How to learn a new language. My daily routine with Assimil.
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- Опубліковано 5 лип 2024
- In this video, I'd like to tell you how I learn a new language, and what my daily routine looks like. I'll talk about the methods I use, how I combine them, and what keeps me motivated. You can find more methods for beginners in my Language Key video course 👉 bit.ly/32xFYY6
A really great method to start learning a new language is Assimil. I'm sure some of you have already heard about these books. They are made in a totally different way than most books for self-learners are - you get short lessons where you have a dialogue in your target language and its translation into your native language (or a language you know well).
You go through the book in two waves - an active wave and a passive wave. In the passive wave, you just kind of notice things in the texts. In the active one, you're translating the texts from your native language into the language you're learning and see whether you can really say those things, whether you really know the vocabulary and can use grammar in practice.
For Swahili, I'm using a French book, but many are also available for English speakers and German speakers. You can check available language combinations on the Assimil website: bit.ly/3qNoyzY
⏱️ TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - I'm learning my 9th language - Swahili
00:11 - My main language-learning material - an Assimil book
00:22 - The structure of Assimil books
00:54 - Explanation of working with Assimil in the passive wave
01:29 - The active wave of using Assimil
01:56 - My daily routine with Assimil
02:11 - How I complement Assimil with the Anki app for learning vocabulary
02:42 - The best way to activate what I've learned so far - conversations with a native speaker
03:01 - How I check the progress I've made so far
03:22 - The best moments of learning a language
03:52 - System - the key to staying motivated
If you want to LEARN A NEW LANGUAGE without all the basic mistakes every beginner makes, you should definitely check out my Language Key video course here 👉 bit.ly/32xFYY6
I'm a TED speaker, a polyglot, a conference interpreter, and a language mentor who has lots of tips on language learning. Subscribe to the Language Mentoring channel to never miss another video. 😉
Instagram: languagementoring
Facebook: languagementoring
Learn how to learn languages the way polyglots do! 💪
If you want to LEARN A NEW LANGUAGE without all the basic mistakes every beginner makes, you should definitely check out my Language Key video course here 👉 bit.ly/32xFYY6
I'm a native speaker of Swahili language from Tanzania 🇹🇿,now learning Germany and Chinese,I'm so proud of you for learning Swahili
From Kenya native swahili speaker trying to learn Spanish love your videos help me a lot
Hello my dear teacher, I miss your videos, I have been learning English for that reason I like si much your methods. Regards from Huila Colombia :)
In my personal experience, is so difficult to be systematic, i've never been one, now that i'm facing adult life, i'm suffering because i see how much systematic people are forward in everything, not that they are smarter, but organization and persuation always keep you one step ahead.
Oh they have Swahili too! I learned Arabic with Assimil, and I am interested in Swahili now. Assimil is really good, they concentrate on the most frequent used words/verbs, so you get those correctly. Of course, Assimil alone is not enough to learn a language, but it is the best written language method I know
Congratulations
Am a Swahili speaker from Kenya currently learning Spanish. All the best as you learn Swahili it's an interesting and fun language to learn.
ccay watson estas aprendiendo español? Esa es mi lengua materna😀 A mi me gustaría aprender suajili
Hello... If you're learning Spanish, I can definitely help you out. And I'm looking forward to learning Kiswahili. Maybe we could help each other.
I can teach you Spanish, and you teach me Swahili, what do you think??
I'm Spanish speaking and I'm learning English and swahili I love it
@@terotero5587
You can reache through ccayyunna@gmail.com
I just started learning KiSwahili and it's an amazing language, i'm proguessing step by step really slowly but i look forward to the day i'll be able to understand and have at least a basic conversation.
Habari.
I am Tanzanian and I'm glad that you are learning our beautiful language 🙂
I was inspired and motivated to learn English after seeing your Ted Talks video. It took me two years of trying, but I finally got decent skills in English. Currently living in Italy, I am hoping to re-energize myself with your inspirational videos and continue learning the beautiful Italian language. Your supportive remarks mean a lot to people like me, and I hope you are aware of how much of a difference you are making. I really do appreciate you.
I also learned English and now I an trying to learn irish
Thank you for sharing your own experience. it's very inspiring and helpful. cheers!
Assimil is indeed marvelous, thanks to this method I can speak German and Arabic.
Thanks for sharing!
Dziękuję za to video. Pozdrawiam z Lublina, z Polski.
I use assimil. The best method!
Kazi nzuri Lydia, endelea kujifunza Kiswahili, hongera!
Thank you Lýdia!
I’m using Assimil to learn German. I like it all right, but I found I can’t stick to just one source. I use a different app, book, or activity, then come back to Assimil. I’m enjoying this meandering so much more, than just doing Assimil alone. Anyhow, thank you for your nice videos Lydia, I always enjoy listening to you. 😊🌷
Assimil in insanely good. They're also honest with the outcomes, and they specify that you have to surround yourself with the language as much as possible whilst going through their method for it to actually work.
I'm learning French, Spanish and Italian at the same time.
I love the languages :)
I recommend a book for Swahili: "Swahili: a Foundation for Speaking, Reading and Writing." I've never tried Assimil, but this book has much acclaim on Amazon. I add to the acclaim. I speak a little Swahili. This particular book is the best book I've read on any language. It uses dialogue and then monologue. Very recommended!
Thanks for the tip! I wish I had known this a year ago when I was just starting :)
Sure.
I'm currently going through the German course with English as the L1 (language of instruction). I'm 80% through the B2 course. While the C2 course I have has French as the L1, French is the 2nd foreign language I studied, and I had a French pen-pal for 10 years who didn't really speak English. I don't really use the Assimil passive-to-active method though; I use Anki for spaced repetition instead. If I want to translate English into German, I may pick up an older Teach Yourself book from before the 1990s or something similar. I use Duolingo for 1 lesson a day. I watch Netflix movies and TV shows with L2 (target language) audio and L1 (English) subtitles. If I rewatch something, I do it with both the L2 audio and subtitles. Recently I've rewatched 'Nikos Weg' (A1) here on UA-cam and even without subtitles I understood almost every word and what they were saying. I'm a false beginner in German really. I studied it for 3 semester at uni, but I didn't feel comfortable producing (speaking, writing) the language. Assimil has really helped with that.
am from Zanzibar.. you are good at swahili
I highly recommend that you put Chinese into your wishlist. I am from China, and I have lived in Sweden for nearly two years. Now I am studying Swedish and English at the same time because it is hard to find a Chinese book to learn Swedish. I realize that Swedish and English are quite similar, and some Swedish classmates of mine told me that Swedish is even closer to German. Chinese is totally different from European languages. Almost everyone is struggling with English learning in China, and Chinese is also a challenge for European people, I think. By the way, I really love to watch your videos, and I look forward to your more videos. :)
Thanks Jun. I'm sure Chinese would be a great challenge and a beautiful language to learn, but I always make sure I have a good reason to learn a language. Not planning any longer trips to China right now. But maybe some day :-) Thanks, glad you like my videos! :)
Thanks for the video Lydia! Your videos are very inspiring. I am one year in to learning Spanish and hope to change to another after 2 years of learning and having Italian as my 2nd language helps greatly!
I’m curious to know do you always use different methods for every language you learn?
Thanks, Jonny. Yes, I like alternating my methods, bot just with each language but also in different stages of learning one language. I find it more fun like that and always learn something new about the way I learn best :)
Hello Lydia. I heard your Ted talk and you inspired me so much to start learning Korean. I felt so motivated because you said we can teach ourselves and don't have to take a class. I have always been so impressed by polyglots and thought that they must be geniuses! Your talk has opened up a world for me that I never knew was available to me.
I was wondering how you would recommend learning a new alphabet? Obviously I can use flash cards and basic memorizing, but was wondering if you had any specific methods. It would very interesting to hear your opinion on this topic. Thank you!
Hi Jennifer, thanks a lot for the comment, I'm glad you are inspired to learn Korean - yes, you can totally do it! In the case of Korean, you don't need to worry at all, Hangul (the Korean alphabet) is actually very easy to learn. Check out this comic to learn it in 15 minutes :) ryanestradadotcom.tumblr.com/post/20461267965/learn-to-read-korean-in-15-minutes I'd suggest to just practise writing and rewriting words for a few days, and trying to decode them when reading (once you know the individual 24 letters) and you'll see it won't be a problem at all in your further learning :)
Hi Lydia, during the time that you took time off from learning Swahili, did you dabble/experimented with other languages or improve your existing languages or both?
Hi Lydia, I'm a beginner in language learning in Brazil, and even your TED Talk was my first step to enter this “world”. I'm researching methods that sound fun to me and I found the method your method of backtranslation. However, I have a question: wouldn't the backtranslation method and BDT (bidirectional translation) be the same thing? You said the methods look similar, but I still haven't been able to notice much difference. Could you explain a bit more about that? thanks for the help👋
so do you use this nook and its method at the same time of using the gold list? @LanguageMentoring
Hi Lydia, love your videos, thanks for sharing! Wondering: are you using the Gold list method for Swahili or just Anki?
Hi, Bergita, I tried the Goldlist method for Swahili but it didn't work for me as it did for other languages. I'm going to get back to it soon again though, now that I'm more fluent. I didn't use Anki at first, I learnt the old-fashioned way with paper flashcards. They're beautiful and colorful and it's great fun! But when I started with Italki sessions, I added Anki to process the vocab from our sessions. It's best to combine them :)
@@Languagementoring Hello, Lydia! Wonderful description of your method. While you were speaking about Anki, came to my mind the question: How much time do you invest making the Anki flashcards every day or every weekend? Thanks for explaining in the way you do. I am 42 and I am learning my second language, German.:-)
how long do you talk with your tutor in Kenya ? ...and how did you connect with them / via what means , network or app?
Very cool to see one of the main youtube polyglots learn swahili. I find that it is a complex language grammatically with its noun class system and how the verbs can change pretty radically. It would be nice to hear how you are dealing specifically with these types of challenges. What made you choose kiswahili, by the way? Thanks for your time and work!
Thanks, AfricaRBG! The noun class system is a bit of a headache, but I know I'll get used to it after a few months of actively using Swahili. I don't worry about learning the class for each noun at this stage. I know what classes there are and how they influence everything else in the sentence, but I don't mind making mistakes and guessing if "basi linaondoka" or "basi inaondoka" or "basi unaondoka" :) The more I'll practise, the fewer mistakes I'll make. I decided to learn Kiswaili because I wanted a whole new language which is non-European, but learnable in two years. And I am going to go to Kenya and Tanzania next year, so it's all a combination of reasons :-)
@@Languagementoring Thanks for your reply! Consistency definitely pays off in language learning. It will all make sense in time. I tried out Swahili in 2012 when i went to Tanzania. Swahili is king over there, not much English heard in the streets at all. It was really cool!
Enjoy your trip and i look forward to any further updates about your progress! Take care.
Do you put the complete Assimil dialogs into Anki or just selected words and phrases?
What language are you currently learning and what's your favorite method?
I am currently learning some Finnish. It was one of the languages I chose that doesn't have a lot of speakers. I just like the way it sounds and of course also the Finnish mindset.
I don't just have one method. I like to start off with some basic vocabulary work. Mostly I am a visual person/learner so I like to learn with youtube and later on watching television series.
It depends on the language. I've noticed that some courses are great for certain languages but terrible at others. And of course there aren't so many resources in Finnish as with other languages so I take what I can get.
I'm studying Swahili as well - currently just doing Pimsleur. but I also have Assimil's Le Swahili waiting for once I'm done with Pimsleur (about a week more to go)
@@rlopez8630 Good luck with that! :)
@@learnalanguagewithleslie That's great that you're discovering different resources Good luck with Finnish! :)
Impressive. I like that you are hitting it from all angles and doing so consistently. Well thought out plan. How many languages do you speak now, lets say at the C1/C2 level?
Thanks for the feedback! The only languages I speak on C1 or C2 levels are English and German, all the others (except for Swahili, of course), I speak on a confident B2 level where I can communicate easily with natives which is my goal for every language. At times, my Spanish and Polish were also at the C level, but as I don't use them intensively any more, I'd say they fluctuate around the B2.
Language mentoring wow that's so impressive. I'm on a B2 close to C1 level Spanish. My mom is native so I have that advantage but growing up in the states never used it in school or with friends. Thanks for your content. I like the scenery you choose for your videos too. And of course the expert advise. Cheers!
Living Language tiene también un curso de swahili.
Tal vez fuera mejor para ti ya que está en base inglesa.
Is there an update video of your progress? Would you recommend assimil after completing it and have you used it for any other languages? I’m currently a low intermediate in Spanish and looking into buying assimil
Hi Dan, Lydia has always liked using those books for autodidacts when she was starting a new language from scratch. Assimil is one option, there is also TeachYourself and Colloquial :) Niki from the Language Mentoring team
Hi, Lydia :) I have a question. How long does it take you to decide on a new language? You've been studying Swahili for about a year now, right? Are you thinking about what language to go for next?
Hi Michal. That is very individual. Right now I do know. Brazilian Portuguese :) It's been on my wishlist for a few years but I wanted to learn a non-European language first to gain new experience with learning languages in general. But I adore Brazilian music and I even started playing Brazilian drums with a band in Bratislava, so the choice is clear. I always make sure I feel passionate about the language for some reason, otherwise it'd be too difficult to keep learning for two years. I am already planning a longer trip to Brazil in a year or two, so that'll be perfect motivation to learn intensively :)
Hi Lydia! Do you use the Assimil book with or without the companion CD's? It is difficult to find the Spanish Super Pack available for English speakers, without also being super expensive. Is the book alone a solid learning approach?
Hi Kevin, I strongly recommend to always buy books which are accompanied with a CD. Listening is one of the most important parts of the learning, especially when you are a beginner. I know that the version with the recordings is more expensive but if I were you I would definitely go for it anyway. It's worth the money! Good luck with Spanish! :)
Hi Kevin, never use language learning materials without the audio files if they're available, especially at the beginning of learning a language. I hope you can get it, I wouldn't recommend using just the book.
Hooo that my language
Hi - you say that Goldlisting didn’t work for you with Swahili. Would you have any idea why that was? Anki seems to work on very different principles ...
Am every glad to teaching me in kiswahili today
I experimented with Goldlist and used single words instead of phrases (which I normally recommend using), and all of them were quite randomly taken from future chapters of my book so I had no personal connection to them. Now I'm going to pick new phrases from texts in Swahili so I expect better results. I was not able to read sich texts at the very beginning. In line with what David James, author of the method, suggests, I think Goldlist works best for lower intermediate and above levels of a language, not conplete beginners.
it is good!! i am from Zanzibar.. you speak good kiswahili..una ongea know swahi kama Zanzibar
i will teach kiswahili in writing.. am from Zanzibar
How far into the book did you start the live talks with the native
Hi, each learner takes a different amount of time to start speaking. Lydia usually takes a few weeks or a month to get familiar with the language first and then attempts to have first conversations. This may be individual for different learners, though, it is also ok to try to start speaking/ expressing basic ideas from the very beginning.
Hello everyone,
I am looking for a native english speaker to practice English with, I can help with Swahili.
Thank you in advance.
How many units of the book do you study a week? Or how many sentences a week do you recommend studying?
The method (Assimil) recommends people to do one lesson each day (and should take 30-45 minutes), then the 7th day (at the end of the week) is a revision lesson that goes over everything you learned during the week
Thank you, but I would like to know what she does because what Assimil recommends, is not what these people do. It's too much one lesson a day. Not effective.
Unfortunately no English version for Swahili
Très bien d'apprendre à partir du français. Mais le swahili est vraiment facile comparé à d'autres langues bantoues !
Comme quoi? Zoulou et Xhosa? Parce que je peux parle cette langues (Zoulou, Swahili, Anglais et petite Francais) mais pour moi Zoulou est vraiment deficile en comparaison avec les autres langues Bantu.
@@samshongwe ɓasaa mais je sais que le zoulou a des consonnes difficiles (clics)
Did you learn swahili while in kenya
Hi Feliki Derria, Lydia learned Swahili at home as an autodidact. (Daša from Language mentoring)
@@Languagementoring thanks for the reply... So how much is the book assimil and where can i get it ? Is it available everywhere even in kenya
@@felikiderria833 All books are usually available on Amazon, check the current prices there!
can not hear you
hello
very good
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