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PMs TAC 2015 crazy? French course mission | ||
Tags: TellMeMore | Fluenz | Linguaphone | Flash cards | Michel Thomas | Self-Study | Spaced Repetition (SRS) | Diploma/Certificate | Study Plan | Fluency | Dutch | Pimsleur | FSI | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Assimil | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 217 of 451 03 November 2014 at 7:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm happy to read about your progress Mr. PM. It's also comforting that you are making good progress by
sticking to yoru guns mostly. It's easy to be disuaded from doing something that "feels right" for something that it seems like "everyone" is doing. Interestingly, for me that is flash cards. I somewhat reluctantly started using flash cards a few months ago. They are still only about 10 minutes of daily study, but lately I've wondered if I might should nix that portion of my study. I haven't done that. I added ten fresh cards yesterday and ten again today. My flashcards are perhaps easier than most, since I've only added word 1120 this morning (from a frequency list). I guess though we can be comforted that "all roads lead to Rome", or in our case Paris et le monde francophone. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5479 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 218 of 451 04 November 2014 at 1:28am | IP Logged | |||||
Hey Luke, I concur with your pondering on the doing away with flashcards. Together with your advice regarding FIA I've decided to change up my study routine. Current study routine (rotation of four hours- 4 hours are not necessarily done in one day): 1st hour: 30min flashcard reviews + 30min intensive course study: Assimil NFWE 2nd hour: 30min FC rev's + Extensive Reading 3rd hour: 30min FC rev's + Intensive course study: Fluenz French 3 4th hour: 0-30min FC rev's + 30-60min Extensive Reading/or watching The current system I have above allows me to focus on 2 courses intensively (trying to make my way through an endless amount of them) which allows my analytical nature to retain a (sometimes forced) smile on its face. The extensive reading and some extensive watching allows for wider exposure to what would otherwise be unknown vocab and leave me floating around in a world of limited well known vocab that can't be expanded upon. Recent re-reading over an article on the value of extensive reading leaves me convinced that extensive language exposure via reading and to a marginally lesser degree, watching, is an absolute essential component to a serious language learner's study routine. Courses aid to complement the extensive activities by breaking down language into to bite size chunks, which of course is also essential in my opinion - extensive exposure (let's say immersion) with a language from day one without intensive focus at some point will result imo (based on readings) obvious downfalls in one's reproduction of the language - unless of course you are a polyglot who is acutely aware of grammatical concepts via extensive reading/listening/watching. That's not me, and that is very rare imo. Thus a combination is best for me. Luke suggested I do FIA and as an FIA groupie I feel it's time to honour the course through to its finale. So I will drop Fluenz French 3 (by no means a bad course, in fact the best CD/DVD-rom based course I've used to date- highly recommended imo) and replace it with FIA. During my hour of FIA I will not use FC's in any way. I may look up the occasional words in the dictionary not for meaning but for phonetics - I don't want to learn the stranger irregular pronounced words phoneticaly incorrect thereby reinforcing bad pronounciation. I expect those look-up instances to be rare. Revised routine version 1 1st hour: French in Action 2nd hour: 30min FC reviews + Extensive Reading (Vivre sans vaccins) 3rd hour: 30min FC rev's + 30min Assimil NFWE 4th hour: 0-30min FC rev's + 30-60min Extensive Reading/or watching I've decided to take this a little further... Flashcards are annoying me and have been for some time. For November and December I've decided to ditch them absolutely completely as an experiment. I'll continue studying thus I'll stil advance with my French. ie I'll either advance more slowly or more rapidly. At the very least I'll learn not to be so attached to the FC's and come 2015 I may decide to reintroduce them in a healthier way that will result in a healthier balance between FC's and the rest of my learning activities. Thus here's my new routine: 1st hour: French in Action 2nd hour: Extensive Reading 3rd hour: Assimil NFWE 4th hour: Extensive reading/or extensive watching I quietly doubt whether I can sustain this knowing my own OCD like approach to exposure to new words particularly with courses. However I'll certainly try. Can't do me any harm the way I see it. If I feel like it has my FC deck will still be there come 2015. Good luck to me, this could kill me... ahhh ahhhhhh ahhhhhhhhhhh! PS Certain studies of dedicated language students have found that flashcards are in fact very addictive. Addiction to substances is viewed as an innate yet newly constructed physiological or psychological drive that is extremely difficult to overcome. What drives one to seek the substance in question is the pleasure derived from the ingestion or injection of the substance, ie its psychological and physiological effects. Unusually there also exists a sub, or side group of 'study addicts' according to B.Morovich, 2013. However this is not necessarily viewed as negative behaviour, but it can become so. In terms of language students, tendencies to over utilize flashcards as a tool for learning could be so negative in fact that it mimics drug seeking behaviour. Yet scientists want to streamline the process and remove the anti-social behaviour associated with the flashcard seeking behaviour. Research currently underway at the University of Dordrecth, BS is looking into ways in which flashcards could be biologically streamlined into the nervous system, thereby bypassing the cumbersome issues associated with memory and constant reproduction. In other words new words to be learned would be introduced via various yet to be disclosed avenues of input and firmly logded directed into one's CNS. Such methods are not new to neuroscience, but are newer for second and third language acquisition. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4912 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 219 of 451 04 November 2014 at 8:23am | IP Logged | |||||
I've already tried eating flashcards, it doesn't work. For another method, read message 104 in this thread. I stopped making new cards about a month ago, because I was getting too many reviews per day. I'll start adding new cards again when my reviews are consistently below 100 per day, every day. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5479 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 220 of 451 04 November 2014 at 9:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
Haha, I like that dude's sense of humour (msg 104 in the link). Hadn't thought about eating flashcards myself, I could try eating my phone which has them all stored on it, but then how do I answer a call? Maybe I'll be able to do away with a cumbersome phone and have my own 'internal bluetooth' of sorts post ingestion. Excellent idea! Yeah Jeffers I know the feeling, hence my doing away for FCs for the moment, which I must say i'm rather apprehensive about (withdrawl symptom). Not sure 100% clean, cold turkey is the way to go yet. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 221 of 451 05 November 2014 at 12:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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Peter, if you use Anki, is love too see your summary graph.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5479 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 222 of 451 06 November 2014 at 12:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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@ Luke. I've been meaning to give Anki a go actually. I will try it, but i'm not ready for it just yet as I actually
don't mind my FC program, very versatile, but I do want to compare at some point. @ Jeffers I know the feeling of the build up of cards... and your idea of simply not entering new cards it's a very logical one indeed :) -------------------------------------- -------------------------------------- I think I will change my mind yet again on FCs tho. I'll continue with them, but just reduce them, so forget all that BS about me going FC cold turkey for the rest of the year, i'm just going to try a more sensible approach. Wow, I make such bold statements and then backflip almost immediately. Feel free to label me indecisive. So this is my new routine which believe it or not is a lot less FC heavy (feel free to ignore it completely, it'll be irrelevant in a week): • 1 heure intensive : French in Action pas de FCs • 1 heure extensive : 15 min FCs 45 min Lecture Limite de 1 nouveau mot dans FCs • 1 heure intensive : 15 min FCs 45 min Assimil NFWE Tous nouveaux mots dans FCs • 1 heure extensive : 15 min FCs 45 min série/film/lecture Limite de 1 nouveau mot dans FCs ------------------------------------- -------------------------------------- I thought I was past my smart phone dilemmas. I've been letting this major headache get in the way of my studying. Now I need to learn to draw my attention back to my routine, solve such dilemmas outside of study time and soldier on... I'm at risk here of really losing touch... Here goes :) PS On my routine commute home (didn't even feel like listening to anything on the way to work yesterday as I was so pissed at iTunes).. on the way home I wasn't overly keen on listening to my usual Rocket French (it's not that easy), so I opted to try something that I was partially motivated to do - I began Pimsleur IV. I must say the first unit seems like a walk in the park compared to Rocket French Premium Plus, so I'll mix it up from here on with some new and some older stuff. Fry on! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5479 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 223 of 451 10 November 2014 at 4:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've yet again slightly altered my study regime. It's unnecessary to post it, the main
thing is I study. I have been doing a bit each day but far less than i'd like. My phone yet again has devoured a lot of my time as I struggle to fathom how Apple could stuff things up so badly lately driving me to the point of insanity. Mind you just because I like their products doesn't mean i'm naive enough to consider them perfect, or squeaky clean for that matter, because they're not. ...anyway I have started French in Action. Currently on lesson 3. I should be further along as I'm basically going over things i've done 10 times before at least, but as stated i'm not studying as much as i'd like to be. These early lessons are child's play really and i'm keen to move on. I'm not writing anything i've written before and I don't see any need to view/listen to anything twice. early this year or late last year i was up to lesson 15, so i'm keen to move beyond that. 1998 I got to lesson 26, this time I want to make it to 52. Trick is to stop letting 'issues' get in my way no matter how much i feel compelled to resolve them.. i have everything i need without my iphone, that can be sorted in due time. Assimil NFWE Still reviewing, slow progress there, no new lessons covered Pimsleur 4 Underway and currently on units 3 and 4 Rocket French Premium Plus Hovering around the final lessons, dragging my feet Reading Although I did complete some easy reader material and a childrens book (very small book) I consider I just officially finished my first real book in French (not a book by the SC standard of 50 pages, but an entire book- don't have it with me unsure of nbr of pages). I'll go back through it again and read more of course, but I did make it to the end. The book is 'Vivre sans vaccins' anecdotal evidence of the health benefits of children raised without vaccines. Some parents gave the reg vaccines to some of their children then changed opinion and raised their later children without vaccines... interesting comparisons throughout the book. A very controversial subject. Easy reading as it is not bogged down in scientific jargon but contains accounts of experiences of ppl from around the world (ie straight forward language). As I enjoy reading about a lot of health related topics (usually not mainstream, often controversial) this has been an enjoyable book indeed :) Probably a good book to continue on with other tougher anti-vaccine related books I have that use the more scientific information. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 4010 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 224 of 451 10 November 2014 at 7:31am | IP Logged | |||||
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PeterMollenberg - congrats on finishing your first real book in French! :). Way to go!!
Glad to find someone who has started Pimsleur IV. After you complete a few more lessons, I would enjoy your thoughts on it.. I am nearly finished with Pimsleur III, And trying to get Pimsleur IV on an InterLibrary Loan (which is looking doubtful right now), So, it looks like I will need to purchase it, if the ILL doesn't work out. Therefore, I would appreciate your thoughts before I purchase it as it is a little pricey! Also, you have reminded me I still need to finish the last lessons of FIA. I have just done video and textbooks to-date. Do you do audio, workbooks, etc and do you also recommend that portion of the program? Keep up the great work! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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