How to use assimil

to all the people that use assimil do you follow the instructions on how to use their course or you do it differently because one lesson a day and thirty minutes on it is really ridiculous and not efficient

I do polish assimil. It takes me about 70 min -i am in lesson 72. I do my own thing. 30 min would be imposible for me. It is a lot of work, but i find it very useful. I do a lesson a day because i already did 2 other basic courses. It is of very easy beginning. After lesson on 40, it becomes hardest. The active wave does not make sense for polish because there are too many ways to translate anything into polish.

I remember, when using Assimil, learning three lessons a day. I would just play the recordings on loop while I went about my day, and I would keep the book handy to consult whenever I felt the desire/need to. I never put any time into the exercises or the translation phase.

Do you think Assimil would be useful for someone that is upper/advanced beginner?

I have experience with Assimil in French (for which I’ve done the upper level “Using French” edition as well), Spanish, and most recently Russian. I’d say the levels where you can get the most out of the series is A2-B1.

If you are not quite there yet, though, I think Assimil is a good way to habituate yourself to the most common 2000-3000 words of a language in realistic context. At the moment, I am studying Russian words dilligently using an SRS, and solidifying my knowledge of them by reading through the Assimil text, slowly.

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I’ll give it a shot. I have quite a few words in my passive vocabulary, even more so than what my word count says, so I might try this out to memorize the basic phrases.

I think the russian assimil got to many colloquial expressions for my taste (something I rather look deeper into at a later stage).

The first time I go through an Assimil course, I study one lesson per day. How long that takes, depends on the very duration of the lesson and the level. But let us assume that I spend at least 15 minutes, maybe up to half an hour. Not more. Even if the lessons is super easy to “get”, there’s still a chance that I won’t be able to translate it back to the target language during the second wave.

Would you like to explain what you find ridiculous?

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When I started my private 4 weeks Spanish challenge with Assimil, I changed languages. Instead of learning Spanish in my mothertongue, I switched over to the English edition.
My secret goal is learning Italian with the Spanish edition…

Actually I only read the texts, do all the excercises and listen to the audio. Again and again. Without deeper work. I prefer to go on reading as long as I am concentrated. So the amount of lessons varies from day to day.

I’ve used Assimil for 3 languages now. My daily routine is usually this:

Read and study w/ audio a new lesson every day (30 to 45 mins) w/ written exercises.

Listen and repeat out loud yesterday’s lesson multiple times on a loop for my 1/2 morning walk with my dog or when I’m driving etc. Then take new lesson during the day.

Repeat this till I’m done with the book THEN, review and do 2nd wave of entire “With Ease” book.

Continue to Advanced Assimil book when available.

When you can find a daily study + listen and repeat routine, Assimil is really the best program out there.

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Hi, in another forum I’ve found a useful post that shows two ways of using the lessons.

1st way, extracted from the dutch with ease version:

1.Listen without the book.
2.Listen while reading and use the translation as required.
3.Read aloud
4.Read without the translation
5.Listen while reading the text in target language, then listen again while reading the text in base language
6.Listen again without the book.
7.Listen and stop at each sentence and repeat them aloud.
8.Read the comments.
9.Do the exercises

2nd way (in that post they call it the Luca way because it’s the way Luca Lampariello uses assimil)
1.Listen and repeat aloud.
2.Read without the audio
3.Translate to base language
4.Translate back from your own translation.

Sorry for not copypasting the link to te original post but I found it useful for myself and jot everything down in a small paper that I now have attached to my Using French book.

Good luck!

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