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PMs TAC 2015 crazy? French course mission | ||
Tags: TellMeMore | Fluenz | Linguaphone | Flash cards | Michel Thomas | Self-Study | Spaced Repetition (SRS) | Diploma/Certificate | Study Plan | Fluency | Dutch | Pimsleur | FSI | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Assimil | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5468 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 33 of 451 28 February 2014 at 7:32am | IP Logged | |||||
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FRANÇAIS
Heures d'etudes 2014 (Hours of Study 2014) Date: & nbsp;28/02/14 Hrs,min: C150,36 + A49,20 + L10,30 + R3 Total: 213,26 Jours (days): 59 Moy. de l'an (Average of the year): 3,37 ---------------------------------- C = Cours (Courses) A = Audio seulement (Audio only) L = Lecture (Reading) R = Regarder ; films français etc (Watching; French movies etc) ---------------------------------- Les mois: -------- février: (February) C49,55 + A21,30 + L7 + R3 Total: 80.25 Moy. du mois: 2,52 (Average for the month) ---------------------------------- janvier: (January) &nb sp; C101,41 + A27.50 + L3,30 Total: 133,01 Moy. du mois: 4,17 (Average for the month) ---------------------------------- Les Cours: Assimil NFWE: 75ème leçon (75th lesson) FIA: Leçon 14 (Lesson 14) Fluenz: niveau 3, leçon (level 3, lesson 11) FSA Mastering French niveau 1: Unité 4 (level 1, Unit 4) Hugo: revue (review) Linguaphone All talk: complété et remplacé avec Rocket French ---------------------------------- Alors, j'ai fait beaucoup moins d'études en février qu'au mois de janvier. Mais J'ai quand-même fait beaucoup :) Le 19 mars je vais passer l'examen B1 en français à l'Alliance Française. Après ça le but est novembre B2 j'espère (mais puisque ma femme est enceinte et nous allons acueillir l'arrivée de notre bébé fin d'avril, je ne sais pas si sera-t-il possible de réssir à l'examen au mois de Novembre. On verra :) ------------------------------------- translation: So I did a lot less studies in February compared to the month of January. But I still did a lot :) On the 19th of March i'm going to sit a B1 exam at the Alliance Française. After that the goal is November B2 I hope (but as my wife is pregnant and we're going to welcome the arrival of our baby at the end of April, I don't know if it's possible to pass the exam in November. We'll see :) 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 34 of 451 28 February 2014 at 9:19am | IP Logged | |||||
Congratulations! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5468 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 35 of 451 28 February 2014 at 9:47am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks very much Luke :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5468 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 36 of 451 01 March 2014 at 1:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm hitting a little bit of a wall....
... no it's not so much the hours of study or the courses, rather wanderlust. I'm starting to consider picking up Dutch again, 1 hour a day, while the rest of my study time remains devoted to improving my French. Although how much time that will be may not be as much as I'd like. Why Dutch? Well in recent times i have realised it was a bad idea for me personally to do more than one language at once. Mind you I was not as consistent with my efforts. Anyway, while my wife and I await a new addition to our family having just bought a house in a little town outside of Melbourne but still within reach of employment in the city (ie life is changing)... I'm fretting. Fretting that I may not be able to return to Europe, and may not be able to continue learning languages (time issue) effectively. Anyway I've been full-steam ahead focusing on French with an intention (i'm a nurse, so is my wife) to eventually pass the B2 and find employment in Geneva whilst living across the border in France for some time (i'm secretly hoping for a whole lot of time) with my wife and a new child in tow. My wife is happy with with idea. But her French is almost non-existent... To add to that, Switzerland has just voted no to immigration en masse which basically means both foreign workers and the Frontaliers (border hoppers- work in Switzerland, live in France for example) may soon be restricted rather significantly. How much remains to be seen. They cannot completely restrict it as a large majority of nurses working in Geneva are sourced from outside of Switzerland (usually France) as they can't meet their own demands. As a side note, the wage and ratio of nurses to patients in Switzerland is much better than France, and finding employment in France as an Australian trained nurse is a nightmare- no recognition of my wife's more advanced qualifications either. So now the Geneva door is no longer open and only ajar... and we're beginning to see that this plan may not come to fruition, the potential for my wife being able to work there is slim (non EU citizen, not enough French, Swiss laws changing). She holds a masters in nursing but as mentioned her French is not so great and her motivation not that strong. Option B: I never thought i'd hear these words from my wife's mouth but one morning she said to me. Perhaps we should consider returning to the Netherlands. Okay- a bit of background- We went to the Netherlands in 2011 for 5 months and attempted to gain decent (nursing) positions but were unsuccessful solely because we were not at a B2 level of Dutch (a requirement for those who obtained their degrees outside the EU). We would have reached the required level, BUT my wife only wanted to stay one year it turned out, so i thought, instead of studying Dutch madly for the rest of the time we are in NL why not travel? I mean what's the point of spending all your time to reach B2 only to leave again, may as well enjoy what Europe has to offer..... thus 2 months in Spain and 6 weeks in France ensued with some other short trips. Backtracking again, upon arrival in the Netherlands my wife was offered a nursing position in the paediatric hospital in Rotterdam. Her qualifications were in the words of the intervewer above everyone else's there and they definitely wanted to employ her... but upon verification with HR, no B2, no can do. My wife now thinks it may be better to return to Holland (better the devil you know- she was not overly keen on the Dutch nor their culture, although she didn't despise it) so that she can at least gain some decent employment and she already knows the Dutch cultural system to some degree. Another side note- job satisfaction is a higher priority for my wife than myself. She is very 'into' nursing. I'm very 'into' languages. Her Dutch would now be A2 although i'm sure she reached close to B1 while there, so passing a B2 in a couple of years is a realistic-ish goal. She still lacks enthusiasm for language learning but hasn't reach the stages of becoming fully independent, so i think that could change. Anyway this is why i'm thinking of reintroducing 1 hour of Dutch a day. In a couple of years i'll not only have (fingers crossed) passed a B2 in French and keep on improving but (fingers crossed again) have passed a B2 in Dutch and my wife too (all fingers crossed). Maybe i'm dreaming. Sometimes I really think i'm full of myself, because I am. Mind you I will keep pursuing my ambitions nontheless. I'm inviting anyone to comment here. Why hesitate with Dutch? What's the problem? Is it dangerous to pick up a 2nd language while actively trying to improve L2 (French) in a substantial way? (My Dutch 'was' at prob B1.2 or so). My French right now (i'm guessing) is only a little better but much more present (Dutch fading). PM 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 3999 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 37 of 451 13 March 2014 at 3:33am | IP Logged | |||||
Best of luck on your upcoming exam! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5468 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 38 of 451 17 March 2014 at 10:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
Merci beaucoup Mohave :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5468 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 39 of 451 20 March 2014 at 5:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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B1 exam completed...
Now the wait for the results (1 month). Ok so it was relatively straight fwd. I did find the listening section rather challenging (other forum members' comments come to mind here when they advised I needed to hear much more French from sources in which the speech is spoken naturally and thus relatively quickly, as opposed to structured progressive courses that I can pause whenever I like)....I think i'd be lucky to get more than 50% for that particular section. But I only need 5 or more out 25 for each section, provided my overall mark is greater than 50%. Speaking was slightly challanging towards the end, otherwise ok (i found myself avoiding some verbs or their tenses at times just because i was nervous about slowing down or getting things wrong). Reading was easy and writing almost a breeze. On the whole I'm certainly expecting to pass, and at this stage I believe a fail would be a joke considering how much studying i've done over the years. However better doing it more effectively late than never. I'm still of the opinion than i'm currently hovering somewhere between B1 and B2. So, B2 is next target. Provided I can keep up consistent studying I should be able to pass the B2 in Nov or next March depending on how well I progress. In the meantime as well as continuing my French studies and taking stock of my weak points (listening & speaking- confidence/familiarity= practise) in French and working on them I've started Dutch again. Just one hour a day is my aim and I'll be mainly reviewing old material for several months. I'm doing that because I will gain a sense of accomplishment out of 'mastering' things before moving on, as well as getting value for what I've spent good money on, and also because I don't want to challenge myself much in Dutch while working predominantly on French (bringing all the old Dutch in my brain to the forefront is sufficient for now). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5468 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 40 of 451 31 March 2014 at 8:05am | IP Logged | |||||
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Here's an update of my activities for the month of March. Once again I've dropped down in the number of
hours I have managed to study. However it's been my busiest month yet in terms of juggling language learning with other pursuits. In short a new job (i do have 3 jobs but they are all part time so i'm not working anymore than anyone else doing full time work in general, but starting a new job always comes with a bit of extra time investment), a lot of cycling training for an event, multiple appointments, and picking up Dutch again. Perhaps my desperate push to improve my French became a little less desperate but no less important to me personally, as I settled into less study but certainly a well formed habit of continuous almost every day study. In Feb I began counting hours in front of the TV watching French programs. Mid-March I began cutting those hours (not that many) out of my 'counted hours' as I felt I wasn't gaining enough out of it at this stage to count it as 'active learning'. Some passive learning yes, but not enough for me to suffice solid worthwhile study..... yet. I took my B1 exam, of which I am still awaiting results, but remain confident. Also, despite deciding to read more (every 2nd hour of study to be exact was my declaration) and to take part in more French conversations, this is yet to really happen effectively. I opted to return to soldiering through my multiple courses in pursuit of perfection. I've made the conscious acknowledgement that studying things a somewhat beyond my reach is not my style. I'd prefer to take longer and get there with a near-native accent in the end as opposed to arriving at fluency faster with an ordinary accent. Criticism for this method is likely and it may even once again come from myself in the near future, but I'm changing my mind constantly, i'm just happy i'm remaining on track with continuous study. Whatever I'm happy doing at this stage i'm happy with. Okay to put my perfectionism into perspective, while using Fluenz French yesterday my wife stated that I repeat things so many times (a phrase often 7 or 8 times). Although I don't do this as much with my other learning methods, the point I want to make is that I would not do this with Spanish or Dutch for that matter. Spanish I'd read a sentence one or twice and feel comfortable, Dutch the same, French one of the trickiest things about the language i believe is nailing the pronunciation, in particular the succession of vowels (nasal and oral) along with falling tone and a lengthening syllable or rising volume at the end of the sentence or sentence break (unless asking a question in which tone will rise). Such things take time to master and repeated effort. Although Fluenz is easy, it's very good for working on such things, and I am wanting to sound as authentic as possible even if that is perhaps unattainable in some opinions. Anyway I'm enjoying the journey and despite once again cutting my reading time back a tad, i'm still reading intermittently. Here's my study hours updated: ---------------------------------- FRANÇAIS Heures d'etudes 2014 (Hours of Study 2014) Date: 31/03/14 Hrs,min: C175,06 A74,35 L21,30 R5,30 E0,30 Total: &nbs p; 278,51 Jours (days): 90 Moy. de l'an: 3,05 (Yearly average) ---------------------------------- C = Cours (Courses) A = Audio seulement (Audio only) L = Lecture (Reading) R = Regarder ; films français etc (Watching; French movies etc) E = Écrire échanges (writing exchanges) ---------------------------------- Le moi de mars: (March) C24,30 A24,45 L11 R3 E0,30 Total: 64,25 Moy. du mois: 2,04 (Monthly average) ---------------------------------- The 'teams' out there including ours seem oddly quiet. I hope it's because we're all busy learning. If you're not learning... get back to it! PM ---------------------------------- Okay see here's a wrap up of my Dutch studies (just begun). I'm not sure it's quite the right place to put this info, but until a better place is found, here will do. Note that I've probably gone beyone a B1 level before in Dutch, but so as not to interfere too much with my French studies for some time yet I will simply be reviewing (remembering) old material. Since beginning this month I've developed over 600 flaschards (note I have over 7000 in French now) and i'm currently adding every word I come across in my books/courses which are currently Hugo Dutch in 3 Months and VocabuLearn. ---------------------------------- NEDERLANDS Studie-uren 2014 (Hours of Study 2014) Het begin (Commenced): 20/3/14 Datum (date): 31/03/14 Uren,minuten: C10 (hours,min) Totaal (total): 10 Dagen (days): 12 ---------------------------------- Edited by PeterMollenburg on 31 March 2014 at 8:56am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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