A year ago, I started learning Dutch with the Assimil textbook "Niederländisch ohne Mühe heute" (Dutch with Ease), and I’d like to share my impressions.
It was my first time trying the Assimil method, and in my opinion, their approach really works: short dialogues with translations, grammar notes, a bit of humor, and constant repetition produce good results. I also liked the division into passive and active phases: in the passive phase, you just listen and absorb vocabulary and grammar, and in the active phase you start applying all of it in practice.
It seemed to me that the Assimil method is similar to Luca Lampariello’s bidirectional translation method: in the passive phase, you translate sentences from the language you’re learning into your native language or another language you know well, while in the active phase, you translate those same dialogues back into the target language, and this activates your passive knowledge really well.
But there are downsides, too. The texts are a bit outdated: you come across old-fashioned jokes—for example, about women behind the wheel—and archaic details like Belgian francs.
Another thing I didn’t really like, although maybe it’s a feature and not a bug, is the mixing of Belgian Dutch and Netherlands Dutch. It threw me off a bit. I never learned to tell which one was which. But maybe that was exactly the authors’ intention—to get you used to hearing different ways the language can sound and to learn to understand all variants.
Around the middle of the course, I realized that I was getting stuck with only the "textbook" dialogues, so I slowly started adding authentic materials like slow podcasts in order to listen to real conversations.
Overall, my experience with Assimil has been very positive. I’d give it an 8 out of 10. And most likely, next time I would also start with it: it gives structure and a clear plan for learning the basics, and after that you can switch to other resources.
Have you tried Assimil? If yes, how did you like it?
If not, what resources do you usually use when you’re just starting to learn a language?
