Assimil Dutch

I just ordered Dutch With Ease from Assimil. I am going to try using professor Alexander Arguelles shadowing technique using this course. I have not used Assimil before, and I have wanted to give the shadowing technique a good try for quite a while.

Although I have some decent materials to work with, I have a limited amount of time. I intend to finish up the Michel Thomas Foundation Dutch course, then use the time in the most intense type of studying I can. I think the most intense thing I could do is Assimil with the shadowing technique.

Update on my Dutch Progress

I'm not really that motivated to learn Dutch, so I'm taking my time. I have been able to do something with it everyday, but as far as a concerted and systematic effort, there has not been much real progress.

I am about 10 chapters into Teach Yourself Dutch (an old version) and about half way (4 cds) into Michel Thomas Dutch Foundation. Vocabulary and some sentences go into Anki, which is the one thing I have been able to use every day, other than listen to music or an audiobook. I have Anki set for 3 minute reviews, so I can guarantee I have at least some exposure to Dutch everyday when I can't do some of the Teach Yourself or Michel Thomas.

One site I just checked out that might be helpful for learning Dutch is www.fluency.nl It is for text-to-speech in Dutch.

Simply type or paste in some Dutch text, choose one of the male or female speakers and it will read the text! It is not perfect, of course, but the words are pretty clear and recognizable, even to a Dutch beginner like me. I think this is good for getting an idea what a particular vocabulary word or sentence might sound like if you don't have any audio for it.

The page is in Dutch, but there is a link for it in English.

PS - You can save the audio file it creates as an mp3!