I have finished one of the most helpful books that I have read so far in my entire life, "Assimil: Le Nouveau Francais Sans Peine". If you are already a veteran of the language learning field; the most probable thing is that you're already aware of this method, but if you're a new comer in this discipline, this is the right place for you and probably this is the right method for you.
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The Assimil Series: Available in a lot of languages[/caption]
The Assimil Series is one of the greatest self-learning books that you could encounter, mainly because of its unique method that consists in an overall exposition of the language you're learning in short lessons which feature either short dialogues, short stories, jokes, or interesting text about the language or about the country in which that language is spoken.
I know that the books are expensive and everything, but... you know... cuf, cuf... you could get them...cuf, cuf...around, cuf, cuf, cuf.
So, almost every lesson of the book looks pretty much like this:
You have your text in L2 ( the language you're learning ) and right in the next page you have the overall translation of that complete text in L1 (your mother language). But the true powerful aspect about Assimil is the audio, the book also has the audio recordings of every single lesson in the book, and that's the most important aspect of this method.
I know what many of you are probably thinking, "so it's basically just a book with a bunch of little texts, jokes and dialogues, but it will not actually teach me the language".
That's where you're wrong, I'm studying French right now and when I started "Le Nouveau Francais Sans Peine" I was a little skeptical about this method, but to be honest, it looked way more interesting and with much more content than the grammar-focused conventional books that I was studying at the time. So I decided to give it a shot, and the results were amazing, taking in consideration the initial expectations that I had for this method.
This method is amazing because it works in a really mysterious but effective way, and also, (if you use it properly) it will actually make you start speaking and writing the language, better yet, it will help you to express yourself in the language, whether you're making some grammatical mistakes or maybe you're not speaking the language at 100%, you are still able to express yourself and make people who only speak that language understand you even tought you don't speak it 100% correctly, and that really should be your first goal while you're learning a language, to be able to express yourself so that natives understand you even if you're not speaking in a perfect way, that's your first goal, and Assimil really helps you a lot to achieve it.
First of all, there are two things that I would like to talk about this method. Okay the first thing is that, although Assimil tells you in the first pages that this method is for absolute beginners, I still don't quite believe that, but that's just my opinion, maybe you pick up the German Assimil and you'll learn a lot from it and you'll find it great, but I think that before you get to start with the actual book, you first need to check out a little bit your target language.
What do I mean by that? Ok, just check out the basics of the language like:
- Common greetings
- The verb To Be in present
- The verb To Have in present
- Common descriptive articles like: tall, fat, thin, etc.
- How to ask questions.
- Numbers, Days and Months
And that's pretty much it , you know, really basic stuff. But now pay attention at the expression that I used "check out", that doesn't mean that you need to learn them or to memorize them completely. Not at all, just get to know the language, familiarize with it, this is not yet the time to learn the language, it's just the time to familiarize yourself with it a little bit and c'mon don't be lazy, you can check out those 6 things that I listed above in just one week or maybe a couple of days.
Why do I says this? Ok, I believe this deserves an explanation. The thing is that if you don't know zero about the language, when you open Assimil, you are going to be truly expose to the language. You're a going to see texts all written in the language and even if you see the translation next to it; it's highly probable that you will be a little overwhelm by the language and by this method and if you're impatient you'll probably end up saying "Oh the hell with this!, this is just too advance, I will never be able to learn these entire texts, I need something simpler" and you will throw the book away. Big mistake.
But if you have already check out the language, it's probable than in the first lessons you will be able to identify certain words or sentences, and you will say "Hey I know what this means" even tought you still don't understand the rest 90% of the text without the translation, that feeling of "huh I already knew that word" or "huh I already knew what that sentences meant" kinda gives you some sort of motivation to keep moving forward.
How to use Assimil:Ok, now let's get into the real stuff, how to use this book? In the first pages, the book already kinda explains you how to use it, but it's not really specific about it, it tells what you have to do, but it doesn't tell you in which order you need to do it, or which learning part is the most important. So, if you are having troubles or questions about how to use this method, I will tell you the way that I used it, maybe you don't like it, maybe you want to do it your way, but I'm just recommending this way because that's how I feel that I got the most out of this method.
Okay, first, remember the part of the audio recordings that I said before?
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Yes, here we go again.[/caption]
Well we're going to begin with that. The first thing that you want to do, when you're already about to start lesson one is... CLOSE THE GODDAMN BOOK!
Listen to the audio recordings, don't read anything and just listen to lesson one over an over again. Okay I'm going to explain myself, the language learning process in divided into 4 parts: Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing. Assimil will help you with all of them, but the most important skill that you have to develop in your early stages of learning is: Listening. Yes I know that I have already said this a thousand times in my
previous posts, but "Listening" is the form that the language gets inside your mind, inside your brain, and once that happens, everything is going to be so much fluid.
How many times should I listen to the audio?Well I think this depends in the language you're learning, for example if English is your L1 and you're trying to learn another Germanic-based language like: German, or Danish. Or if your L1 is Spanish and you're trying to learn: French or Italian. I think that mandatory you'll have to listen to it 10 times, and then, once you have already listen to it 10 times, listen to it more times until you kinda actually now what they're talking about. If they are languages from the same group of families you should be able to at least recognize one or two things about what they're saying, when you feel that you understand just a little bit of what they're talking about, okay that's enough and open the book.
But what about if you're learning a language completely different from any other language you know, I'd say that 20 times mandatory.
Ok, that's the first part, now open the book, put the audio of the lesson once again and read (in your mind) while you're listening to the audio, do this at least five times. Then stop the audio, read the translation and all the notes that the text has, and then play the audio once again and try to read it yourself out loud along with the audio, do that at least 5 times.
Now you're going to close the book and you're going to do one of the most important techniques in the early stages of language learning, this is going to help you a little more with your listening and your pronunciation:
Shadowing.
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That's right baby![/caption]
When you do shadowing you have to listen to the audio and you have to say everything that the audio it's saying, but now here's the trick, you will NOT pause the audio at any time. You have to follow everything that the guy is saying without stopping and with the best pronunciation possible. That's why it's called "Shadowing". At the beginning is going to be a little hard, but it's all matter of practice.
How much shadowing you should do?Well, ideally 10 times but I'd say that you should stop, when you understand everything that it's said in the lesson and when you feel that your pronunciation it's similar or almost identical as the recordings.
How many lessons should I do?One lesson per day is perfect
But what about writing?Ok, yes I know the method that I described doesn't contain any actual writing developement, but stay calm dudes. Assimil is divided into 2 big parts or "waves", in the First Wave (1 - 49) you should do what I already described to you and in the Second Wave (50 - 99), after you have already done your usual routine, as Assimil explains to you, you have to go back to one of the earlier lessons and you have to pick up a notebook, read the translation of that lesson and translate that translation (xD) into the original language without reading the original language. So is that good writing practice for you?
When you finally finish Assimil you'll have developed a good listening ability, tons and tons of vocabulary, a fair amount of idiomatic expressions, and the ability of expressing yourself in various subjects.
Is not going to completely teach you the language, but is going to make that tedious early learning stage so much easier, productive, faster and effective.
Trust me, I have used it in my French, and recently I met a French teacher (from France) and she told me that she was amazed with my French, the vocabulary that I knew, my reading ability and the sentences that I was able to formulate while speaking, she didn't believe that I have only studied french for less than a year. I'm not trying to show off xD, I'm just trying to make you realize how effective this method could be, and you should definitely check it out, the books are available for a lot of languages: Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Arabic, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, you name it, they are extremely good and trust me they will help you a lot.
I hope that this post was helpful for you and thanks for reading :)
