German with Ease

by Hilde Schneider, Alphonse Chérel, Michael Kassner

Book Overview

Série essentielle d'ASSIMIL, elle permet en quelques mois d'acquérir plus de 2000 mots de vocabulaire, la grammaire de base et de maîtriser la conversation courante dans plus de cinquante langues. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 2700501322
• ISBN13: 9782700501322
• Release Date: February 1996
• Publisher: Assimil France
• Length: 407 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.9" x 7.1"

Customer Reviews

Very impressive

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.

The Easy Way to Learn a Language

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.

It works, but you have to follow the method

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...

A very good language learning system

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.

An entertaining way to learn German

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.