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s.mann’s French ** TAC 2015 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| s.mann Groupie United States lang-8.com/973514/jo Joined 3627 days ago 55 posts - 76 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 58 16 December 2014 at 7:07am | IP Logged | ||
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I started getting serious about reviving and extending my 1 year of high school French
and 1 semester of French 101 from more than 10 years ago right about 3 months ago. In that time I've gotten well past my previous skills and have been having fun finding new learning and understanding materials. I think language learning is the hobby I've always needed and never took up because I thought it would be expensive and tie me down by making me physically go to classes. I'm loving the self-teaching resources I've found so far. As far as goals go, it would be nice to be at a B2 production/C1 understanding level by my one year mark in mid-September, but I'm also looking for quality over quantity, so ce que sera, sera. Learning Modalities: Duolingo - yes, I know it's supposed to be bad to translate so much, but Duo has been the constant since I started about 3 months ago, so it's not going anywhere Assimil NFWE - I understand Santa is bringing this, so I will be starting soon Fluent-Forever pronunciation trainer - trying this because my work on the FSI Phonology course didn't get past lesson 1 and I would like a good experience with Anki (didn't like it using the pre-made decks I tried before) Lingvist.io - I'm liking this better than Memrise for vocabulary aquisition, but don't think I'd pay for it, especially since it builds in cheating. At the rate I'm progressing I'll have reviewed the advertised 6000 words right about the time they might start charging in a year Pimsleur I-IV - I'm able to get this through the library, and have already finished the short course, but am waiting for my hold on the rest of the first set to come through. FSI Basic - Just started this tonight and think it will be really good for me, but it's clearly a lot of work, so I'll have to be disciplined to stick with it. I think if I manage to do this course to completion my B2/C1 goal will be in reach Reading/Listening/Watching: I'm getting excited about catching up on my to-read list in French. I'm planning some early intensive and later extensive reading of Harry Potter (I've only seen the movies), Asimov's Foundation series, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I sort of read Le Petit Prince through Duolingo's immersion, but I'd like another swing at it with audio. I've also found a few movies I know by heart that I can get French dubbing and subtitles from the library, and have found that I like a couple original French films that I can stream on Netflix (although English subtitles are the only option, I wouldn't know what was going on without them as of yet). Finally, I have a goal of getting my news from RFI Journal en Francais Facile eventually, but for now I can just sort of pick up what topic the section is on. Edited by s.mann on 31 December 2014 at 12:15am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7194 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 58 16 December 2014 at 7:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Bonne chance! Tout ira bien avec de la patience!
Et, bienvenue! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| redflag Senior Member Australia Joined 3831 days ago 123 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish, Indonesian, French | Message 3 of 58 16 December 2014 at 9:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi s.mann - welcome although I am a newbie myself)
re: streaming films. Assuming that it is not against your moral code, with a VPN like Hula blocker you can access Netflix France with your existing Netflix account and access the films and TV there. I was just watching the new Netflix series Marco Polo dubbed into French with French subtitles. I am only A2 but I hardly watch anything with English subtitles these days, I find the French so much more useful even if I don;t understand everything. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5196 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 58 16 December 2014 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome! I also picked up French again after some years of it at school followed by a
several-year break. High school courses aren't great but it was good already having some basic knowledge rather than starting completely from scratch. My approach was also to work through a few beginner courses, to fill in the gaps and build a more solid foundation.
Interesting, I did not know you could do this, it might be time for me to get a Netflix account! I wonder if it'll work for Italy too if/when it's launched there... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| liam.pike1 Groupie Australia Joined 3743 days ago 84 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto, French | Message 5 of 58 16 December 2014 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello! I'm a newbie as well, and I've just started learning French... I never got to learn French in high school so I'm learning it now! I'll check up on your log; it'll be good to see how a fellow beginner goes about learning this extraordinarily beautiful, important language.
Bonne chance! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4998 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 6 of 58 16 December 2014 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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For people with most common moral codes, there are more ways to get to French
streaming but you can as well buy dvds on amazon or at other site. And from what I've read on the forums, having French material shipped from Canada can be a very good option for americans. And a well stocked library is a welcome miracle :-) I can only second redflag's recommendation to use French subtitles right away, the English can draw your attention too much. As to finding the French subtitles. You can find transcripts of some shows online, which could be just as useful or perhaps even more in some ways. Your beginning sounds promising, I'm looking forward to reading of your progress :-) Are you joining the TAC 2015? Edited by Cavesa on 16 December 2014 at 5:50pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s.mann Groupie United States lang-8.com/973514/jo Joined 3627 days ago 55 posts - 76 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 7 of 58 16 December 2014 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the encouragement everyone.
Just so I have a record of my beginning "stats"" Duolingo I'm more than halfway through my French tree, and the whole thing is golden right now. I'm on the line with Adjectives 4 (gold) Pronouns 2 (1/4 and amazingly hard considering I pretty much know the vocabulary, but the grammar is killing me) and Verbs Infinitive 2 (2/10) The goal here is to do at least one new lesson a day, although some days it's easy to do more, and some days it's frustrating to even get one done. Just to keep up my comparison between Lingvist and Duolingo, Duo says I know 1206 words and can understand 72.4% of written text. Lingvist.io Since I started the day I found out about the public beta, I've logged 17 hours and 51 minutes and learned 1012 words, many of which have been covered in other courses and some of which are the exact same in English, but I'd guess at least a couple hundred are new to me. I really like getting a preview of tenses I haven't covered yet, without the stress of having to formulate the whole sentence properly. Now that I've stopped trying to do it in front of the TV my accuracy hovers between 80-95%, which I'm pretty happy about. It seems to track with Duo in asserting that I can understand about 72% of written text. Pimsleur I have done French I Lessons 1-8, and have lessons 15-30 in hand, but the sets with 9- 14 are in my library's catalog, but have yet to appear at the hold desk. I previewed the end of the course and know the vocab for the most part, so I might try to skip ahead, although I stumble over words in 1-8 even though I was saying them right in my head, so that might be a disaster. I felt like Pimsleur was really helping. (BTW, if I were to start the last 3 months over again, I'd start with Duolingo, Pimsleur, and Lingvist as my bases.) FSI Basic French I'll call this level 0 since I haven't even gone through all of Unit 1 one time through. For the moment I have plenty of time and would like to complete a Unit a week like I assume the diplomats did, but that's probably more discipline than I actually have. We'll see how this goes. Fluent Forever Pronunciation trainer They say that it'll take 10 days to get it down, and this is more for hearing and spelling than production. I'm on day 2 and am having a better time with this professionally made Anki deck than the ones I tried before, which may have been too easy or too ambitious for me. Although I do want the pronunciation practice, I mostly want to learn how to best use Anki since I will want to make my own cards when I get out of these basic courses and start reading and listening intensively to my own chosen materials. For pronunciation production I may try going back to FSI Phonetics after I have the ear portion down, but I've seen other options on Youtube as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s.mann Groupie United States lang-8.com/973514/jo Joined 3627 days ago 55 posts - 76 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 8 of 58 16 December 2014 at 6:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Regarding the streaming issue, I might be legally wrong about this, but I'm pretty okay
with it because I'm paying Netflix and Netflix is counting my viewing from Netflix.fr in the stats, so I'm not taking money out of anybody's pocket. I've used paid VPNs before which provided physical equipment to run to get to my US stuff from overseas, but I'm suspicious of the security of the free in-browser VPNs, since they require you to open up your browser to the point that they would see all traffic. Maybe running it in a virtual machine is the right answer, but between a VM, a VPN and an overseas server, that's a lot of overhead which may cause intolerable lag times. I'll have to check into it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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