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Slow Learning: FR, HI, ancGR TAC 2015 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5465 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 49 of 164 20 June 2014 at 7:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hey Jeffers,
It's a shame you can't really use FIA at this stage. I'm sure you're not put off learning French together with your son as you haven't indicated that, but I don't want to say that I really feel that FIA is best as a complete course. There's so much to gain from watching the videos. What I mean is that because it's immersion I believe there's almost an expectation that you are watching the videos as the creators feel that seeing French used in it's natural environment, in context is important for learning. I don't know that listening to the audio alone can accomplish that. So I wouldn't be too 'put off' I think it's just simply a little too much of a struggle with the audio on it's own. And to take it a step further using the videos and audio only is still missing quite a bit, with regards to grammatical explanations, the transcripts and so on. I know this is prob all pretty obvious to you but I just thought I'd share my thoughts and have a little sth to say on your log for once, as you do make a lot of helpful comments for others including myself (not that this necessarily helps).... Actually just like Mohave I started FIA as a newbie. That and Destinos I started at the same time way back in 1998. Those were my first (can you believe I was just about to spell first as 'furst'!) adventures with decent self-taught language leaarning material... yes yes waffling i know! Anyway both those courses I still list as my favourite 2 courses I"ve come across yet. Tho, fortunately I came across this forum and 'Assimil' which runs a close 3rd. ... anyway as for the SC you really do provide a lot of useful feedback, I just want to say it's appreciated by many ppl on here i'm sure... Just don't let it detract from your own learning! That's an order! ;) It is rather interesting that you are studying 3 very different languages. Glad to see you're enjoying it :) Btw how good is your German? How long did you study it for and how did you learn (what method/materials)? I actually own a sprinkling of German courses myself as it was the first language I ever began to learn and loved it, way back in 1989 at high school. I did say FIA and Destinos were my first adventures with decent self-taught language learning materials. Decent meaning they were large courses that required a decent commitment. With German I dabled, although I did attempt to learn more German a number of years later into adulthood when I met some Austrians I was friendly with. When they departed Australia, I returned to the usual suspects- Dutch, French, Spanish (I even bought Greek books but never started it). Anyway seems like you're doing some pretty solid work on your French, keep it up. You're remaining high up the 'leaderboard' in the SC with an impressive amount of material covered and judging by what you've been using you're no slacker yourself. I wouldn't dare attempt to go through Amelie (script) at this stage, but I don't mean you shouldn't- whatever we are motivated to use works right? Now that you're back on the FSI track, good luck with that too. Myself I don't mind I've slid way down on the SC as you could see yourself that I have a lot of courses to get through, and they're not going to complete themselves. So back to your son... perhaps more audio based courses (that don't require textbook/video support) may be better for a while longer? I can recommend both Paul Noble, but that is VERY similar to Michel Thomas (also recommend the entire MT collection), of course Pimsleur (i'm currently also doing level 3 for during my commuting) and Rocket French, which is often overlooked as a gimmick. However if you see past the heavy advertising it's a worthwhile course- one perfect French accent and another speaker with a 'weird' French accent, but a LOT of different things are covered that are not covered in other audio courses, and interesting story to follow too. I know you have other audio courses as well so i'm not necessarily encouraging you to buy these programs, just offering my experiences with them, but if you have more of your own audio only courses perhaps that would be better for the time being. PM PS Hope you're having a nice day :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4898 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 50 of 164 20 June 2014 at 10:23am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks for that, Peter. We are still going to watch FIA videos from time to time (we
were up to 4 when I decided to try the full course with him), and we've switched to working on Pimsleur on the school run. We finished lesson 3 yesterday and we will repeat it when he comes back from a school trip. My son has autism, but he is fairly high-functioning academically. The main effect of autism on him is in "receptive/productive language". What this means in real life is that he has difficulty processing what he hears, and difficulty expressing his thoughts even though he has an excellent vocabulary for his age. When he was younger he actually spoke like near-deaf person, not because he didn't hear all the sounds, but because he didn't notice them when he did hear them. As for language learning, he does well with written material, remembering details, and so on. He has liked Pimsleur, and I think the fact that things keep repeating gives it a chance to sink in. He is doing well in French in school, but I think the focus in school is too narrow. I'd like him to get good enough that he could begin to enjoy native material. Once you get to that point, there's no stopping you! But schools tend to do very little to get kids using the target language for their own interests. For all of these reasons, I've been looking for ways to boost his language studies in school. I would like to support the grammar and vocab they are learning, but at the same time help him to build up real world French skills. Pimsleur will help because it will review the basic points of grammar, and help him to gain a bit of automaticity and fluency. When the summer holidays begin, I was thinking about starting to work on Assimil with him, because that will get him used to reading decent chunks of text. Now to answer you question about German, Peter. I started with a Berlitz textbook, but quickly got bored of it. I bought the Living Language German course and worked through it completely, as well as two other textbooks with cassettes I borrowed from the library. One of them was really good because every chapter featured questions sessions with people on the street; very much like those segments on the FIA videos. Unfortunately, I have no idea what the course was called, but I have a vague notion that the author was female. I also listened to InTense German until it came out of my ears, learned all the vocabulary from a 1000 card box of cards I bought, and was just on the verge of using native materials (I was reading Asterix) when I got the chance to move back to India, so I dropped it to start reviving my Hindi. All of that study was over the course of a year. About 6 years later I decided to try German again. A bookstore was getting rid of all their Michel Thomas at 75% off, so I got the German foundation, advanced and vocabulary courses. I also got TY German, but that quickly got difficult (too steep a curve, very dense in terms of content), so I switched to TY Beginner's German. I also bought several A2 readers with CD, listened to some Germanpod101, and Slow German podcasts. About halfway through all of that, I caught the French bug, and have kind of let German go. I'm planning to slowly start to pick it up again once I'm more comfortable with how my French/Hindi/Greek are going. I think I will target a full revival to be underway for the gap between the Super Challenges, and then sign up for 4 languages for the next SC. By that time I'm hoping my French will be more a matter of fun and less a matter of effort. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5465 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 51 of 164 21 June 2014 at 7:03am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Well it sounds like you're really making an effort to do all the right things with regards to your son's French learning.
I must say it always seems a bit strange (although I'm getting used to it) that people on here call me Peter. I know it's absolutely logical, and I'm a tad rediculous for even mentioning it. It's just weird as it's not my real name. For some reason on occasion I've often referred to a comic version of myself as Peter Mollenburg despite that not being my name at all. However don't let my drawing attention to this fact make you change, it makes perfect sense to be called Peter on here. I didn't want to use my real name on the forum, as most don't for obvious reasons, and just went with it.
Thanks for sharing again Jeffers. I look fwd to the day when you revive your German, simply because it means you're 'on track' and it would be nice to see you pick it up again. However by no means am I encouraging you to do so sooner than required. I know what it's like trying to learn multiple languages and suffering from wander lust. One day in the very distant future I will also revive my German, but that's not before being very satisfied with a very high functioning level of French and close or similar level in Dutch and being able to progress in Spanish. ie the only way I can foresee picking up German myself (which I do want to do, I wouldn't even mind starting Portuguese but where the hell will I find the time for that?).. well I don't want those other three languages to fall into a cesspool of stagnancy. I've given up trying to kill too many birds with one stone as you end up missing one, scraping one and hitting one or two if you're luck {not that i encourage the killing of birds ;) } Oh and a course I invested in for German was (still own it) Fokus Deutsch as I thought it was prob the closest thing in German I could find to FIA or Destinos. So keep up your good French, Hindi and Ancient Greek progress and we shall battle on somewhat together but worlds apart :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4898 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 52 of 164 21 June 2014 at 1:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Er, is your name Steven? Is Peter just your stage name?
Thanks for the mention of Fokus Deutsch. Is it anywhere as good as FIA? Is there an audio component, textbook, etc? One German resource I forgot to mention is Deutsche Welle. I wish there was a collection of resources anywhere as good as this for French. The mention of Fokus Deutsch reminded me of a short video course called Extr@, designed for beginning students in the UK. They have it in French, German, Spanish and English, and they can be watched with or without native subtitles. They are designed for beginners, but are a sort of sitcom about 2 girls in an apartment, who house an American guy for some reason I can't remember. There are lot's of "common" situations, but the language is fairly simple. The series has 13 episodes of about 25 minutes each (I think the English series has more). I watched the first two, and then things happened and I forgot about it. I have a new series for the Super Challenge. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5198 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 53 of 164 22 June 2014 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I really like the Living Language course - used the French one very early on, and again as a refresher from time to time, especially before a couple of my vacations. I own the German and Italian ones too (bought deeply discounted second hand/remaindered), and hope to get round to them some day...
That cracked me up, and reminded me of a book display at my library. The display was themed "I don't remember what it was called, or who wrote it, but it was a yellow book..." On a less trivial note, that was an interesting post about your son, and prompted me to think about how we process info and language - thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5465 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 54 of 164 25 June 2014 at 10:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Something like that I guess
Yes Deutsche Welle I own some of that material as well Deutsch Waarum nicht? and Deutsch Wieso nicht? books and audio, altho I think it's prob accessible online too. I have no idea if Fokus Deutsch is as good as FIA. I have never started it. I own the entire course tho, all levels, all books, video could only find for download, which i did but the quality loss is around 15-20% but still definitely useable. I really don't know what the course is like. It's one of those 'one day' courses which for me actually does mean I will do it, but just not for a looong time yet. I believe it has audio as well, the CD's I think are... hang on, i'm going to get them out of their dark hiding spot and take a look... ... okay so there are 3 workbooks, three textbooks, three audio CD's (one for each level), one student viewer handbook and 36 15min video episodes with occasional additional 15min review episodes. The course seems smaller then than FIA or Destinos. The three levels are Beginner 1, Beginner 2, and Intermediate. It's a shame Dutch doesn't have a course like FIA, Destinos or Fokus Deutsch, but there are logical reasons why such a comprehensive course in Dutch is yet to exist.
Yeah I'd recently responded to Mohave regarding this series. I have seen it in both German and French. I really wanted to order it for French, Spanish and German but found it became too costly when purchasing the complete course (i think from memory was mainly only access/subscription) and the series alone was too expensive. I have viewed it on you tube but wasn't impressed with the quality. Thus i'm prob best off to get my hands on it once my French is a little better this way I won't need the additional material but will still get something out of it. Mohave is yet to mention tho how decent the quality is via youtube. I wish I was I had a lot more free time on my hands (ie win the lotto!) so that I could not only do all the courses I wanted but could live in the countries as I did them. Ahhhh wouldn't it be nice. PM Edited by PeterMollenburg on 25 June 2014 at 11:00am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4898 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 55 of 164 26 June 2014 at 8:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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As you thought, Warum Nicht? and Wieso Nicht? are both available online for free. But besides those courses they have a load of other free material, all arranged by level.
As for Extr@, what is the complete course? From what I understand, if you have the DVD, it has PDF files of the transcript and some worksheets. But since you can watch with French subs, you don't need the transcript. I watched the first two episodes after I posted about it, and I looked up one word in each episode. The language is really pretty simple. Unfortunately, the video quality on YouTube is pretty poor for most of the episodes I've found. I found two channels with the full course, but both were equally poor. This guy has HD versions of the first two episodes, then poor quality for 3 & 4, and then nothing. Maybe if a bunch of us pester him about it, he would put the whole series up in HD? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5465 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 56 of 164 28 June 2014 at 6:51am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't remember it very well but I thought I'd come across some website for the series in which games and grammatical exercises and such could be carried out. I'm almost as vague on the fact that whoever it was run by was asking for an arm and a leg to gain access. I don't want all that rubbish anyway, i'm simply wanting to watch the series and maybe have access to the transcripts if I don't have subtitles in whatever version I might wind up with. The youtube version (as you noted Jeffers) if it hasn't improved can go jump as far as I'm concerned as the quality when I last checked it out was absolute rubbish. Why would someone even bother uploading such crap?
Maybe, but i'll leave it up to you to lead the way if you wish, as I couldn't be bothered at this point. So if you want to sure, i'll back you up :) However it's not a great loss to me if I don't get to see the series, although it would be nice :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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