I’ve just started Dutch With Ease self-study course made by Assimil. It is a language course designed in France that uses a language known to you to teach you a target language. Creators claim that you can acquire an average vocabulary of a few thousands words, gain a command of everyday conversation and reach B2 level in a few months. I am going to try it.
The course consits of a book and audio recordings. This book is very different comparing to other (more regular) courses. Each lesson has a dialog in your target language together with translation to a known language, some explanations and exercises. Dialogs are humorous to make learning easier and more fun. All these these immediately engaged me.
There are 84 lessons in the book. Initially the idea was to do at least one exercise a week. But then it would take more than a year rather than “a few months” to finish the course. The book itself also recommends to spend a little bit of time every day rather than 2 hours once a week. So I decided to set a target of 4 exercises a week. I am really curious to see where it would bring my Dutch if I finished the book. B2 level is a nice target, which is very far away at this moment. If everything goes according to the plan then the book will be finished in around 5 months.
In addition I am going to combine Assimil course with Duolingo exercises and maybe some real-life practice.