveman wrote:Even though you lost interest eventually, while you were studying this way, did you find that you still added to your knowledge of German in a meaningful capacity?
No, but my situation was quite different from yours as: (1) I had already completed FSI German Basic and Assimil German, and (2) despite neumanc’s excellent guidance for working with Assimil without the audio recordings, as I have more materials for the study of German than anyone in right their right mind would ever collect, I enjoy the luxury of being able to pick and choose (this is not the case for the less-frequently studied languages).
1 x

User avatar
iguanamon
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2354
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 11:14 am
Location: Virgin Islands
Languages: Speaks: English (Native); Spanish (C2); Portuguese (C2); Haitian Creole (C1); Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol (C1); Lesser Antilles French Creole (B2)
Studies: Catalan
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=797
x 14196

Re: Studying Assimil without audio?

Postby iguanamon » Wed Dec 12, 2018 2:49 pm

I am currently doing two Assimil course in Catalan simultaneously without audio (see my log), however; I am an experienced learner and a speaker of related languages. I get regular exposure to Catalan audio from native materials. I don't really need the audio.

One of my issues with Assimil is the very slow and unnatural audio of the early lessons in many of their courses. I find this to be very off-putting.

I used the DLI Haitian Creole Basic Course, mostly without audio, but Haitian Creole is a very phonetic language. I had Pimsleur and that gave me decent pronunciation. So, I didn't really miss the audio at all.
2 x

User avatar
jeff_lindqvist
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3135
Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2015 9:52 pm
Languages: sv, en
de, es
ga, eo
---
fi, yue, ro, tp, cy, kw, pt, sk
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2773
x 10462

Re: Studying Assimil without audio?

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Wed Dec 12, 2018 4:46 pm

Don't forget the writing aspect - you can work through any material by copying the texts manually, which is what I'm doing with New German with Ease at the moment. It's different from the passive and active waves, but many learners tweak Assimil (and other material) to their own needs and methods.
4 x
Leabhair/Greannáin léite as Gaeilge: 9 / 18
Ar an seastán oíche: Oileán an Órchiste
Duolingo - finished trees: sp/ga/de/fr/pt/it
Finnish with extra pain : 100 / 100

Llorg Blog - Wiki - Discord

ilmari
Orange Belt
Posts: 187
Joined: Sun Apr 17, 2016 10:12 am
Languages: Fluent - French (N), English, Hebrew, Japanese.
Intermediate - Korean, Finnish, Spanish, Russian.
Studying (now) - Russian, Spanish
Dabbling - Italian, Polish, Yiddish, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Indonesian, Māori, Latin, Esperanto, Swahili
Would love to study - Norwegian, Swedish, Ancient Greek, and so many more.
x 461

Re: Studying Assimil without audio?

Postby ilmari » Thu Dec 13, 2018 2:24 am

neumanc wrote:It should be possible to study an Assimil course without audio, at least they were intended for this, since the audio recordings were very expensive in the old days. However, you need to use a different study technique. Assimil "witbout toil" or "with ease" courses were named this way, because it should be esay to study them, without intensive grammar-translation studies and without (conscious) memorizing. Some of the first generation Assimil courses, at least in the original french version, describe the study technique you are considered to use:

First, you should read aloud through the lesson and compare each sentence carefully with the translation and the pronunciation. Also, read carefully through the notes. After that, you read each sentence aloud and immediately thereafter you repeat it from memory until you are able to do so fluently. Then you proceed to the next sentence until the end of the lesson. Repeat often the older lessons in the same way. After 50 lessons, you begin again with lesson one, repeat the same process first and then try to re-translate the sentences from the teaching language into the target language. This will be possible without any problems, since you will have internalized, if not memorized, the sentences by then.

I used this technique in spite of having the audio (to which I listened first and at some other occasions). I got quite good results. It's a way of study that certainly can claim to be "without toil" or "with ease", respectively, because you are essentially only reading and repeating what you just read.


This is exactly how I used Assimil quite a few years ago: I was a teenager and could not afford the expensive recordings. I still find reading a sentence aloud and then immediately repeating it from memory incredibly efficient, maybe even more than listening and repeating.
A variation of the same would be reading the sentence aloud, and then writing it from memory. This can be easily integrated into the second wave.
8 x


Return to “Language Programs and Resources”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests