To use these books, firstly you are meant to read, listen, absorb and try to understand each article for perhaps 15-30 minutes a time. No memorisation is required. This is called the passive wave. You are later expected to go back through the book and this time, try to translate each article into your target language. This is called the active wave.
I hasten to add that I don’t have any connection with Assimil but I can confirm that these books are amazing! This is because you can use these books to practice all areas of reading, listening, writing and vocabulary building. It even helps you to avoid having to do so much grammar work as you naturally absorb some of the ways a language work.
I have also found two other ways you can benefit from this course. First, is the fantastic method of really internalising the Assimil contents by listening and reading with Assimil over a regular basis. Secondly, is activating the contents further by trying to talk with the audio without needing to refer to the book.
Like anything, there is a downside with Assimil. The first is that it doesn’t practice conversation skills but you can practice this skill elsewhere. At first, it can also feel like you are not learning much as it is not obvious just how much of the language you naturally absorb when you first commence the passive wave. It has also been criticised for the speakers speaking very slowly during the first few lessons but I assume that this is to get the user used to the sounds of the language.
For learners of English, these books come in the following base languages: Arabic
, Dutch
, French
, German
, Hungarian
, Italian
, Polish
, Portuguese
, Russian
, Spanish
and Turkish
.You can find more information about these courses from the Assimil website or from Amazon.
Have you used Assimil and did it work for you?
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