sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5383 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish
| Message 305 of 336 07 October 2014 at 6:06pm | IP Logged |
I was surprised to discover that many of the people around me didn't speak French or were
just learning. It's nice seeing how he attracts such a diverse crowd and that people have
a passion for learning French thanks to his music.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian
| Message 306 of 336 08 October 2014 at 9:42pm | IP Logged |
sctroyenne, I just started using the Grammaire Progressive niveau avancé. From what I noticed at one of your posts, the Perfectionnement level is much more comprehensible, but I don't have acess to it and am not sure I should make purchases now (it's the book + les clés). How far do you think la Grammaire niveau avancé will bring me, in terms of helping fix some grammar issues such as subjonctif, partitif and other common mistakes? I'm a B2 passive B2 active probably, I don't have the same depth in knowledge of people who focus mostly on French, like emk and yourself do; I have a not bad listening and can say what I want, though I'd write mostly with lots of mistakes.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5383 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish
| Message 307 of 336 15 October 2014 at 10:53am | IP Logged |
Bonjour from France ! I was in the Paris region a few days and right now I'm in Toulouse. Will be headed back
to Paris in a few days. This trip has turned out great since I've been staying with friends - so I get lots of
speaking practice. For some reason at the beginning I felt like I had forgotten all my genders and I confused
poule with poulet to the amusement of my hosts. But I got a question right that other French people got wrong
during a pub quiz: which is masculine: anagramme or apogée?
I'll write more later and I'll answer your question, expugnator.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5383 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish
| Message 308 of 336 29 October 2014 at 7:40pm | IP Logged |
Back from France!
A little sad to have to return to real life but it was a great trip! I spent a lot of
time with friends and friends of friends which means I had a lot of quality
interactions. I also managed to bring back quite a collection of cheap DVDs I picked
out from markets and a bunch of books - mostly nonfiction. An even greater source for
cheap books than Gilbert Jeune in Paris is
Bookoff. I went to the location near Opera and
for Japanese learners/manga enthusiasts there was a whole annex devoted to Japanese
media. I got all my nonfiction at 1/3/5 euros (which is not bad at all for nonfiction).
I'll post some pictures of my collections later.
I attended an improv show just like in the good old days and I was at the taping for
two episodes of Le Petit Journal (they tape Friday's show on Thursday)! Other
highlights: in addition to Toulouse I visited Carcassonne and Albi (if only I could
have learned to drive a manual transmission before going over I could have rented a car
and seen a lot more - automatics were hard to come by and very expensive), and I saw
the special exhibition on the Marquis de Sade at the Musée d'Orsay which was very well
done (though disturbing and not for kids!).
I'll try to get my pictures together and share them. Meanwhile back to the grind!
3 persons have voted this message useful
|
Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5158 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian
| Message 309 of 336 30 October 2014 at 8:14pm | IP Logged |
Many thanks for the recommendation on Bookoff! Wish I knew of it when I when to Paris (I did go to Gibert Jeune and the like).
Edited by Expugnator on 30 October 2014 at 8:15pm
1 person has voted this message useful
|
sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5383 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish
| Message 310 of 336 03 November 2014 at 6:03am | IP Logged |
Monthly summary time!
I missed September since I was pretty busy leading up to my vacation so here goes:
September Summary
Total hours: 162:41 Daily average: 5:25
French: 125:14
Speaking: 2:04
Listening: 96:10
Writing: 2:47
Reading: 8:50
Vocab: 10:10
Class: 5:13
Irish: 33:00
Speaking: 1:25
Listening: 1:53
Writing: 0:42
Reading: 2:49
Vocab: 2:16
Course: 23:55
Spanish: 5 measly minutes of listening
Not a record-breaking month (I've been averaging around 8 hours study/exposure a day)
but a normal effort all the same.
October Summary
Total hours: 117:08 Daily average: 3:46
French: 117:08
Speaking: 50:29
Listening: 42:48
Writing: 1:30
Reading: 5:15
Vocab: 5:05
Class: 2:25
Irish: 9:37
Speaking: 0
Listening: 0:25
Writing: 0
Reading: 0
Vocab: 2:22
Course: 6:50
So, compared to my regular productivity, October looks like a disaster. But look again
at my French speaking time! Now check out this graph of my monthly French speaking
time:
I got in more speaking practice in October thanks to my trip than in all the rest of
the year combined! This was the result of my trip being so focused on visiting with
friends (and friends of friends). My friend and Ile-de-France host is a real chatty
Cathy so days we spent together I literally talked during all of my waking hours. So
while my other activities took a hit, October was the month to really get in tons of
speaking practice.
Duolingo *just* released an update of their app which included the Irish course. Too
bad, because if I had it while travelling I would have gotten more Irish time in. I
maintained it mainly through my Anki deck.
So, with the year stretching to a close, what lies ahead? It would be nice to maintain
some of my French speaking gains - I need to get on Skype! There's a mini French movie
festival coming up in my area which I can go to. I brought back a ton of books and DVDs
so I'll need to make a dent in that. And I promised my friend an article on the Dark
Enlightenment (Google it if you dare) and there are upcoming writing workshop sessions
at the Alliance Française.
I want to get back on track with my Irish course study - both Duolingo (I have tons of
units to review before making progress again) and GGS2. I was looking at doing an
Ireland trip this summer...but now I'm evaluating whether or not I should wait. My
manager really stressed herself out making sure I had nothing piled up when I got back
- which is nice but makes me hesitant to take another long vacation so soon. And I
offered my kind hosts to return the favor should they want to visit me. I know that so
far, at least my Ile-de-France hosts are seriously considering taking me up on that
offer (and we'll see if I get other takers) in which case I'd want to take some time
off to do some touring around with them. I was looking forward to Ireland but some more
French practice with friends wouldn't be so bad either.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5383 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish
| Message 311 of 336 04 November 2014 at 5:17am | IP Logged |
As promised, here is my book and DVD haul from France
A good portion of the DVDs advertise French subtitles, but I'll have to see how good
they are.
Not pictured are the two Canard Enchaîné I picked up, which I may do some stuff
with later in this log (there's some good word play).
I managed to get it all home within my luggage allowance so NO shipping fees!
3 persons have voted this message useful
|
sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5383 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish
| Message 312 of 336 09 November 2014 at 8:48am | IP Logged |
French film festival this weekend! I'll write up the films I went to later (probably in the SC Challenge thread). I also had Alliance Française courses this week. I had a sub for the writing workshop and we talked about our battles with writing and perfectionism. I shared a podcast I listened to earlier in the week on the topic of perfectionism, which can be found here (the one dated 7 10 14):
Malka
I don't have all my photos edited yet but here they are so far: France 2014
I've been experimenting with Subs2SRS à la emk with mixed results. I tried using my Anne Roumanoff DVD but the structure is weird - there are about 90 titles instead of a few titles and many chapters. So that wasn't really working. I tried again with Nos 18 ans. I had better luck with getting the movie copied and extracting the subtitles. Just a few problems - I couldn't find an English sub track (not important for me but if I ever wanted to share it with someone with a lower level of French they'd have a lot more to look up), the conversion to text went okay but sometimes it didn't really register spaces which is a bit annoying, and the subtitles take quite a few liberties with what is actually being said. From the bit I watched of the Anne Roumanoff DVD, this is also the case but much less so, which makes me wish I could extract it since there would be much less to edit.
I would have to look around my DVD collection to see if I have anything that would work for Spanish ready to go. If I can get this to work, this can be a great exercise to work on my Spanish without actually having to "work" on it. I was doing some work a while ago with the Harry Potter texts and audio book - I wonder if I can't do a Subs2SRS-style extraction with that?
1 person has voted this message useful
|