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Bryan’s French with Assimil log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4977 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 13 21 September 2014 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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After two years of Spanish study, and finally making it to B1, I'm moving it to
"maintenance". Which shouldn't be too hard since I have a friend that I speak in Spanish with daily. I will try to make time to read in Spanish as well, so it doesn't get rusty. My next goal is to see how far I can get in French using Assimil New French with Ease along with native materials only. To be honest, I'm a false beginner, having done Michel Thomas French Foundation. When in France last year, I was able to ask for things such as where the metro was located and buying stamps, food, etc. Having said that, I'm sure I'm not even A1. My plan is: - Assimil. A lesson each day in the evenings. - MCD cards in Anki based on the lessons. - Lots and lots of listening. Each weekday I have a total of ~60 minutes commuting in the car. My plan is to listen to previous Assimil lessons on repeat. At work, I like to listen to RFI. At this point, I don't understand much. Just a word or phrase, here and there. But I think it will be useful to get the sounds and rhythm of the language and expect nothing else right now. - I also have about 45 minutes of gym time 3-4 times a week that I will probably use for listening to something. I'm debating on what the "something" should be. Suggestions are welcome. I'm hopeful that around lesson 30-40 I can start looking at simple native texts. Possibly with the Lingq or importing them into my Kindle with the Chrome plugin Klip.me. This worked really well for reading news articles in Spanish with the popup dictionary on the Kindle. Edited by bryanpeabody on 21 September 2014 at 8:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4977 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 13 21 September 2014 at 8:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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First update....
I've done Assimil lessons 1-4 so far. Nothing overly complicated in them. Although, I did pick up some new vocab and learned the imperative form to say things like "Let's...", "Let's go", for example. Today's lesson, 4, had an exercise about le or la for a given word. I found it a bit difficult. Picking the right one is much easier in Spanish. Maybe there is a general rule for French. Otherwise, I will just do my best to memorize them. So far, I like Assimil French much more than Assimil Spanish. For whatever reason, I just did not like the Spanish version. I'm also following EMK's (and others) suggestion on how to use Assimil. Basically, just relax, take what you can from the lesson and don't stress over what you don't know/understand. Expect to see the same words and grammar over and over again in future lessons. Until next time... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7197 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 3 of 13 21 September 2014 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Bonne chance Bryan!
Or, should I say, Mr. Peabody? Edited by luke on 21 September 2014 at 11:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4977 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 13 25 September 2014 at 3:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Finished lessons 4 and 5. Today will be the review lesson.
All in all, no real difficulties. Although, lesson 5 gave me a couple pronunciation difficulties. Specifically, “Il est absent.”. In the recording, I swear there is a “p” sound in there somewhere. Even after listening to it 15-20 times, I still think it’s there. Lesson 5 also introduced du, de la and des. In the exercises I got them right so I think I have a fairly good grasp on which to use and why. Hopefully it will come more naturally as I continue. So far, I'm enjoying Assimil. I think I've finally learned to not fight it or try to do too much. Just read, listen (over and over), read the grammar notes and speak out loud the lesson once I can understand the audio. Nothing more. So far, so good. Until next time... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sizen Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4331 days ago 165 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Catalan, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, German | Message 5 of 13 25 September 2014 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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In French, 'b' becomes 'p' before 's'. Words like "observer", "absoudre" and "absurde" are all pronounced with
a 'p' and not a 'b'. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4977 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 13 25 September 2014 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks Sizen! Now I know my ears weren't playing tricks on me :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5524 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 13 25 September 2014 at 4:42pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Never forget that deleting cards is good for you. :-)
In addition to Assimil lessons, you might want to consider music. At your level, this will work best if you find some songs you like, then listen to your favorites intensively at home. Basically, get a French song with English and French lyrics, and treat it like an Assimil lesson. After several passes through the song, you'll understand at least some of the lyrics. Then you can listen to it during a workout and burn those lyrics into your brain. Some good choices that might have some useful gym tracks: - MC Solaar 3-album MP3 pack (try "Ben Oui", "Da Vinci Claude"—these aren't his most "serious" tracks, but they might be good for the gym) - Stromae (try "Alors on danse") For lyrics in French, search for "<artist> <song name> paroles". For English, Google around a bit.
Yeah, this is great to try. And with your Spanish and English, plus 40 lessons of Assimil, you should be able to read quite early. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5254 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 8 of 13 25 September 2014 at 6:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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¡Bienvenido al foro, bryanpeabody! Good advice, as always, from emk. I suggest as well as using klip.me for porting to kindle, that you try the free open-source ebook conversion and management software calibre. You can copy and paste to a word/open office document, print to pdf or save to html, then import and convert to .mobi format easily. I make a lot of my own ebooks in this way.
A great source of diy bilingual texts is Global Voices.org these are contemporary "news" items sourced from social media and bloggers with translations in English and Spanish (often). For example, here's an article L'Asie Centrale et la Corée du Sud : plus proches que ce que l'on pense with translations in English and Spanish. You can try reading them when you're ready and read the translation to check your comprehension. There are many variations that can make this resource useful. Reading the Spanish text can help to maintain the language while you progress with French. With five minutes effort you can also make your own bilingual texts (word/open office doc with inserted two column, one row table then copy and paste TL left L1 or L3 right, don't copy and paste images- too much formatting work. With Global Voices it is better to copy and paste from the print versions). I find them to be quite helpful in the beginning stages of learning a language. I'm already able to read a lot of French thanks to my languages (especially Haitian Creole) and English. Speaking French? Forget it, I don't have a chance without study and practice, :). ¡Buena suerte con tus estudios en el francés, pero no olvide tu español! Edited by iguanamon on 25 September 2014 at 6:30pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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