Lately, I have been focusing on German and French, as well as gearing up for taking on Norwegian and Swedish. I've seen Youtube polyglots advocating for learning both languages separetely, but I decided to begin to acquire them concurrently and see how things work out.
Recently, I have been visiting some blogs I used to read when I first found out about the online language learning community. Since Assimil is one of the most mentioned/refered to methods, I decided to post the steps I found on the LanguageGeek blog years ago. His website is currently under maintenance and I think the steps to effectively using Assimil need to be posted online again. Therefore, I took the time to retrieve the information on his website and post them here. The step-by-step is as follows:
1. Listen to the text with the book closed. It does not matter if you do not understand what is said. You will gain a general impression of the sounds, hearing the pronunciation without being influenced by the spelling.
2. Listen to the recording a second time while looking at the English translation.
3. Read the Dutch text aloud (with the aid of the phonetic transcription if necessary). Be sure you understand the meaning of each sentence, comparing it with the translation as required.
4. Now read the Dutch text again, but this time without looking at the translation.
5. Listen to the recording twice, once while looking at the English translation, and once while looking at the Dutch text.
6. Listen to the recording again with the book closed. At this point you should understand what is being said.
7. Listen to the recording once more. Stop the machine after each sentence, and try to repeat it aloud.
8. Carefully read the comments several times. Examine the Dutch sentences being explained. These notes are very important.
9. Read the exercises. Repeat each sentence several times. The exercises review material from the current lesson and from preceding lessons. If you have forgotten certain words, consult the English translation.
10. Examine the examples of sentence structure. They show how words and phrases are combined in Dutch, which is not always the same as in English.
Happy language learning!
Luiz
