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luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7195 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 73 of 439 08 November 2012 at 11:04am | IP Logged |
Hey it's good to see you here again. Over 2000 days in the forum for you. That makes you a real old timer. From your blog, it looks like you are proof too that we can learn a language or two or three.
This weekend I'm planning to take another Listen/Read trip through L'Etranger and Le Petit Prince.
In French without Toil, I'm on lesson 10 today. In Using French, lesson 11 I believe. Also listened a bit to Marcus Aurelius. Background listened to Le Petit Prince.
Edited by luke on 08 November 2012 at 11:05am
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7195 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 74 of 439 10 November 2012 at 2:00am | IP Logged |
It is the weekend and I'm about 1 hour into Listen/Reading L'Etranger again. The French is much more comprehensible this time, but I am looking mostly at the English in the bilingual text I have.
In French without Toil, I wrote out lesson 12 today. I'm continuing to review previous lessons in the read each line, then look away and repeat the line.
In Using French, lesson 13. Without Toil has 140 lessons, and Using French 70, so I'm thinking I can take 2 trips through Using while I take the studious journey through Without Toil.
I'm a bit frustrated with the Mediations of Marcus Aurelius, so I've been only listening to a few minutes of each chapter, first in English, then later in French. I may abort that track and go for some stories by Charles Perrault, which were written for children. Perrault has the side benefit of having some recordings in Spanish as well.
I'm planning to gradually build up a corpus of easily comprehensible stories and material. It's a nice diversion from the Assimil lesson track.
Edited by luke on 10 November 2012 at 2:19am
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7195 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 75 of 439 11 November 2012 at 7:20am | IP Logged |
Actually, today was lesson 12 and yesterday was 11 for French without Toil.
Today was a review day, 14 in Using French. I was very thorough, listening to each lesson several times while reading the French, the notes, exercises, etc. I also watched some youtube movie trailers to fill in some of the back story for lesson 12 on Le cinéma. It was interesting to see the old director's work and it gives me some idea of some movies I may want to watch in the future.
I'm almost finished with L'Étranger; the last chapter of part 2. I still spend most of my time in the translation. As far as Listen/Reading methodology is concerned, I don't know the story well enough to stay on the French side of the bilingual text. I'll probably listen to L'Étranger in the car over the next couple weeks, then come back to it again in a month or two or three.
I downloaded some Charles Perrault stories in French and Spanish. There is fairly good overlap between these two sources; about 5-6 fairy tales to listen to. They have the nice feature of being short, which fits my curent study approach very well. I'm enjoying switching things up after 10-15 minutes. With these stories, I get that plus time with both French and Spanish. The Albalearning stories are told at a very relaxed pace, which should make for easy shadowing.
Edited by luke on 11 November 2012 at 7:39am
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7195 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 76 of 439 11 November 2012 at 8:54am | IP Logged |
I found this La langue la plus facile du monde which is of course about Esperanto, which I'm also studying.
Il y a aussi une deuxième partie.
Here is one by Claude Piron about La Solution (pour les langues).
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7195 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 77 of 439 12 November 2012 at 2:10am | IP Logged |
Finished listen/reading L'Étranger for the second time since coming back from my trip to France. That probably won't be the last time. I copied it to my USB stick, so it should show up in the car rotation soon enough.
Wrote lesson 13 in French without Toil and lesson 15 in Using French.
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7195 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 78 of 439 15 November 2012 at 7:53pm | IP Logged |
I have started listening to L'Étranger in the car and understand a lot of the story. I am wondering if I might be spreading myself too thin between the Assimil courses and this sort of supplemental listening. I don't know yet.
I listen/read Le Petit Chaperon Rouge which is now very comprehensible without text/translation support. It's another part of that question in the back of my mind about spreading oneself to thin. There are another half dozen or so fairy tales by Perrault that should be fairly easy to put into comprehensible rotation. The question is, should I?
Of course there is also Le Petit Prince that I want to Listen/Read again, but just haven't had the time.
So behind this enumeration of non-Assimil comprehensible to varying degrees audiobooks is, "how much should one have in one's reperatoire while still in the study/foundation laying phase"? I do want a solid foundation, which is why I ask the question. A solid foundation can be returned to some years down the road and brought back to serviceability without too much effort (compared to that of laying the foundation in the first place).
So, more time for Assimil, or go ahead and spend time adding a story here and there?
Back to the enumeration:
Le Petit Prince - about 2 hours
L'Étranger - about 3 hours
Perrault Fairy Tales - about 5 - 40 minutes each.
Assimil French Without Toil, Using French, and New French with Ease are each about 2 hours and 15 minutes if one uses "truncate silence" to about 1/2 of a second. That primarily eliminates the long gaps in the Exercises and tightens up here and there as well.
Anyway, today I'm on lesson 17 writing out French without Toil. I thought for a while over the last day or so that writing out the lessons is taking out too much time in a return on investment (ROI) sense. After reading some old posts in the forum and a blog by Luca about "full circle", I've decided to continue writing lessons. Anyone who has taken on a big language learning load can perhaps appreciate the crisis of confidence that occasionally arises with, is this the right path? The best wisdom is often, "just keep going", and that's what I've decided to do.
The "full circle" idea did make me imagine writing out the lessons the first time in English, and then for wave 2, doing that in French. I've decided to continue just writing in French, as that seems the most helpful. Now I wonder, should I write wave 2 translations in French as well?
In the background today I've listened to or shadowed the lessons from 1-current in French Without Toil and Using French. I'm now listening to New French with Ease. I did all that work before my trip to cram the comprehensibility of the courses into my cranium and want to keep that investment alive. Depending on how the day works out, I may be able to listen to the rest of one of the other courses too.
Oh, and for Using French, I'm on lesson 19. That's where I listen and read the notes and lesson in the morning and listen to and read the dialogue a few more times throughout the evening.
Edited by luke on 15 November 2012 at 10:44pm
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7195 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 79 of 439 17 November 2012 at 2:17pm | IP Logged |
I'm one day further in the Assimil lessons.
I watched Professor Arguelles video on Shadowing which goes into some depth about half way through on how he uses an Assimil course. That has helped me to come up with a modification of my approach to Assimil without backing up and starting from scratch or aborting any part of my study.
Today is lesson 21 in Using French, so it's a Notes and Revision day. I have been using this day to go back over the previous 6 lessons. I plan to do that today, but have added stretching out to the next 7 lessons. The "stretch out" will be just listen/reading/understanding the lesson; once through per study session. I will still give much more attention to the current lesson. For Using French, I can use this as a method to basically be going through each lesson 7 times over 7 days, marching forward one lesson per day. The current lesson will be repeated as many times as necessary in order to read the notes, etc.
I'll also put the current 7 Using French lessons into daily shadow/listen rotation while driving. 7 lessons are about 15 minutes in the advanced course. Later lessons get up to 3-4 minutes, so I'll see how this goes.
The change up on French Without Toil will be slightly different. There I want to stretch out to 10 lessons. I.E., current lesson plus 9 later lessons. These lessons are shorter; 10 lessons last about 10 minutes. The focus here will be listening/reading/understanding. The "current" lowest numbered lesson will continue to get the read/listen/repeat/write treatment. That way I won't feel like I've aborted the write aspect of my studies.
For a few days, I'll be doubling up to review a bit more of the past lessons, but my goal is to get through a 10 lesson set each day. I'll probably do that 2-3 times in seperate 10 minute or so sessions. One of those each day may be in the car.
So the extra Assimil in the car will mean less "extensive listening" material in the car and at home. Basically, I'm shifting my extra listen/reading time to Assimil. The idea is to build a solid foundation. I'll plough through the Assimil courses for a while, then later the extensive reading/listening will just be the next phase. I think that will be more efficient use of my time.
Edited by luke on 18 November 2012 at 3:52am
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7195 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 80 of 439 19 November 2012 at 2:42am | IP Logged |
Today was lessons 18-27 in FWT and I wrote out lesson 20. Using French was lessons 18-27 with a focus on 22. It may take a week or so to see if the new approach is better, but I suspect it will be. When I write out the lesson, it will be much more familiar than in the old method. There will also be more review than my old technique.
I think if I got more sleep, that would be helpful. I just noticed the vitamin water I have been drinking before the last few nights has AWAKE on it's label and contains Gotu Kola, which I think is a stimulant. Not good for insomniacs. Tonight though I am tired and hopefully will sleep long and well. I did take a nap today. Those are helpful.
Edited by luke on 19 November 2012 at 2:44am
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