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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 17 of 124 27 April 2010 at 5:49am | IP Logged |
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Japanese: My progress is Japanese has really stalled over the past few days, for two reasons. First of all, the stereo system in my car broke last week, so I’ve had a lot less listening time for Pimsleur. Juggling between Pimsleur French and Pimsleur Japanese has also been pretty time-consuming, so I’ve been alternately days – hence, the lack of real progress in either language. Secondly, the Pimsleur Japanese lessons somehow feel like they’ve gotten very hard. I suspect that my brain is starting to feel fatigued from juggling multiple languages, and thus, is choosing to expend less cognitive energy on my weakest and lowest-priority language. Thus, I’ve been listening multiple times to each Pimsleur lesson, trying each time to catch progressively more of the vocabulary and the structures. I'm only up to Lesson 6 -- still got a long way to go!
French: I’m currently up to Lesson 16 of Pimsleur French III and Lesson 55 of Assimil New French with Ease. I’ve been making good progress with Assimil, and have been very happy with the active wave thus far. I really feel that back-translating has really helped me solidify my knowledge of the vocabulary, the spelling, and to a very minor degree, the grammar of French. In particular, I’ve been taking closer note of small details such as contraction of “de le” into “du” and concordance/agreement issues between nouns and adjectives, etc. On another note, I just received the Visual Education French basic vocabulary flash cards in the mail a few days ago, but I haven’t had a chance to go through them yet. The cards are flimsier and more bare-bones than I had hoped (especially compared to the outstanding “Chinese in a Flash” cards that I used in the past), but I expect that they will be useful to drill down the most crucial vocabulary words in the language. I am not currently using Anki for my French learning, so I think I’ll try to set a goal of getting through all the Vis-Ed flash cards before my Paris trip in August. Cantonese: My Cantonese midterm is this tomorrow, so I’ve been reviewing grammar structures and vocabulary in preparation for my test. It’s wonderful how the vocabulary that we’re learning does come in handy– at least to my daily life. For instance, we covered banking and finance terms last week in class, including the Chinese words for bank accounts, interest rates, inflation, etc. This past weekend, my boyfriend and his family got into a fairly detailed discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of buying property in Hong Kong – it was great to be able to follow along during their discussion of mortgages and interest rates! Cambodian: I also have to admit that I’ve been derailed a bit this past weekend by language wanderlust. I just noticed that the outstanding FSI language courses website just posted the audio for Contemporary Cambodian: Introduction – 54 audio cassettes worth of recorded material. I ended up spending a few hours on Saturday reading through lessons and listening to the audio recordings after feeling a huge temptation to go through the course and learn more Khmer. Of course, getting through that FSI course would be a huge endeavor (it consists of 60 comprehensive units and learning to read Khmer, in itself, would be really difficult), so I’m shelving that for the moment. But actively studying Cambodian is definitely on my wish list! Edited by mike245 on 18 May 2010 at 8:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 18 of 124 18 May 2010 at 8:39pm | IP Logged |
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I’ve been delinquent in posting these past few days, largely because of traveling and class work, but fortunately, I do have some progress to report.
French: I finally finished up Pimsleur French III last week. The last few lessons were fairly easy, especially considering that most of it was a review of what I have been covering in Assimil. However, it was very helpful to go through the vocabulary and really solidify my knowledge of the basic grammar structures. Pimsleur doesn’t go much into the imperfect tense nor does it cover the subjunctive mood, but the last half of French III tried to cover the future tense. I can certainly see how the course is incomplete for anyone seeking true spoken fluency in a language, but it has been very helpful in getting me comfortable with French – and I definitely learned much more in that course than I did in two quarters of French at my local community college! I’m also up to Lesson 76 of Assimil French (passive wave) and Lesson 29 (active wave). The active wave is moving a little faster, because I’ve been occasionally taking two lessons at a time, whereas the passive wave lessons have started to get tougher. In particular, it seems like from Lesson 71 onwards, the speakers are talking a bit faster and there are more vocabulary words crunched into each lesson. The lessons are also going beyond what I learned in Pimsleur and what I can understand from Spanish, so each lesson is taking more time for me to get up to speed. However, I can see that my passive vocabulary is really improving, as well as my comfort level with more complex grammar structures. Hopefully, I can get to Lesson 100 by graduation in a few weeks, and I think I am on track to finish the course by the time I head out to Paris in August. I have ordered Assimil Using French from amazon.com, so I am prepared to use that volume to supplement my immersion classes in Paris. Japanese: Things have still been going fairly slowly. I’m up to Lesson 11 of Japanese II. I’ve decided to make it my goal to finish up Japanese II and perhaps make some inroads into Japanese III before I go on my trip, but I don’t have high expectations. It is simply too hard to be juggling so many languages at once, and I don’t want to sacrifice my French learning just to get up to tourist-level skills in Japanese. I do feel a little disappointed that I haven’t made much progress in Japanese, but I keep reminding myself that my real goal is to get some proficiency in French first, with basic survival skills in Japanese. After I visit Japan, I’ll decide then whether learning more Japanese (at some point in the future) will be worth the time and effort. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 19 of 124 22 August 2010 at 11:56am | IP Logged |
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I feel a little guilty not posting sooner, but from mid-May to end of July, I was
incredibly busy with final exams, graduation, and then studying for the bar exam. My 14-hour days of intensive legal studying and exam preparation were not at all conducive to spending any time with language learning! I hate to admit it, but I've put Japanese on hold indefinitely in order to concentrate on my French. Not only was focusing on two languages mentally exhausting, but I also felt that I wasn't making any noticeable gains or even retaining much of the language. As I will be in Japan solely in a tourist capacity, I am hoping that the few phrases I remember from Pimsleur Japanese I and II will be sufficient. Maybe some day, I will return to Japanese -- especially after French and if I find that I want to make Japan one of my regular travel destinations, but in the meanwhile, I think I have my hands full with learning French and trying to at least maintain some of my other languages. I am actually writing this post from Paris, where I just finished up two weeks of intensive language study with Langue Onze, a fantastic non-profit language school in the 11th. For an excellent rate, they offer 20 hours of language instruction a week (4 hours a day), all in French and with many opportunities to speak in class. They also put me up in a homestay with a very friendly French couple that did not speak much English, which provided lots of challenging opportunities to speak more French. For those wondering just how far Assimil New French with Ease takes you -- I had completed about 80 lessons of Assimil French by end of May and the entire Pimsleur French I-III. After that, I did not even look at a single French book or listen to anything in French. In middle of June, I took a placement test offered by Langue Onze, and this was followed by a brief oral exam on my first day of classes. Based on those results, they placed me in a B2 level class! While I dare not pretend that I am actually at the B2 level after such meager study of French, I can certainly appreciate that IF I had truly mastered all 113 lessons of Assimil French, a B2 level would certainly not be out of reach. More likely, however, my comprehension skills were likely at a B1 level, whereas my active skills were at A2. However, my good accent (thanks to Pimsleur) and my knowledge of lots of elegant phrases, slang, and useful, native-like expressions (thanks to Assimil), combined with my passive knowledge (thanks to my knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese) probably made me appear more proficient than I actually was. The teachers all seemed genuinely shocked when I told them that my only formal instruction in French was a single semester of French class more than ten years ago, and that everything I had learned since then was via a self-taught method. The first week of intensive French felt almost impossible. All of my classmates were actually quite conversant in French and most were native speakers of Spanish, Italian or Portuguese, so they knew quite a bit. I felt that I used every single bit of knowledge that I had gained from Assimil and Pimsleur, and that I was still struggling to stay above water. By the second week, however, my comprehension skills had noticeably improved and I was able to speak basic French with some degree of ease. I was originally worried that learning French on my own without input from native speakers would result in terrible mispronunciation, but I have not had any trouble being understood by people here -- and not once has someone switched to English in response to my speaking in French. I think it's still going to be a long way until I reach a comfortable level of conversational ability, but as it is, I can understand about 85% of spoken French -- including movies and television -- and I can hold basic conversations with everyone from taxi drivers and waiters to classmates and my host family. Needless to say, these two weeks have been wonderful in bolstering my confidence, validating my progress, and strengthening my interest in the French language. Maybe I won't ever get to the level of "fluency" but it seems like a reasonable level of conversational ability is not completely out of reach. I am hoping to continue my language studies when I get to the US -- I plan to finish Assimil New French with Ease and then plod my way through Assimil Using French, French in Action, and the Living Language Ultimate French volumes. Maybe after that, I'll be able to come back to Paris again for another immersion program where I can really take advantage of the speaking opportunities here! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 budonoseito Pro Member United States budobeyondtechnRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5654 days ago 261 posts - 344 votes Studies: French, Japanese Personal Language Map | Message 20 of 124 22 August 2010 at 2:24pm | IP Logged |
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That sounds like a great reward after the Bar Exam.
I am glad to hear about Assimil and Pimsleur as that is my main method of learning French right now. I also watch the FIA videos but they are quickly exceeded my vocabulary. Time to start at the beginning again. We are thinking about taking a trip to Quebec next year so that is good motivation to continue my French. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 21 of 124 23 August 2010 at 10:25am | IP Logged |
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Budonoseito --
Yes, this has been a wonderful language learning vacation! Lots of my friends thought I was crazy to go from cramming bar subjects to intensive cramming of French, but it has been a lot of fun here. And of course, learning French is so much more pleasurable that studying all sorts of arcane common law principles. Even little things like understanding the captions and write-ups for the artwork at the Louvre or making restaurant reservations in French make language learning feel so very worthwhile. I just noticed that you are also studying French/Japanese. Are you using Pimsleur and Assimil for both? Good luck with your studies! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 22 of 124 31 August 2010 at 2:56am | IP Logged |
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After three weeks in Paris, I am finally back in the US. I don't start work until November, so I still have two months off -- but I will be leaving on Sunday for a three week trip to Asia. The first 10 days will be in Japan. It will be my first time in the country, and hopefully, the stay will be pleasant! I do think I will try to invest some time this week to refreshing my very scant knowledge of Japanese, so that I can at least have a few words of survival-level tourist phases.
I also likely need to refresh my knowledge of Mandarin and Cantonese, as we will be spending some time in Beijing, Xi'an, and Hong Kong. I don't actually need much Cantonese to get by in Hong Kong (as everyone else I'm traveling with is already fluent in Cantonese), but I do like being able to speak at least some Chinese when I'm there. However, no one in our group speaks Mandarin very well, so it will probably be helpful at least to be able to get back to the point where I can ask for directions, talk with cab drivers, and order at restaurants. I do recall that the last time I was in Beijing, it was extremely difficult to get around even speaking some Mandarin myself and traveling with a friend who was orally fluent although illiterate in the written language. At least this time, we can read the street signs! Right now, though, I am newly re-energized for my French studies. I am currently on Lesson 103 of Assimil French (passive wave) and Lesson 67 (active wave). Compared with the original 99 lessons of Assimil, which were relatively straightforward and manageable, the recently-added lessons at the end seem much harder and longer. Even after three weeks in Paris, including 40 hours of instruction in French, these lessons are still very challenging! I am hoping, however, to get through the passive wave this week, and get to Lesson 75 of the active wave before I leave for Asia. I do plan on bringing both New French with Ease and Using French with me on my trip, so I can continue my studies. I've also decided to slowly incorporate other methods back into my studies. I reviewed the first four chapters of Ultimate French yesterday night, which was very helpful. Studying grammar is not my favorite activity, but it is definitely less painful once I already have a good base in the language (from Assimil). Yesterday, I also re-watched Episode 10 of French in Action, and was pleasantly surprised that I understood a lot more than the previous time. I can certainly appreciate that, at a minimum, my coursework and my studies with Assimil have improved my listening comprehension quite a bit. I think I will try to get through at least one episode a day until I finish all of the videos -- and then put FIA on hold for a bit before re-watching the videos over. I also completed Unit 1.1 and Unit 1.2 of FSI Basic French today, which was okay but not very interesting. I am glad, however, that I worked through Pimsleur and most of Assimil before starting FSI -- the pace of Basic French is a lot faster! I do believe that the audio-lingual approach works: We used oral drills in my Portuguese class years ago, and they definitely helped my oral fluency in the language, and I can still remember the phrases I drilled several years ago using FSI Chinese. However, the approach is also dreadfully boring. Thus, for the next several weeks, I will try to experiment with using FSI French as a supplemental tool -- just to drill grammar points, word order, etc., but not actually using the materials for grammar explanations or vocabulary. I doubt I will have the endurance or interest to repeat drills to perfection -- but I suspect that even going through each tape once or twice will help dramatically with my oral production. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 23 of 124 02 September 2010 at 2:25am | IP Logged |
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Assimil: Currently up to Lesson 105 of the passive wave and Lesson 69 of the active wave. I didn't have a computer with me in Paris so I was only back-translating the active wave orally -- yesterday I went back and transcribed out translations of Lessons 43-53. Surprisingly, I still remembered almost all of the dialogs and could translate them with minimal difficulty. My orthography, however, still leaves something to be desired -- I tend to forget or use the wrong accent marks.
FSI French: Finished Unit 1 drills today at the gym. I've noticed that they are less boring when coupled with something less keeping me busy -- such as jogging on an elliptical, etc. Hopefully, I will be able to get through Units 2 and 3 before I leave for Asia on Sunday. Ultimate French: Went through Chapters 5 and 6 yesterday. Much of the material is review, except for some useful grammar points. I've been taking an Assimil-like approach -- hoping to cover the material quickly the first time through, and then review it again in progressive iterations. French in Action: Currently up to Lesson 16. I finally figured out how to digitize the FIA videos and have transferred them to my iPod. I watched one episode yesterday before bed, one episode this morning when I woke up, and then one episode at the gym. It's amazing now to come back to FIA after my recent burst of studying -- I've noticed that my comprehension has improved dramatically. I think a few months ago, my understanding of the storyline dialog was about 40% and my understanding of Prof Capretz was about 75-85%. Now, I'm understanding about 80-90% of the storyline dialog, and 95-100% of Prof Capretz's explanations. It's also fun to recognize all the street names and landmarks in the videos! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 24 of 124 21 September 2010 at 3:50am | IP Logged |
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Assimil: I finished up the passive wave of New French with Ease (all 113 lessons), and
I am currently up to Lesson 79 of the active wave. Just a few days ago, I went through and listened once through to the dialogs from Lessons 30-60, and was very happy that I still could remember and understand everything. My progress with Assimil feels slow because it is so gradual and so enjoyable, but looking back, it is nice to see just how much I've been able to learn through the past several months of self study. In many ways, French is starting to "sink in." I don't have to think anymore about the genders of nouns, as the right one just comes out. Similarly, I don't have to think about when to use the imperfect and when to use the compound past. I still have trouble with some conjugations and my spelling is pretty awful, but there are many phrases and conjugations that come naturally now. Surprisingly, I still remember a huge number of useful sentences from Assimil verbatim! I've also started Using French, and I am currently up to Lesson 3 of the passive wave. The book feels slower than where New French with Ease leaves off, but I still feel that it is challenging in the level of vocabulary, the grammatical constructions, and the level of explanations they put into their notes. I think that whereas NFWE as very much designed for a "lazy" learner, Using French seems more serious. This makes sense, but it also means that I probably need to buckle down and start learning from grammar, rather than just repeating dialogs and memorizing them. FSI French: I just finished Unit 4 and am moving on to Unit 5. I was worried that the numbers drills would be extremely difficult since numbers are my weakness in all my other L2s, but surprisingly, it wasn't so bad at all. I am a little slow with the 70s and the 90s because it forces me to do a little arithmetic, but I was able to get through the Unit 4 drills with 95% accuracy. The only real difficulty I had was with transcribing the rapidly spoken numbers in only of the drills -- there were a few that were too quick for me to process! French in Action: Currently up to Lesson 26. I am really finding the videos very charming and interesting, and they are really helping to beef up my listening comprehension. I haven't really used the textbook that includes all the transcripts, so I've been forcing myself to pay close attention. I can still understand pretty much everything that Prof. Capretz says and a large part of what the characters say, but every so often, there will be a dialog between the characters that is almost incomprehensible because it is too fast or uses too many vocabulary words. I am glad, however, that I waited until I worked through most of Assimil before coming back to FIA, as this really beefed up my vocabulary. The thing about listening comprehension is that it requires both listening and comprehension -- even if I somehow trained my ear to hear and parse out the sounds of French, I still need to know the vocabulary words in order to understand! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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