Customer Reviews

Assimil Language Courses / German with Ease (Book and four audio compact discs) (English and German Edition)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Initially I got this kit out of my local library but liked it so much I decided to purchase it. This study kit is made up of 100 individual lessons, with the aim of doing one lesson each day. Despite good intentions, this has not happened for me - I usually manage about 3 or 4 lessons per week. Vocab and grammatical concepts are introduced gradually, with the intitial focus being on understanding the dialogues and later moving onto a more active phase of study. Every 7th lesson is a review of the previous six, which draws together the grammatical points introduced. The texts are entertaining, and are supplemented by cartoons that are amusing. Using this course I have found my German has made very good progress in a short time. The key thing with this course is persistence - keeping the momentum going and trying to do a little each day. There are a few errors in the texts, but these are fairly obvious and not misleading to the learner. I find it useful to have a dictionary handy to check individual words and a book of verb conjugations (I find the "501 German Verbs" book most useful) as sometimes a new verb is introduced in the past tense. I find the CD format useful for shutteling from track to track. This course may move too quickly for some peoples liking but for me the pace is ideal.

I used the Assimil German course for six months before travelling to Germany. I had never studied German before so my knowledge was nil when I began.

I studied one lesson per day, spending a total of around 20 minutes broken up into chunks of five or ten minutes at a time. I would read the text of the lesson through in the morning, taking note of the meanings of new words and reading the explanations and grammar notes. Then I would play the recording several times until I understood it. Then I read the text several times through the day in coffee breaks or during lunch, then play the recording and read the text in the evening.

I didn't worry about memorising vocabulary or grammar. Any words I forgot would be reviewed tomorrow and for the next week of review. I reviewed each lesson for a week. I picked up most of the grammar by usage.

I was able to converse with my German friends after two months using Assimil and I spoke good German after completing the course in six months. I got a job in Germany as a technical translator, translating from English to German. I had to negotiate in German on behalf of my company and I taught in a German school. After a year I did a lot of public speaking. I wrote reports in German and did a fair amount of correspondence in German.

I was so pleased with my Assimil German program I bought Assimil courses for French, Russian, Dutch, Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, Polish and Italian. I have used them all except for Hebrew and Arabic. Assimil was not my primary program for Russian and Polish but I highly recommend them.

Assimil takes the hard work out of learning a language. Learning becomes fun. Assimil texts are friendly and humorous. Each lesson has a cartoon to illustrate the lesson. Some of the older courses have a central person who visits the country where the language is spoken and you follow his adventures as he comments on customs and the people. You feel you get to know the characters.

I am looking at tackling more languages and Assimil will be my first choice.

I highly recommend all the Assimil products for aids in learning a new language. I have used Assimil to learn both Hungarian and German, with very good results. The key to this system is assimilation, so be sure to practice a little bit every day for best results. This system will teach you a foreign language, but I have a suggestion to help you along with the process. There is a very good website with radio streams from all over the world, at http://www.live-radio.net/info.shtml where you can find radio broadcasts from the country of your target language. Spend some time every day listening to native speakers speaking the language you are trying to learn, the news stations are best. This way, as you progress in your studies, you will be surprised at to how fast you will be able to follow along to broadcasts and start to understand the native speakers. This is truly assimilation, and the more time you spend studying the Assimil tapes and listening to the foreign radio, the faster you will learn, the more fun you will have, and the more motivated you will become to stick with it. Don't give up! Leaning a foreign language can be a very rewarding and stimulating undertaking.

The Assimil method is a great way to build up your language skills in an easy and relaxed manner. But in order to make it work, you have to follow the rules explained in the book. This means that you have to learn on a daily basis and without conscious memorization (not to mention drills).

I write this mainly because I got the impression that one previous reviewer misunderstood the concept completely or didn't give it the time it deserves. The course isn't at all limited to listening and writing skills. On the contrary, it encourages you to practise pronunciation from the very first day and focuses strongly on speaking skills later on.

But there is indeed an extended period of passive learning which to my knowledge is unique to the Assimil method. For several month you simply listen and read and then repeat aloud what you've just heard and read (and check your progress with the exercises). Only after two or three month (depending on your schedule) of passive learning you enter the second phase where you are asked to formulate sentences on your own.

By this time, you have already amassed so much knowledge that speaking (simple) German will be an amazingly easy task for you. Plus, it takes a lot of pressure from the first phase of learning. Here's a tip from my own experience: Don't go too fast, never learn more than three lessons a week. The material will sink in better this way.

To sum up, this method works fine for me and I can recommend it wholeheartedly. But then again, there are always people who love to sweat...

I have studied with Assimil before. Many years ago, French, all by myself. After a few months, I spoke to a French person that could not believe I had never been to France.
So, after checking several methods from the public library to learn German, remembering my good experience with Assimil, I bought the German version of it. Well, I am definitely not disappointed this time either! What I like about Assimil, is that you really learn to speak the language little by little. I love the way they introduce the conversations, especially for an English speaking person. They sort of ease you into the language like no other method out there. The trick is to repeat each lesson until you learn it completely. I write it over and over, also, to memorize it. I also love the fact that they don't overwhelm you with the grammar from the start, which I find very discouraging.. The book is small and light, so I take it everywhere.
I definitely recommend it. But I strongly suggest to learn each lesson by heart, like an actor learning his/her lines. That really works for me. I've been to France many times and now speak fluent French, and I plan to do the same with German.

The best method for learning foreign languages on your own - it will take you to a a level where you'll have a very solid base in German in a matter of few months. You can take it from there by yourself to become perfectly fluent. The Assimil method contains everything - reading, writing, understanding, grammar, listening comprehension, speaking. And it's actually quite fun. The dialogues are witty, the exercises useful, the grammatical explanations perfectly timed and clear.

This book is really great. Though I was sent the wrong version of the book. I still enjoyed it. I just have to get updates from all my German friends I talk to but that's the only bad thing.

The book is divided up in 100 lessons. I'm only on lesson 17 of the book. But, I have learned a lot of vocabulary from each lesson. You read one lesson a day until you get to lesson 50. Then you go back to the beginning and translating the English part in to German. What I do is just read the passages and also listening to the audio (better with headsets). Then stop it after the sentence is finished. Then, you pronounce it to your self and then with the book close. Go over the lesson 4 times a day so you'd keep it in your head.

It is a very excellent product for one tenth of the price of that crapp Rosetta Stone. Which is just a cheap flash card application for $1000. Any ways, also download Anki (flash card app for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. You can stick words in it and also stick sentences and use that also for memorising with the book.

I wish I had gotten it first before I did German. But, it still helpful even though I am still a beginner. It will get you close to Intermediate German. The only bad thing is there is no advanced book of Assimil with German unless you know French.

I'm going to buy this book again when I learn another language. I recommend it for any one who is serious about learning it.

Amazing book, just what you need to study german by yourself. It's very important to have the audio recordings, though.

I initial reviewed this item in early 2010, and my rating of this item then was 3 stars, Here is what I wrote:

Considering that the ASSiMiL folks advertise that "in only 20 minutes a day" you will be able to speak German within about 3 months, they provide very little opportunity for the student to actually speak German. There is minimal opportunity to even repeat the German, and there are no drills designed to make understanding and speaking German second-nature. I can see how this product might be useful for the person who already knows German, but hasn't spoken it for a few years and wants to "brush up."

I purchased this course a little less than two weeks ago. I am on lesson 10 (of 100). I took one year of German in High School 30 years ago. Thus, I have some familiarity with German, but have forgotten 95% or more of what I learned. I do not speak any other foreign languages. I plan to visit a friend in Germany in ~8 months and find myself motivated to learn. Here are my observations of this product thus far:

Each lesson consists of 10 or so lines of conversation presented in German, with the English translation on the facing page. Beneath the conversation each sentence is replicated phonetically with enough detail so an English speaker can get decently close to the correct pronunciation. The pronunciation section is followed by an exercise section consisting of 5-6 "practice" sentences containing words from the conversation. The first few lessons were easily grasped and substantive enough to be interesting. At about lesson 5 or 6, however, new words begin to be introduced rapidly. Often with two or more new words and/or verb tenses in each sentence. For me, this made it difficult to really understand which of the new German words relates to the English words in the translation.

On the CD, up to lesson 6, the German sentences are spoken twice by native speakers. First slowly, then at a slightly faster pace. At the slow pace, there is time to repeat the sentence before the next phrase is spoken. The exercise sentences are spoken only once. Unfortunately, beginning at Lesson 8, the German sentences are spoken at a moderate pace only one time each. There is no time to to repeat the phrases before the next sentence is spoken. Also beginning at lesson 8, the pronunciation is provided only for the new words introduced. If a word was presented in a previous lesson and you have forgotten how to pronounce it, you must refer back to the lesson in which it was initially introduced. Which means you must search for it. With rapid introduction of new words and the need to refer back to previous lessons for pronunciation (assuming you are not listening to the CD concurrently), recent lessons have become tedious.

It is pretty clear the course designers intended users to listen to the CD each and every time they read the book. Regarding the audio, there is no English on the CDs. If you are listening to the CD without the book you must understand what is being said, you must be prepared to pause the CD after every phrase if you wish to repeat, and you must be able to "rewind" if you wish to practice the pronunciation of a particular word. This is tedious even when sitting down at a table or desk. Forget about taking advantage of driving time to practice pronunciation. I plan to continue with the lessons, but am augmenting the course with other learning methods that are heavily weighted towards speaking and simple listening / speaking drills.

April 2011 -

After having tried other German learning techniques, I believe the Assimil approach is one of the best. This method (like all methods) does require perseverance and patience, something I did not really appreciate when I first wrote this review. My comments about timing, etc. still stand, but can be overcome using things like an iPod (which makes it easier to pause and restart), or actually speaking over the audio after you have reviewed it or heard it a few times (see comments to this post from "Crno Srce", they are valuable).

Tschuss!

I made it two-thirds of the way through this program before switching to Barron's Mastering German. My only regret is that I didn't give up Assimil earlier.

Assimil isn't bad if you seek to build passive skills such as listening comprehension, vocabulary and reading. If you want to learn how to speak German, it is highly inadequate. This is due to the lack of extensive drills such as the ones in the Barron's series.

Learning a language is both an intellectual and a physiological task. Understanding the rules intellectually is just the beginning; employing them physically--using your tongue, lips and throat--is a physical task that has to be repeated until it becomes automatic. Assimil, due to its scant drills, does a poor job of imprinting the patterns of the spoken language on the mind.

Assimil claims that you can "assimilate" a second language the way you assimilated your mother tongue. This is true, but keep in mind that it took you years to learn how to speak your mother tongue, and that even then you were making all sorts of cute "kiddie" mistakes ("He gaved them fishes!"). Adults may not be able to master a native accent, but they can learn a language must faster than children, especially if they are taught grammar patterns explicity through drills.