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TAC’14 2ième - J’aimerais être bilingue | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5474 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 9 of 46 11 November 2010 at 6:53am | IP Logged |
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Une mise à jour bien attendue
Time for a long overdue update to this log. My boat was put away for the winter 2 weeks ago and I am now one week into my off-season language mission in Montréal. I have rented a furnished apartment on the plateau Mont-Royal and plan to stay until the end of March - although I can leave anytime with 30 days notice. I have been here before but only for one month at a time while enrolled at a language school. This time I will not be attending any classes. I know all the grammar I need for now and find interactions with other students of the same level to be almost a waste of time. I will however be using the methods of Benny Lewis (Irishpolyglot) whenever possible as well as my own study methods. I hope to visit native speakers in this region or other parts of the province once a week or so with the help of couchsurfing.org as I did back in June in Québec City. I will use conversationexchange.com to find conversation partners to start with but it would be nice to eventually socialize in French without the need to pay for it by speaking English in return. The first week was a bit slow but I did attend several meetings organized by meetup.com with good results. I spoke with 3 Français recently arrived from France and looking for work here. One of them had only arrived 2 days before, one just 2 weeks and the third 6 months. All were asking me what to expect from a Canadian winter - a shock perhaps! There was a couple Québécois at the meetup but they were harder to find than Les Français. I discovered that I don't need to limit the use of meetup.com to language related groups. There was a movie lovers group that was meeting at a cinema in my home apartment complex (15 floors below). At this event I met a very interesting fellow - a concert pianist born and raised in Montréal from francophone Swiss parents. Growing up, he had to learn to speak a perfect international French at home or his father would become angry and at school he had to speak a perfect Québécois French or his classmates would bully him. I have never met anyone who could demonstrate the differences as well. Although many people at this meetup were bilingual, they were happy to speak French when I explained why I was here. I read a recent thread on this site on bragging about language abilities. I don't think that is something I will ever need to worry about - here (meaning in Montreal) it always seems I am trying to catch up and everyone else is already bilingual. Plus I must be one of the only members of this site who does not desire to be a polyglot - fluently bilingual will be fine thanks. I just don't think I could maintain the needed determination to succeed at a language that required a 6+ hour plane trip to achieve true immersion. In other words I don't think I could learn a foreign language. Fortunately I don't consider French a foreign language - my home town is more than 65% francophone after all. Thats all for now. I will try to post updates from time to time. Edited by microsnout on 25 December 2010 at 3:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Adrean TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member France adrean83.wordpress.c Joined 6171 days ago 348 posts - 411 votes Speaks: FrenchC1 | Message 10 of 46 11 November 2010 at 6:47pm | IP Logged |
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Welcome back to your log. Great to see you taking the plunge and going immersion. It will be fascinating to hear how your efforts go. Personally I would be interested to hear about Montreal, a place in North America they speak French! I sometimes forget. Just to let you know I have never visited North America or South America for that matter, so I know next to nothing about Quebec. So feel free to jot down anything you find noteworthy.
Also very great to see you taking a very social approach to language learning. It's way more interesting for the people reading your log. I was just watching some videos by Benny the other day and I appreciate his method to language learning. Most of all I agree that some people may keep off speaking until they feel 'ready', I'm realising more and more that the day one feel's completely 'ready' will never truly arrive, best to go ahead and talk to people as you are doing. I'm going to begin going to a kind of speed dating event for language learners. 7 minutes in English, 7 in French and then you change partners. I look foward to it very much. Well look foward to hearing from you more often. Profitez bien de votre temps en Quebec! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5474 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 11 of 46 24 November 2010 at 8:26am | IP Logged |
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Surmonter le bilinguisme pour l'atteindre
A brief update after the first three weeks. Yes Adrean, its a place in North America they speak French but they also speak a lot of English here which can be a problem. I knew that of course which is why I originally thought of going to Quebec City (pop 700,000) which is about 95% francophone and has a much lower level of bilingualism. Montreal has a population of about 2 million (not including surrounding regions) of which about 65% are francophone. It is more convenient to visit Toronto from here however which is what I will do this weekend. Again, following the ideas of Irishpolyglot (Benny) I chose the larger city and find ways to deal with the bilingualism. For example there is a restaurant beneath this apartment complex where I occasionally eat. The waitress always greets me in French but had the habit of switching to English at some point later. I said nothing about it because I don't like to pressure anyone like that but I tried a small experiment. The third time I ate there I wore a t-shirt bearing a Quebec flag (Le fleurdelisé) and Voilà, she spoke no English. I didn't ask why, one can only speculate but I suspect this may not work in France. That incident reminded me of another of Benny's tricks which is to wear or carry something strange that will cause people to approach you and ask about it. It is a solution for those who find it difficult to approach strangers and start speaking a language they have not yet mastered. He used to walk on the beach with a stethoscope around his neck and of course people asked about it. The idea I came up with was inspired by a cruise I was on 4 years ago. I was with the host of a highly liberal american talk radio show and a group of his listeners. I had a t-shirt printed with the slogan "Has he mentioned yet tonight how much he hates these people?" On the ship of 3000+ passengers, other members of the group immediately knew that I was one of them and the other passengers were totally puzzled about what that meant. They kept asking, who is he, who are these people and why does he hate them? It definitely provoked conversations. I have ordered a new version of this shirt with the phrase "A-t-il encore mentionné ce soir, à quel point il déteste ces gens ?". I figure that as well as making people curious and inciting conversation it also (unlike the stethoscope idea) suggests the language to use which may be needed with this level of bilingualism. Thats all for now. oh and by the way Adrean, its "au Québec" not 'en'. Just like 'au Canada' : ) Edited by microsnout on 10 December 2010 at 7:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5474 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 12 of 46 17 December 2010 at 4:48am | IP Logged |
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Goals for 2011 (reprinted from the 'Language Goals for 2011' thread)
1er By spring, complete current French immersion project in Montreal with significant improvements in verbal fluency. If I need one of those vague descriptions lets call it "moderately advanced quasi-functional mostly-conversational fluency" 2ième Sit one of those DALF exams at the Alliance Française just to see what they are like. I don't care which one, either B2 or C1. I don't really think of my level in terms of these designations. 3ième In summer, voyage up the Saint-Laurence river in my sailboat into French speaking territory. Explore maritime areas of Quebec and small towns, meet new people, improve knowledge of Québécois culture, idiomatic expressions and geography. 4ième Visit my home town in Northern Ontario (which is now over 60% francophone) which I have not done in the 4 years since I started studying French. Sample Franco-Ontarien culture. 5ième Speak French better than Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper. 6ième Interact with a dozen people in Montreal in one day without anyone speaking English to me. 7ième In the spirit of Irishpolyglot, fool a Français into thinking I am Québécois for 30 seconds. As you can see, the wanderlust is killing me : ) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5474 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 13 of 46 21 December 2010 at 8:41am | IP Logged |
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Some thoughts on Yabla
Having studied over 200 of the videos on french.yabla.com, I thought I would record my impressions of it. First of all, Yabla is useful mainly for improving aural comprehension of real world native material. It should definitely not be relied on for learning grammar as there appears to be many grammatical errors in natural native speech like this. My first two complaints are that it contains too many music videos and not nearly enough Canadian content. Music lyrics are just not written the way people speak plus it is easy to study on your own as most CDs come with the lyrics. There was some music I quite liked however so that was good. As for the Canadian videos, I understand this is not the largest market for them. My biggest complaint is that almost all of the videos (maybe 90%) are in the context of news stories or documentaries with interviews and narration. As a result, I have become much better at listening to news stories and documentaries but not much better at movies and real world dialogs between multiple speakers. I think they failed to realize to what extent this affects the manner of speaking, choice of words and grammar. I would like to see a large number of additional videos extracted from movies or TV shows. Finally a really interesting discovery. They provide a button to slow down the speech (preserving pitch) but I now believe you are better off never using it. It would be useful if you did not have the text and needed to use it to determine what was said but this is not the case. You always have the text available. There were some videos which were clearly comprehensible except for a short burst of rapid speech from one person. I just moved on to the next video even though I could not make out that part. After studying about 150 videos, I started to review earlier ones and found to my surprise that some of these incomprehensible bursts of speech were now clear and I felt certain I could hear each word. I think that with repeated listenings and finding the same grammatical pattern in different contexts, my brain eventually made the connection and filled in any missed words. I do intend to finish all 300 or so videos - hopefully by mid February when my subscription runs out. Edited by microsnout on 21 December 2010 at 8:45am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Adrean TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member France adrean83.wordpress.c Joined 6171 days ago 348 posts - 411 votes Speaks: FrenchC1 | Message 14 of 46 21 December 2010 at 9:54am | IP Logged |
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Hey Microsnout, this may or may not make you a little peeved but they've made their
videos available free of charge on itunes as podcasts. I think they have over 100 there, along with their Spanish and German videos I think. My impressions are slightly different from yours. They have some great videos alongside some really dull videos. Dull being that guy sitting on some beach and blah blahing away. Interesting being the tours to interesting corners of Paris/France. I think the subtitles and the translations are incredibly well done. Out of the 33 videos or so I've seen I've only seen two music videos I think. To be honest I'm not using these videos as a study tool, I've gone through each video once just to find out something interesting or whilst being on public transport. I think I may decide to go through them in the new year with a notebook taking out unknown words or phrases eventually. How do you choose to go through these videos? Do you have a systematic approach, i:e you watch a certain amount of times, you move on once you know all the vocabulary etc.etc. I will be most interested to find out! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5474 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 15 of 46 22 December 2010 at 11:27pm | IP Logged |
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I start by watching/listening without the sub-titles to see how many words or phrases I fail to understand. Then
watch with text visible and pause occasionally to make notes and sometimes write out an interesting word or phrase. This helps me remember the spelling - I think my spelling is now actually better in French than English. Finally I re-watch without the sub titles to just focus on the listening. Then do the "game" and move on to the next video. When reviewing videos for a 2nd or greater time, I spend much less time on each - no pausing, no notes - just listening to help ingrain some words and grammatical patterns. It is interesting to see how studying many videos makes earlier ones easier to understand than repeated viewing of one could - if that makes any sense. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5474 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 16 of 46 23 December 2010 at 7:51am | IP Logged |
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Entracte...
Today is not the end of my immersion mission here in Montreal but it is time for a break. Tomorrow I return to Toronto on the train but I will be back here by January 3 at the latest and expect to stay until the end of March. To finish off the year, this evening we had a great party at La Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal which has been hosting its "Club de conversation française" every Wednesday evening for about 5 years. I have learned a bit about what works well and what does not over the last month and half. The meetings organized by meetup.com for English-French exchanges have been a bit disappointing - sometimes worthwhile, sometimes not. People who want to practice English are on one side of the café and those who wish to practice French on the other. The flaw here is obvious, all the francophones are on the other side!! I end up at a table with immigrants from all over the world, not one a native speaker and often all at a lower level than myself. It is actually a better idea to join the English speaking table, help people with English and try to meet someone who wants to meet privately. The other problem is the immigrants who come to practice English and neither speak nor study French. I sympathize with their need but they should have their own group because that goes against the spirit of a French- English exchange group. A much better meeting is held every Tuesday here, organized by meetIn.org. These meetings attract smaller numbers (8-10 typical) but avoid the problems mentioned above. Everyone speaks French for the first hour and English for the second. There has always been a mix of francophones and anglophones at each meeting. Last week for example we were only 6 total with one Français and one Québécoise. I only missed one of these meetings and found out that there were no anglophones at all that week - just Français and Québécois all complaining to the host that no anglophones showed up! Grrrr! The meetings at the SSJB (Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste) were also always worthwhile. The group is divided into 3 parts (beginner, intermediate and advanced) or sometimes more if there are more francophones present. There is always a native francophone serving as focal point of each group. There is no English involved in these meetings since the SSJB exists for promoting French in Quebec (et de l’indépendance du Québec). I have met several good language partners using conversationexchange.com but have met each only once so far. I expect to pursue this further in January. One of the two, un Québécois who is enrolled in an English program at McGill University was especially good - but I discovered that I can't explain phrasal verbs and gerunds too well - I just speak the language, I don't study it! The other was a woman who was the only one in her family born here in Montreal - her parents and siblings all born in France. She has the lowest level of English I have encountered so far - really struggles to put a sentence together - so I will have to work hard to help her since she wants to travel to New York in the spring to enjoy some English theater. Also well worthwhile have been non-language related outings organized by meetup.com. There has always been a mix of francophones and anglophones (many bilingual) and plenty of opportunities to speak French. Most memorable were a breakfast outing to a very Québécois restaurant called "Madame Bolduc" and a comedy club evening. Fortunately the comedy was in English - I can't follow stand up comedy in French yet. The other two at my table were francophone however which provided good conversation. Finally a word of advice to reduce the chance of people speaking to you in English. Don't ever use only the absolute minimum number of words either in responding to someone or initiating an interaction. Say something extra - anything. Nothing sends the message that you are uncomfortable with a language more clearly than saying only the minimum words necessary. Edited by microsnout on 23 December 2010 at 7:53am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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