I find having the parallel text (one page target language, the other your source language) to be extremely helpful. The lesson texts are progressively more difficult (A1 to about B2), so it never feels overwhelming. And maybe most importantly you can get through a lesson in 20-30 minutes, so it’s easy to make a daily habit of it.
With all the other language courses I’ve done it has always been tons of grammar lessons, some basic classroom discussion, and making vocab decks for something like Anki. With Assimil you’re immediately just inside the language, learning it almost passively. I was able to pick up easy native content books — like Camus in the case of French — after getting through the full Assimil course in a few months. Of course it’s still slow going and takes lots of effort, but the faster you can get to native content that is interesting to you the better I think.
