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What after Assimil Using French?

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14 messages over 2 pages: 1
microsnout
TAC 2010 Winner
Senior Member
Canada
microsnout.wordpress
Joined 5406 days ago

277 posts - 553 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French

 
 Message 9 of 14
17 March 2015 at 4:22am | IP Logged 
pesahson wrote:
... you should make listening comprehension your priority.


I agree. Consider using Yabla

It has over 700 short videos with accurate French captions and English translations, plus the ability to slow
down and loop difficult sections.
1 person has voted this message useful



Speakeasy
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 3987 days ago

507 posts - 1098 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 10 of 14
17 March 2015 at 3:32pm | IP Logged 
I have used Yabla for practicing German.

I found that their collection of videos was better than what I could find on Youtube. However, I was not overly impressed by their grading of the videos, in terms of difficulty.

Finally, you should be aware that the Yabla payment function is set, by default, to "recurring billing", which means that your credit card will be charged indefinitely, unless you turn it off in your account settings ... Lire les petits caractères!
1 person has voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4944 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 11 of 14
17 March 2015 at 5:47pm | IP Logged 
For comprehension and to learn to think in the language (which is necessary for
speaking), I recommend tv series. A few htlalers, myself included but you might be
very interested in emk's log for exemple, have found dubbed series to be very useful.
Some tips on good series to start with :Grimm, Lost Girl, Buffy, Eureka. Later, you
might want to switch to native ones, such as Profilage.

Reading is not a bad thing, especially as a part of immersion. It does affect your
speaking skill as well, even though less directly. Les Trois Musquetaires is an
excellent choice, the language is very modern, considering the expectations from such
an old book, it is fun and so on. But you might want to read some modern books as
well.

Another thing that is among the pillars of good quality speaking skills: grammar. I
think Assimil teaches a lot but grammar is less systematic there and you might want to
continue studying it. One of the most popular grammarbook/workbook series is Grammaire
Progressive by CLE in four volumes.

Really, having gone through both Assimil levels, I think you should be ready for real
input. Don't let it scare you if you do not understand that well the first episode or
the first few pages of authentic French, you are very likely to catch up with the
originally targeted public: the natives :-)

Large amounts of native input bring lots of advantages, no matter whether on their own
or supplemented with courses or even tutors/teachers.

For speaking practice, some htlalers have good experience with finding conversation
partners on Italki.

I wish I could give you any advice about finding a job in France but I know nearly
nothing about it, so I can just wish you good luck. Your plans sound awesome and I'd
be excited to read more from you.
7 persons have voted this message useful



chaotic_thought
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 3477 days ago

129 posts - 274 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Dutch, French

 
 Message 12 of 14
17 March 2015 at 8:25pm | IP Logged 
I am learning French at beginner-intermediate level and after finishing a basic course I am supplementing my continued learning with audio material from librivox.org. They have volunteers who produce free audio recordings of classic works like Les Trois Mousquetaires. Go over there and search for things in French for which there is also an English translation available (e.g. at project Gutenberg).

Some people call it "LR" method but I'm not sure. For the first pass of the book Les Trois Mousquetaires I listened to the native recording of each chapter while sight reading the English version of the same chapter. Important is to only listen to it one time. Don't "go back" to something that seems tricky. Otherwise it will just take too long to get through it (all recordings add up to about 26-28 hours so you need at least 1hr per day to get through it in a reasonable amount of time).

For the second pass you do the same, but you sight read the original version while listening to the recording. I'll probably give it another month before I do the second pass, otherwise it's kind of redundant because the details of the story are still fresh in my mind.

2 persons have voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4944 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 13 of 14
18 March 2015 at 10:19am | IP Logged 
Audiobooks are a great thing as well, thanks for the note, chaotic_thought. Apart from
librivox, there are as well other sources, such as http://www.litteratureaudio.com/ which
is really good, or http://www.audiocite.net/ which I just found when looking for the link
above. Audiobooks might be a nice stepping stone between Assimil and the tv series as
they tend to be slower, more standard and the speakers tend to be among the best
available.
1 person has voted this message useful



Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4844 days ago

2151 posts - 3960 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

 
 Message 14 of 14
24 March 2015 at 12:31am | IP Logged 
It sounds like you need a lot of listening practice. Audio books are great. Podcasts great
too. You said beginner podcasts are too easy, but have you tried L'avis de Marie? It covers
a lot of interesting topics and is spoken a bit slowly. Audio Coeur de l'Histoire is a
podcast for native speakers, but I find it much easier to follow than other fully native
podcasts.

And I fully support the idea of using FSI. It's free, thorough, challenging and free. (It's
twice as free as other courses. ;) Plus it has like 80 hours of audio.

And as Cavesa mentioned, watch TV. And films. If nothing else, it will give you something to
talk about.

Finally, get into French music of whatever style you like. Whenever you're tired of studying
put on some music and keep your immersion going.

Edited by Jeffers on 24 March 2015 at 12:35am



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