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Rebel Dragon’s Foray into French | ||
Tags: French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| rebel dragon Newbie United States sevenlanguagenati Joined 3663 days ago 20 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Danish | Message 1 of 19 25 May 2014 at 1:08am | IP Logged |
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Well, I'm already nearly 6 months into my quest to see how much French I can learn in a year. I haven't really kept any sort of documentation on my progress, but I have made some sporadic posts about it on my personal blog.
I was technically studying French since some time (possibly October?) of last year, for an after-hours class that met at my work. I wasn't having an easy time of actually feeling like I was learning anything though, and around the New Year decided to make a serious effort to actually learn the language. My initial thought was that I had difficulty remembering vocabulary, and so that's what my initial Google search was based on, "help remembering vocabulary" or something like that, which led me to Memrise. Several weeks after finding Memrise and being impressed by the amount of vocabulary I was able to remember, I found about about Duolingo and decided to give them a shot. Now the two of them have formed the main pillars of my language-acquisition strategy. I visit each site at least once a day, and sometimes more than that. I'm trying to accelerate through the Duolingo tree now, because my grasp of grammar isn't that good, but I still try to learn a few new words from Memrise every day or so. A few months ago, I started using lingua.ly to augment my vocabulary while reading lemonde.fr, and I try to review my lingua.ly list at least once a day. More recently, frustrated by my inability to understand audio French (which became obvious when I listened to French radio stations and couldn't understand anything that was being said), I have been listening to audio books from http://www.audiocite.net/ and http://www.litteratureaudio.com/ while reading the book text. I am currently up to Chapter 6 of Le Docteur Oméga, and my comprehension of the audio has seem to caught up enough that I'm able to get the gist of the story while reading along (previously, my comprehension lagged so much that I couldn't both understand the story and keep up with the audio). I have used these audio book sites in combination with lingua.ly to quickly look up words that seem key but I don't know. I try to watch at least half an hour of BFMTV daily, but I find I am still heavily relying on the visual rather than the audio component for a clue as to what is going on. I also recently stumbled on the lengthy series of C'est pas Sorcier on Youtube, which looks like it will be interesting (and maybe one of these years in range of my comprehension). I made an account on Lang-8 a few weeks ago and have made a few entries there. Apparently, my French writing is atrocious. More recently, lingua.ly sent me a code for some free points on italki, so I've been poking around on italki and trying to figure what's the best use of that site. I haven't had much luck hooking up with people to speak with before, and more recently I've had a cold so haven't dug into finding people to speak with. My average daily routine (when I have to work) is: after waking up, do a Duolingo review, water all my Memrise words, review all my lingua.ly words. At work: listen to French music, either on Youtube or my Pandora station; after getting home, do my Memrise and lingua.ly reviews again; play Runescape (French version) for a bit, try to knock back a lesson (or more) of Duolingo, listen/read to an audio book, watch BFMTV or other media. Right before bed, I'll review Memrise and Lingua.ly again, and usually this is when I'll add new Memrise words. I tend to vary up this routine by writing Lang-8 posts or reading various sites (LeMonde.fr, viedemerde, etc). Like I mentioned, I am not sure where to get started with italki. I understand you can talk to other language learners for free. The after-hours class at work discontinued recently, so I don't currently have any real-life practice going on. I know there's a French meetup group in my area, but quite frankly my inability to understand audio French is kind of holding me back. I'm not an incredibly social person, so real-life interactions (even in English) can be intimidating for me. As to why I'm still optimistically trying to learn French: Because now I want to. I've found that making a serious effort to learn another language has expanded my horizons and revealed a whole other world to me that I had no access to previously. I also tend to go for achievements for the sake of achievements. So here I am, trying to see how far I can get in French in a year. Come next year, I'm planning to start learning either Spanish or German and learn them while continuing my study of French. A big key to me consistently studying French has been identifying what makes me want to learn. Memrise with it's spaced repetition has definitely been a major key, in that I haven't felt that I was falling behind. The only thing I have approaching structured lessons has been Duolingo, and only lately have I been pushing it hard. I'm also dependent on my ability to identify what I'm struggling with (audio) and how to attempt to remedy that. I guess I'll find out how effective it is eventually. Anyways, thanks for reading! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3954 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes  Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 2 of 19 25 May 2014 at 2:10am | IP Logged |
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Welcome to HTLAL!
It sounds like you're off to a good start! Duolingo + Memrise is a great way to increase vocabulary and understand basic sentence structure. The gamification makes it fun to learn stuff that - let's face it - would probably be pretty boring in another context. I think that Duolingo fails later on in the skills tree, when they rush through complex grammar in a few lessons, but the early part of the skills tree is very well-structured. Yes, you'll learn silly sentences like "The bear drinks milk.", but you'll work on proper sentence structure from the beginning. It's not perfect, but I really liked it for Spanish. Listening is a hard skill to work on. The key is to find N+1 materials - things that are just *a bit* tricky for you, but that you can understand with a few repetitions. Listening to something that's way over your head will help you internalize the music of French, but it won't necessarily help you actually understand. I highly, highly recommend French in Action for beginners - although it might be much too easy for you. It's worth a shot, though: French in Action While there's a ton of material for purchase, you can watch all of the video course for free - and the videos are the heart of the program. It's cheesy and dated, but it's also charming. It's for absolute beginners, though, so I'm not sure if you'll find it useful. I don't mean to spam your log, but I wrote a very detailed post on my blog about how I use italki to learn Spanish. There's no way that I can type in this message box in as much detail the way I did in my post, so I'm linking it here: italki Happy French learning! I look forward to following along on your log! edited because of typos Edited by Stelle on 25 May 2014 at 2:11am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 4925 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 3 of 19 25 May 2014 at 5:36am | IP Logged |
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I started using Duolingo for French a couple months ago, and I love it. The gamification is really motivational for me. And based on your recommendation, I just signed up for Memrise, and that looks like something I'll enjoy too, so thanks for that!
I'm near the beginning of my own French journey (despite having taken it for like 8 years in school...). I look forward to following your log! :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| rebel dragon Newbie United States sevenlanguagenati Joined 3663 days ago 20 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Danish | Message 4 of 19 25 May 2014 at 7:57am | IP Logged |
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Today's update:
Finished Ch. 7 of Le Docteur Oméga. Finished "Adverbs" & "Occupations" on Duolingo Watched 1/2 hr of BFMTV, also walked a few other random videos Feels like I haven't done much besides Duolingo today. I went on a Memrise spree a few nights ago and I'm still watering the consequences of that on a regular basis, but I'll probably add 5-10 words tonight, because when I open my Kindle after going to bed, things happen...Also considering tackling the "Negative" module of Duolingo, since it's only two sections, but that depends how soon I fall asleep. Don't know how often I'm going to update this log, but I'll try to be somewhat regular about it. Tried FIA a few months ago, found it boring and unable to hold my interest. Might be worth trying again, I've got an extended weekend, after all. Thanks for your encouraging posts! Some current numbers for my future reference: Memrise: 1551 items Lingua: 182 words Duolingo: 1839 xp edit: and feel free to add me on Duolingo or Memrise, "rebeldragon" Edited by rebel dragon on 25 May 2014 at 8:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| rebel dragon Newbie United States sevenlanguagenati Joined 3663 days ago 20 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Danish | Message 5 of 19 26 May 2014 at 7:55am | IP Logged |
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Today's updates:
Memrise: planted 14 items. 34% of the way through "1000 Word Introductory French" Duolingo: 77 xp, finished "Negative" module, started "Adverbs 2" Read/listened to Chapters 8-12 of Le Docteur Oméga Watched "Des Dinosaures sous nos pieds" of C'est pas Sorcier Read "Tyranno le Terrible" and "Tyranno L'espece de Sale Tricheur" from http://www.childrensbooksforever.com/childrenpages/French.ht ml Watched 1/2 hr of BFMTV Watched a Cyprien video from YouTube Missing other random articles I've read and videos I've watched. I'm subscribed to a few different French-based Reddits, so the top stories show in my feed and I'll sometimes stumble across interesting things that way. I feel that do the "listen to a book while reading it" is starting to pay off. I'm able to pick up more words I know when watching non-subtitled shows, and it sounds more like actual words than an indistinct stream of murmuring. I also have this problem in my first language, English, where it seems as though the thing that's responsible for translating random sounds into words will randomly shut off. It gets worse when I'm sleep-deprived. I also have a really hard time understanding heavy accents. Also encountered http://sweetrandomscience.blogspot.fr/. I'm excited about this because science is one of those things that I find very interesting (I got a degree in Geology), and so far the site seems fairly easy to read. Well, one more day of my extended weekend and it's back to work. Maybe I'll remember to take another look at FIA tomorrow, and maybe actually look for language partners on italki. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| rebel dragon Newbie United States sevenlanguagenati Joined 3663 days ago 20 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Danish | Message 6 of 19 27 May 2014 at 6:03am | IP Logged |
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Today's updates:
Memrise: 14 items Duolingo: 63 xp. Finished "Adverbs 2" Finished Le Docteur Oméga (chapters 13 & 14) Watched BFMTV & C'est pas Sorcier I may or may not have a language partner on italki; we'll see if we can actually get together on Skype. Having a standard workday doesn't go well with trying to hook up with people 7 hours ahead of me. Also checked out Bliu Bliu; seems like a cool site but also that they'll want money at some point. Trying to find information on what "Premium" meant got frustrating quickly. Otherwise, I like how it attempts to gage your reading level and presents material accordingly. I am starting to become a big fan of C'est pas Sorcier; today I watched the VOL EN IMPESANTEUR episode and I find words like "gravité" and "station spatiale" easy to pick out of a conversation. It also seems generally at an easier comprehension level than BFMTV. I am so ready to be done with Memrise's "1000 Word Introductory French" course, but I don't like doing multiple courses at once because it seems to increase the chance that more repeats slips through the cracks with the auto-ignore function. I'm also anxious to plow through my own "Fantasy & Gaming Vocabulary" course, although that is mostly without audio and probably won't get any until I suck it up and spend a great deal of time trying to learn the actual audio pronunciation for the words.Which, as there are around 380 items in the course, probably won't happen soon. *sigh* I had started the "1000 Word" course awhile ago, but it seems like I keep detouring to do other courses - "Hacking French" and "Conjugation," among others. So yea, I go through phases of wanting to hammer out the "1000 Word" course on Memrise, and then I remind myself that I should probably focus most of my efforts on Duolingo, at this point.I think I have (counts them) 42 more modules on Duolingo. :( Memrise is definitely my pastry of language learning sites - I like to use it, I like learning off of it, but it doesn't provide everything I need for a balanced language learning experience. edit: typo P.S. Forgot FIA again. Well, getting one out of two isn't so terrible. Edited by rebel dragon on 27 May 2014 at 6:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| rebel dragon Newbie United States sevenlanguagenati Joined 3663 days ago 20 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Danish | Message 7 of 19 29 May 2014 at 5:37am | IP Logged |
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Since I started back at work, I haven't been able to do much Duolingo or Memrise. Duolingo's sitting at 1991 xp and Memrise is up to 1582 items.
I did have my first Skype exchange with a French person I met through italki, so that was exciting. My understanding of audio French still lags something terrible though. Also, I couldn't think of words to say fast enough so I was entering English sentences into Google Translate to get the French equivalents. I think for next week I'm going to look up some potential topics ahead of time and perhaps construct a few sentences that I can direct the conversation towards in the future. The person's English was much better than my French, incidentally. To be expected, I guess. I haven't really spoken French all that much. But hey, I spoke to a real live person in my TL online for the first time ever. That counts for something. I did manage to check out French in Action today. Much more likable if I have it on while I'm doing other things, so I imagine I'll play it at work instead of radio or Pandora stations. Other finds of the past two days: http://apprendre.tv5monde.com/fr/niveaux/a1-debutant http://www.farkastranslations.com/bilingual_books.php I found the Farkas one on this forum. I briefly checked out the site, and I think it's spectacularly cool. TV5 Monde has exercises and level tests, so I feel it may be worth investigating when I have time. Not a bad couple of days, even if Duolingo and Memrise haven't gone as fast. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| rebel dragon Newbie United States sevenlanguagenati Joined 3663 days ago 20 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Danish | Message 8 of 19 04 June 2014 at 4:04am | IP Logged |
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Five days, eh? Well, Plants vs. Zombies was free on EA Games, and I promptly proceeded to play it rather excessively. However, I'm now getting back to a regular schedule.
(Edit because apparently I hit the wrong button) I went through a stack of DVDs that I got out of my storage unit, and found that three of them have French dubs & subs, while one has dub and another has sub. This was a pleasant surprise. I also have some Netflix titles lined up. Watched some more C'est pas Sorcier, saw an episode on volcanoes. Apparently there is a graduate program in that part of France for volcanology. I got my Bachelor's in Geology, so I was definitely intrigued. Have not been able to hook up with anyone else from Italki. Duolingo: 2067 xp Memrise: 1597 items Edited by rebel dragon on 08 June 2014 at 6:52am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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