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Inhaling Belgium | ||
Tags: Belgium | Super Challenge | Living abroad | Dutch | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Suzie Diglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4222 days ago 155 posts - 226 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Dutch | Message 25 of 116 01 June 2013 at 8:49pm | IP Logged |
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I have just completed my first season of Grey's Anatomy!
I even tried to watch some minutes without subtitles, but finally decided not to continue: From July onwards, I will have daily access to French television programmes, but then I will have to watch without any subtitles anyway. Therefore, I've decided that I am going to keep the subtitles of my DVDs, enjoy the fact that I understand, and that I can look up unkown words. No stress with that. Understanding without subtitles will come eventually. I have three and a half additional seasons of "Grey's Anatomy" in French at home, several seasons of "Gilmore Girls", two seasons of "Fringe", the first season of "the Mentalist", and the first season of "Lost". The last series is nearly new to me, but I've been recommended the first seasons of "Lost", and well - it was available in French in a shop, for a price below 15 €. Having already successfully achieved 15.9 % of the "Half Super Challenge" until this very moment, I am confident that the remaining material will help me to complete my 100 films challenge well before the deadline. In addition, I went through several pages of "Inferno". As I find one or two unkown words in nearly every sentence, the progress is quite slow. But as this is a novel, not a dictionnary, I strongly hope that at some stage there will be some repetition of those words, accelerating my reading speed (which is currently at about 30 min per page...sigh!) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Suzie Diglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4222 days ago 155 posts - 226 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Dutch | Message 26 of 116 02 June 2013 at 8:07am | IP Logged |
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Due to the very lack of system in my previous attempts to learn French in the past twenty years, I am aware that there are a lot of special obstacles that need to be overcome. Of course, starting from the very beginning each time would be frustrating, so you build your studies on a fundament you feel comfortable with. However, it is difficult to define this exact level. You therefore also base your progress on half-forgotten stuff, which might even make your progress more difficult. These days, I found a great example of what I mean, and I would like to share with you my learning outcome:
In French, there are three quite similar words that I apparently mixed up in the past couple of years: la cour, le cours, la course . Given its translations to English, it is no wonder anymore that I did so...Just in case someone has the very same problem, I'll now summarise my learning outcome. la cour (fr) = der Hof (de) = the court, the yard (en). The term is used either in the context of farming (basse-cour, the chicken run), or as the royal court (la cour de roi). le cours (fr) = der Kurs (de) = the course, the rate (en). It is used for taught courses (e.g. le cours de langue) or for the stock exchange prices (le cours boursier). la course (fr) = das Wettrennen, der Lauf (de) = the race, the course (en). It describes primarily competition contexts (la course de chevaux, la course contre la montre). Also important in this context: faire les courses = to go shopping courir = run courser = pursuit I myself am now hammering this into my brain by creating numerous cards in Anki, distributed over several hundred other new cards to learn, with as many as possible relevant and interesting examples and contexts. In addition, I created a card summarising my findings as above, which will also undergo the SRS (only reading, though). Edited by Suzie on 07 June 2013 at 5:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Suzie Diglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4222 days ago 155 posts - 226 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Dutch | Message 27 of 116 03 June 2013 at 9:06pm | IP Logged |
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Another milestone - my fifth French book ever is finally completed! Now that I got rid of the Lernkrimi, I can finally focus on "Inferno".
Today, the weather is great (after a long, long time), and as already repeatedly described, I have special "outdoor training material", as I find it difficult to use the computer outside. However, as I was so excited to read my new novel, I searched for my dictionnary and took it outside, to look up words manually and note them down with a pencil, directly into the book. That felt very....20th century...^^ But it had its advantage. In order to look up a word this old-fashioned way, you must be really interested to learn its meaning. This tripled my reading speed, leaving me with three words per page in average that really, really wanted to be looked up. I am also continuing watching DVDs. I had planned to go on with Grey's Anatomy, now that I have build up the special vocabulary needed for this series (= medicine, love affairs and general casual and partly impolite conversation). But somehow, the "Fringe" DVDs convinced me with such a charming smile that I couldn't resist....Love this series. It's so funny. And I really don't understand their scientific babbling. (Being a science nerd myself....!) In addition, I re-activated my account in Lang-8, to produce some French myself. Writing felt easier than before, that was good news. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Suzie Diglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4222 days ago 155 posts - 226 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Dutch | Message 28 of 116 05 June 2013 at 1:20pm | IP Logged |
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I just returned from the drugstore, where I was quite close to saying a friendly "Bonjour" to the shop assistent. Remember, I still live in Germany! Luckily, I could stop myself just in time.
Being on holidays for the rest of June (just 25 days left to my relocation!) I am finding myself to use my French studies for procrastination of other stuff. Learning French is so much more fun! I really forgot how much you can get absorbed by language studies... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Suzie Diglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4222 days ago 155 posts - 226 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Dutch | Message 29 of 116 09 June 2013 at 11:59pm | IP Logged |
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Some silence in the past days..
I've been quite absorbed by my French studies and the preparation of my relocation in the past days. As time is running and there are so many things left to do, I didn't want to spend too much time on the log. However, having returned now, I'm quite happy to report some progress... 1) I have completed to listen to 2'000 minutes of French! And I was really thrilled when I realised that I could easily understand nearly everything of the RFI journal en français facile last night when listening to the podcast two times. THAT's a major breakthrough for me! I also feel quite comfortable with the video subtitling - I feel that I still need it, but can easily figure out idiomatic phrases used in the dubbing as compared to the subtitles. Today, I have completed episode 10 of the first season of Fringe. 2) Also my progress with Inferno is surprising. I was thrilled to find out that I can read and understand the book without looking up any vocabulary. Of course, this does not mean that I understand all the vocab used. But I feel confident that I can access this book with some joy and fluency while not reducing the overall understanding. I keep looking up words I find a) crucial or b) interesting. However, sometimes I read several pages without any break, feeling completely fine. I would have never guessed that this would be the case, after never having read any "proper" book in French before...And I feel confident to be able to read books like this in future (having already checked the location and opening times of some libraries nearby my future home^^). 3) The improvement of my oral comprehension and vocabulary revealed a new bottle neck: Grammar. Not only the lang-8 practice, but also some tests on French.about.com (which is an awesome website, by the way) showed some weak points in...well, nearly everything. So I am revising some grammar, primarily using this great Anki software, starting with adjectives and conjugation for the time being. The proper use of pronouns will follow soon. 4) This leaves me with vocabulary, which now unfortunately has to suffer. I am currently forcing myself to 20 new words per day, to have some spare time for grammar practice. Watching Fringe and reading Inferno, however, have their downside: They wake up my inner science nerd. I promised myself to stick to French until the end of the 6W challenge, which is extremely motivating, but next week, I'll most probably return to some pending science-related projects. As I wouldn't give up on French, I'll have to consider some proper time management. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4700 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 30 of 116 10 June 2013 at 12:34am | IP Logged |
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I find the use of the pronouns and the accords to be a nightmare, but I`m getting better
at it nowadays after some months of practice over the past year. Frankly understanding how they use them was one of the major hurdles I needed to overcome to push my French up a level. (It is now up that level). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Suzie Diglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4222 days ago 155 posts - 226 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Dutch | Message 31 of 116 10 June 2013 at 5:51am | IP Logged |
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Yes, the pronouns are indeed a nightmare. But who am I to complain...when the pronouns were delivered, they obviously came as a double-pack, with the second set being shipped to Germany. Sadly, the rules are not identical...
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Suzie Diglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4222 days ago 155 posts - 226 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Dutch | Message 32 of 116 12 June 2013 at 5:30pm | IP Logged |
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Erm....the 6 week challenge is over? Wow, that really caught me by surprise. I mean, yeah, if you think about it, it's quite logical that a 6 week challenge takes exactly...six weeks....I just did not think so much about the end, just kept running and running....
I myself am quite happy with my achievement - I could log in incredible 137h40min of French studying time, primarily focused on learning vocabulary and watching DVDs, but also some grammar work and reading. I think my French has really improved throughout the past six weeks. I would have certainly done a lot without this challenge, but I think the sheer intensity I experienced was certainly due to this limited challenge situation. So, big thanks to the organiser! With this now being over, I found myself to reconsider what I am heading for in my life. Now this seems pretty philosophical, so I'll break it down to one phrase, very familiar to most members of this forum: "Setting priorities". Unfortunately, life is not long enough to do everything you want. At least my life. I mean, I am in perfect health, but I just have an incredibly long wish list... Having read so many interesting threads and logs in this great forum, I really was caught by wanderlust and kept dreaming about learning Finnish, Japanese, Italian, Swedish....and...and...and..... This is now the moment to say finally good bye to becoming a true polyglot. I don't think it is feasible to learn many languages to near-native fluency - at least not if you are doing a demanding full-time job. Especially in my case, as I love my profession and would like to invest a lot of energy to become a true expert in my field. Having said all that I need to highlight that this does not at all affect my intentions regarding French. Or Dutch. Of course I want to master this great language of my new home. And Dutch...well, it's nearly impossible NOT to become fluent in Dutch as a German, if you just jump a bit into the language, and I find it so charming....But that's it then. No Japanese, no Finnish. I really enjoyed the last six weeks, and am now in the great situation that I can access normal, entertaining books like Inferno or dubbed videos with subtitles just for entertainment. My brain doesn't melt anymore if I spent two hours on that. And this means that - in order to use my time efficiently - I am giving up on watching German TV. In addition, I'll try to intensify my grammar study. I really don't want to have any serious grammar problems in one year from now, and my dream is to throw away my textbooks in the next couple of months. I have already thrown away my introductory guide to French grammar I bought some twenty-ish years ago, as I now find it insufficient. Having considered to buy "Le bon usage" instead, I now decided to buy a more comprehensive version of a French grammar book for German-speakers first, for the following reason: I had spent some time at French.about.com, which is such a resourceful website. But I feel that I need to access the grammar as compared to my native language. It seems far more efficient to me. So I bought "Langenscheidt Standardgrammatik Französisch" and hope it will push me to a level that would allow me to master French Grammar, and to be able to finally replace it with "Le bon usage". I also expanded my library by purchasing a German-Dutch dictionary. Fifteen years ago, when I lived in Flandres and learnt Dutch, I was horrified by the high price and congratulated myself on buying a Dutch-German dictionary from a Dutch editor instead (so much cheaper....). Unfortunately, this dictionary contains a lot of information on German words, but the Dutch translations are seen as given. For example, there is no indication whether a Dutch substantive is accompanied by "de" or "het". Why should it? The dictionary was made for Dutch people who know this already! Long text, but what was my point again? -> I want to spend my energy as efficiently as possible. This is to affect especially my French studies. I have to leave my comfort zone and focus more on grammar lessons and language production. Watching videos and reading nice books is great, learning vocabulary is also great (as quite easy) and certainly helps me to improve my French, but from now on, this should be regarded more as "entertainment", not as "work" anymore. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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