Assimil French with Ease

by Anthony Bulger

A course that doesn't involve learning by heart, ideal for beginners and revising. Learners can start to speak French within two months, gaining an intuitive knowledge of grammar. Within six months, learners can take part in everyday conversation with a vocabulary of 1,500 to 2,000 words

Genres: France, Language, Nonfiction, Textbooks, Linguistics

Paperback

Published January 1, 2020

Reviews

[Freddy]

Je parie que personne ne s'attendait à ce que j'étudie le français, non ?

C'est le meilleur manuel scolaire pour apprendre une langue que j'ai jamais lu.

Croissant et baguette mes frères.

[Nelson]

The single best traditional book learning resource for learning French. Through this book I was able to improve my understanding of French grammar and acquire new vocabulary in a relatively enjoyable way. If I was to recommend a language learning book it would be this one. However, my caveat is that I strongly believe that it is not useful to study a grammar heavy book like this until one is at perhaps a B1 but preferably B2 level. The reason being is that I believe in a comprehensible input system of language learning whereby one acquires vocabulary through reading and listening at your level and where you then slowly build up to greater and greater levels of reading difficulty as your understanding of the language improves. To that end I recommend a lot of the books by Olly Richards and Steve’s Kauffman’s language learning app ‘LingQ’ as a starting point. After some progress(A2+) it is worth having French conversations through italki or in person. This is the method I used and, despite never having been to a French speaking country, I am a fluent French speaker at a B2/C1 level.

[Eirik]

3.5

In general I think the Assimil series is great. Their books are fantastic for getting introduced to a language, and even getting to a relatively decent level if you put in some extra effort. Unfortunately, this book (it doesn't say which edition it is, but published in 2020) had so many errors that it affected my experience.

For the most part these were small errors, like wrong or misplaced punctuation in the English version of the dialogues. Others were more significant, like misplaced words in the French version or straight up wrong translations. One would think that getting the translations right would be a big priority in a book for self-teaching.

Along with a couple of inaccurate cross references within the book, I'm lead to believe that this was a sloppily edited republication of an older edition, with some minor changes. It's not a sin to reuse old material, but I do think it's pretty grievous to do such a half-assed job. At times it felt like the structure of the book had been changed, without changing the notes and explanations to match the new order.

But, to be fair, there is a relatively low amount of mistakes, and the content is generally good. Some of the dialogues try a little too hard to be humorous, but others are genuinely entertaining - and/or useful.

Would I recommend using Assimil for learning French (or other languages)? Yes, definitely. But I would probably recommend getting a different edition than the 2020 one.

[Vicky]

5 stars for the Assimil series in general, as an idea of introducing yourself to a chunk of vocabulary and grammar within popular contexts. I will continue including it in my routine for future languages. 3 stars for the experience of this French one, where it was "ok". It was not my favorite thing to do because if you follow the longer version of the instructions that someone posted on Reddit, it takes 30-45 mins per lesson. This one woman's voice was rather bothersome throughout, too, but I did get used to it. After 100 lessons, I was really checked out and found more fun things to do with the language. I've been dragging through the remaining 13 lessons, 6-7 of them done today 🎉

[Christina]

I really enjoyed it! For the last 7 days i’ve skimmed through the book to familiarise myself with the Assimil method. Tomorrow I will follow the steps as recommended in the book and I am very excited about my journey as I’ve already learned lots of new words and expressions. What a fun and refreshing way to learn a new language!

[Dave]

After a few month break, I got to lesson 80 (out of 100). I'm sure it's been helpful for me, but the lessons were getting a bit tedious in the end.

[Carla]

Son diálogos simples que me ayudaron a comprender mejor la lengua.

[Joseph Cain]

Parler français est difficile....

[Rahul Bhandari]

Assimil is my first serious stint with French. Would totally recommend it for beginners!! Do supplement it with other resources like Duolingo, Memrise, or some French Podcast.