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redflag’s TAC 2015 - French & Indonesian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| redflag Senior Member Australia Joined 3835 days ago 123 posts - 182 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Danish, Indonesian, French | Message 1 of 86 29 November 2014 at 7:10am | IP Logged |
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OK. I need to get some discipline in this thing. I'm going to update this daily until at least Christmas. The last few weeks have been disrupted with additional work in the evenings and on weekends but after tomorrow I will not have that excuse. December 15th ETA: Doing the TAC 2015 for French and Indonesian so have updated title accordingly. Currently doing: 2 x 45 Skype lessons a week, pretty traditional working through a textbook stuff. Assimil New French With Ease Bits and pieces of a bunch of other things in a haphazard way: Glossika, Pimsleur, movies and TV (in French with French subtitles), reading novels/nonfiction, grammar books etc. Something of a goal is that I'm going to New Caledonia for five days in January (I live in Sydney, Australia is ti's less than 3 hours flight from here) so I want to make a push on speaking and listening for the next month. Edited by redflag on 14 December 2014 at 11:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| redflag Senior Member Australia Joined 3835 days ago 123 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish, Indonesian, French | Message 2 of 86 29 November 2014 at 10:58pm | IP Logged |
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So yesterday I did:
- 45 minute class with teacher (mostly futur simple) - Cleverdeck SRS vocab app (currently on a 72 day streak so don't want to end that, plus I find it a very well made, no fuss app to use) - translated a recipe for my sister. Gâteau d'aubergines libanais. She saw and liked the photo on Pinterest but the recipe was in French so asked me to translate it. Think I did it OK, I guess we'll see if it turns out OK when she makes it, ha. Today I have done my Cleverdeck session but that might be all as I have other work to polish off. ;-( 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 4000 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 3 of 86 30 November 2014 at 1:06am | IP Logged |
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Welcome to the forum! Looks like you have a great plan, and are on a great track. I look forward to reading
your log and seeing your progress! Edited by Mohave on 30 November 2014 at 1:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| redflag Senior Member Australia Joined 3835 days ago 123 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish, Indonesian, French | Message 4 of 86 30 November 2014 at 1:38am | IP Logged |
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Thank you Mohave! I have been lurking for a long time .... ;-)
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| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4902 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 5 of 86 30 November 2014 at 10:16am | IP Logged |
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Good luck with your personal challenge. I must admit, I knew nothing about New Caledonia, including the fact that it is French. Do they have their own accent there?
What films/TV, novels and grammar books are you working on? Edited by Jeffers on 30 November 2014 at 10:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| redflag Senior Member Australia Joined 3835 days ago 123 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish, Indonesian, French | Message 6 of 86 30 November 2014 at 11:23am | IP Logged |
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Hi Jeffers. Thanks for your interest! You know, until recently I never thought much about New Caledonia myself. I
knew it was there, in the Pacific somewhere but it's much lower profile even here than say, Tahiti, Fiji, Vanuatu etc. I was really surprised to find out it is only 3 hours to fly direct from Sydney, which is a lot closer that those other islands (and A LOT closer than Paris for some French immersion!). It's a French territory, although they are ramping up to have a referendum on independence sometime before 2018. The accent is an interesting issue. I watched some vox pops videos taken a couple of weeks ago when President Hollande visited (he was out in Australia for the G20) from Noumea and I couldn't discern much different from a metropolitan French accent, amongst the European anyway, a Kanak/Melanesian lady they interviewed had more of "an accent." I'm no expert but I watch/listen to a lot of Quebec materials and think I've become pretty good at picking up a Quebec accent but I couldn't hear much dramatically different from mainstream French on these videos. I look forward to exploring things like that more when I'm there. The majority of their tourism is from people on cruise ships pulling into harbour for a day and on a lot of the travel forums are cruisers complaining "no one speaks English." Which of course makes me very happy! As little English and as much French is my goal. I got myself a Canadian iTunes account so I rent a movie or two a week in French with French subtitles, usually a Hollywood type film. These I don't actively study, I just watch and read and try to follow the story. You can only have a movie you rent for 24 hours after so you start watching it and usually I need longer to take notes, absorb things on multiple viewing etc so I just treat these like a bit of passive downtime to watch once but still very useful. I bought a couple of DVD from Amazon.fr so I could get version with French subtitles. My listening is pretty bad, so with subtitles I can get the drift of most things, without I'm lost. So next week I'm going to start on the first season on "Un village français" which is a popular show in its fifth season in France about a village occupied by the Germans in WWII. I have a bunch of graded readers but decided to try a real novel so I have the first Hunger Games book in French plus the audio book, again in French from Canadian iTunes. I've read the HG books in English and they're quite straightforward so I thought it would be a good one to start with. I've only done a few pages of it but I'm pretty pleased with it. The grammar books are just your ordinary Practice Makes Perfect, McGraw-Hill etc etc. I like buying grammar books more than I like actually using them, so I have a stack here I've hoarded and really want to work through systematically - part of my motivation in starting this journal so I can try and keep myself to that pledge .... ;-) Edited by redflag on 30 November 2014 at 11:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4902 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 7 of 86 30 November 2014 at 2:12pm | IP Logged |
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For fun and enjoyable French reading and listening, Le Petit Nicolas is great. The audiobook is really well read (but quite fast), and the stories are enjoyable enough to read several times over.
I've recently discovered what looks like a good podcast, with an active transcript. By "active" I mean that the currently spoken sentence is highlighted. Since I've been focusing more on Hindi, I haven't listened to it very much, but it looks very good. Here's the link: L'avis de Marie 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| redflag Senior Member Australia Joined 3835 days ago 123 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish, Indonesian, French | Message 8 of 86 01 December 2014 at 8:15am | IP Logged |
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Thanks very much for both suggestions Jeffers, particularly the podcast with the transcipt. That's moving to the top
of my list of things to try out. I was up to 3am polishing off the work that has soaked up so much of the time I would rather have been spending on French so I am extremely tired and could literally barely keep my eyes open at work. So I took it pretty easy and just did - 1 x Assimil lesson - Glossika French GSR Day 2 I'll dive into the grammar tomorrow when I'm more awake. I also today booked my place at a "in conversation" the former French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin is doing in At Alliance Français Sydney next week, he has written a book about Napoleon and will be talking about it. Of course I expect to understand very little - public talks don't have subtitles unlike movies but still I'm looking forward to it as something a bit different. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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