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Developing Better Active Skills | ||
Tags: Activating a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Tyrion101 Senior Member United States Joined 3902 days ago 153 posts - 174 votes  Speaks: French | Message 1 of 7 09 February 2015 at 5:33am | IP Logged | ||
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My passive skills are awesome, I'm able to piece together things that are being said, in say written material in French, I can also listen on the radio, and follow along mostly with what is being said, though I still do not know all the vocab, but can fill in blanks when I do not know the words, and am often surprised that I get it right after checking up on my own translation. It's given me a great boost in confidence lately. However, my active skills still lag far behind, and Lang8 has helped in that a great deal. What else could I be doing to go from just recognizing the words, to actively using them on a more frequent basis?
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6586 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 2 of 7 09 February 2015 at 7:04am | IP Logged | ||
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While reading or listening, constantly ask yourself if you'd have said it like this, and if no, why. Consider also solving one problem at a time. Break up the problems into smaller ones that can be solved in one week or 20 hours at most.
What is your attitude to grammar? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Tyrion101 Senior Member United States Joined 3902 days ago 153 posts - 174 votes Speaks: French | Message 3 of 7 09 February 2015 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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If I understand your question, I believe knowing grammar is essential in language learning. I know the basic grammar of French, and some of the intermediate grammar as well (I also know lots and lots of words, though I still do not understand some of their uses yet) and am working on the more complex things that aren't said the way they are in English.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5251 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 4 of 7 09 February 2015 at 8:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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In addition to Serpent's excellent advice, if you want to develop more active skills in French, then there are ways to do that, even living in the US. Are you involved in a regular, scheduled, language exchange with native French-speakers who want to improve their English? You can start writing on French forums concerning topics that interest you. You can join groups on social media such as Google+, Facebook and Twitter. There's a group for every one and every interest.
You can start to develop "conversation islands" a la Boris Shekhtman's How To Improve Your Foreign language Immediately. Our skills develop as we need them and we tend to work on them to fulfill that need. It helps to have a reason to develop your skills such as, "I need to be prepared to speak to X in French about Y", "I want to comment on an interesting tweet I just read" or "I need to post about the film I watched last night" rather than just a vague "I'd like to be more active in French". Continuing on with your questions: When you listen, is this regular, daily, listening. How much listening to French do you do in a day, in a week? Are you watching a regular tv series? Are you listening to a daily podcast in French? Are you writing about what you watch and listen to on lang8, describing it? Are you actively helping French-speakers with their English on lang-8. Do you post there regularly? If so, ask someone to be a language exchanger partner. Are you also studying French actively with a course? Are you active in the language with native speakers outside of lang8? Do you follow French-speakers on twitter. Do you tweet in French? Are you involved in any French forums in any topic? Any French meetups within driving distance of your home? In other words, if you want to be more active, get a reason to be more active. The more active you are, the more you will need active skills and the more you will learn and the better you will be at them. You have to make it happen. Learning all aspects of a language requires a substantial amount of effort. Purchase link for How To Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately This book can help you get started. You have to do the rest yourself by finding a reason to be more active. Edited by iguanamon on 09 February 2015 at 9:44pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Tyrion101 Senior Member United States Joined 3902 days ago 153 posts - 174 votes Speaks: French | Message 5 of 7 09 February 2015 at 10:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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I do not listen so much anymore, but I have spent a good amount of my time listening to, or reading French, I've not really watched anything French yet, though it is nice now when I hear it on TV in shows I can tell people what the character, or person is saying when it is not something that everyone knows (Like, merci, beaucoup, etc.) I do try to spend a few minutes every day reading, my book is Harry Potter, book 1 (Thanks to whomever suggested it, I'm learning a lot of colloquial French.) Unfortunately French is the one language I have yet to find someone to talk to in. I also have both my phone and my iPad in French (Canadian, though it doesn't make THAT much of a difference.) I think Firefox is even in French, though it doesn't seem to change all that much from site to site. My podcasts, if I can find them are usually news, and science (space) related if I can find them. I like news broadcasts because you learn a lot about the culture, and lots of useful words in a formal setting (They also rarely try to offend, unless you find the wrong news source.) My biggest active difficulty is remembering when to conjugate what how. I have present tense down pretty good, and have been trying my best to work on future simple, and past. The other thing, that I do, the reason I started in the first place, was to listen to hockey in one of it's original languages, I listen to 98.5 Montreal quite frequently when I can, as that is where the NHL games are broadcast in French. I've tried my best to make it an immersion rich as possible. By the way, the space podcast is Ciel et Espace, and that is one of my hobbies, astronomy. Liaisons are another thing that are difficult to pick up on in text. I hope to improve that as well. Edited by Tyrion101 on 09 February 2015 at 10:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4088 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 6 of 7 09 February 2015 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | ||
You are? I don't remember it being particularly colloquial, myself. I don't have a perfect memory, of course, and my memory is strongly influenced by the critiques I've read complaining that the French translation first and foremost erases colloquialisms and accents in favour of instructing children on correct usage of the French language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tyrion101 Senior Member United States Joined 3902 days ago 153 posts - 174 votes Speaks: French | Message 7 of 7 10 February 2015 at 1:46am | IP Logged | ||
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I do not know about the print version, but the kindle version seems to be legitimate French... Edit: but then again, I am only learning. Edited by Tyrion101 on 10 February 2015 at 1:49am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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