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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 33 of 58 11 January 2015 at 10:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Jeffers - that's good advice, I should take it. I did end up doing a GLOSS level 1
listening unit last night, and it was insultingly easy. It's nothing like the test, and the hardest part is when the voice shifts to a second speaker you can tell they are in different recording environments, so it gets hard to adjust due to the different background hiss and echo as well as voice. That said, it takes less than a third of the time it estimates to go through, so it actually wouldn't hurt to do time-wise. The teaching notes still have some good pointers and cultural notes even if I'm annoyed that I'm working at such a low level it's explaining conjugations of être in the present tense... Anyway, I'll take GLOSS off the agenda for the week and replace it with L'avis de Marie as you suggest. @PM thanks, I'm following your progress with interest as well. Vive l'Anki! ---- A word about FluentU - I actually liked but didn't love my experience with free access to this product - up until the day I went to work on it and both the Trois Petits Cochons and the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer I was working on mastering had become paid content. Way to let me determine if your product actually works for me. Anyway, one artifact from that experiment is that I am getting their newsletter for French learners which has REALLY GOOD articles, with surprisingly few and mild plugs for their product. I read most of their blog postings from this week, and particularly like the following ideas which I may work into my routine this year at some points: -Record yourself speaking extemporaneously once a month (just wondering where to upload the files, and will probably include with end of month stats) -Write a journal entry every day so you can review progress (may write a sentence or two at the end of each posting here, which isn't every day, but at least a few times a week) -Make all your media input TL input (I'm not watching any other shows now. After Buffy will be Monk and then perhaps Spiral, plus I really do want to get up to the level of getting my daily news on RFI.) Finally one other piece of advice I liked since I want to get back to my Spanish one day (in 2016 or beyond)): "While French will likely be more intimidating to speak initially, its shared vocabulary with English will help lessen the difficulty of memorization. Then, the lexical and grammatical similarities between French and Spanish make it easier to move from one to the other." Master French and you don't have to start from zero with Spanish. ----- How I did against last week's goals: Duolingo: Complete the "Verbs: Compound Past" skill (9 lessons) and maintain my gilded tree Done and done. Lingvist: average 15 new words per day or higher actually averaged 25 per day! FSI: Do one FSI French Phonology lesson per weekday (Lessons 3-7) Managed lessons 3-6... not bad. Michel Thomas: I actually only had one opportunity and then I only had one disk with me... I really need to load this up on the phone and computer so I use it more. Buffy: I only watched one of the 4 that I wanted to, but I renewed the disk through the library so I will give this another swing this week Harry Potter: Decided to choose a different book or series for LRing at this stage. I will research and collect my resources and get back to this. Goals for next week: Buffy: Create easy, imperfect parallel texts with Excel and Google Translate for Buffy and see if that helps me follow along (est. 4 hours) Lingvist: average 15 new words or better (est. 3.5 hours) FSI French Phonology: Lessons 7-10 (4 hours) Duolingo: Complete the line with Compound Past 2 and Abstract objects and maintain my gilded tree (9 lessons to go, est 3.5?? hours (I wish Duo would tell you how much time you spend there...)) L'avis de Marie: daily efforts of 2x pure listening/3x LRing/1x intensive reading until my first listen of the day either understands or memorizes the broadcast (est. 7 hours?) Michel Thomas: finish at least the first listen through. (est. 6? hours) (Total commitment this week: ~26 hours) --- Inspiration: http://youtu.be/Qev-i9-VKlY Ah Seigneur, voulez-vous m'acheter Une plus chère voiture Mes amis tous conduisent elles Je dois suivre eux J'ai travaillé toute ma vie Sans aide de mes amis Ah Seigneur, voulez-vous m'acheter Une plus chère voiture (I know it isn't grammatically perfect with word order especially, but it was hard enough to make it almost rhyme... Think of the liberties as an homage to the great lady.) Edited by s.mann on 27 January 2015 at 2:37am 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 34 of 58 12 January 2015 at 12:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I just did some calculations on my Lingvist progress, and although I'm
progressing through the available vocab quite quickly, at my current rate of usage hours I won't get to the advertised 200 hours for more than 13 months. At a low rate of 15 words per day (last year's average after the first couple hours of determining base vocab) I'd reach 6000 words by late October, and at a high rate of 25 like since the beginning of the year it's more like early July. (Note: they only have something in the mid-4k range right now I guess, but I'm hopeful they are building that out for beta testers to the advertised 6000.) While I can see it being beneficial to continue to work on those words and use the reading and listening more heavily, it seems like far too long after mastering the core content. This makes me wonder... is this intentional? Basically you don't just know all the cards by then, you know them inside and out? Or is it that if the goal is 200 hours you can't complain it didn't get you to B2 if you didn't do all of the hours? Or if I spent more time in the Reading and Listening sections would that creep up noticeably faster? Or am I really spending more time on it, but if I take longer than 3 seconds to answer it doesn't count it or something? I still really like it for using as a no-overhead SRS deck with well-thought out nuances, just kinda bummed to think that I might not be able to reach that milestone before they start charging. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 3996 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 35 of 58 12 January 2015 at 7:52am | IP Logged | ||
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I am very impressed at the effort you are putting in, and I think you will progress quickly as a result! I also
love that you translated Mercedes Benz - which I think was probably a great way to have some fun with the language - plus I really like that song! :). I do have a few recommendations for you. If you haven't already, you may want to consider watching Extr@ French before moving on with Buffy. Extr@ is a Friends-style comedy designed for language learners. The speech is slower and the language is easier, and it is a little corny, but I found it was a great segue into using native materials. There are 13 episodes of about 30 minutes, there are transcripts available, and you can find the videos on YouTube. If you want to proceed with Buffy now, perhaps consider Subs2SRS with Anki that emk has been doing. I understand it takes some effort to get it set-up, but many are reporting great success! Also, I am not sure if you started Assimil yet- saw that you received it for Christmas, but I think you will be surprised at how quickly your listening skills improve once you are doing Assimil consistently. Bonne Chance! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| redflag Senior Member Australia Joined 3831 days ago 123 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish, Indonesian, French | Message 36 of 58 12 January 2015 at 8:14am | IP Logged | ||
I was reading this in a boring work meeting today and as I translated it, it slowly dawned on me what it was. Thank you, I got a good smile out of it. 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 37 of 58 12 January 2015 at 8:52am | IP Logged | ||
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I'd second Mohave's suggestion of Extra French. It is super corny, but that's the fun! Also, you should be able to find it with French subtitles on Youtube, although the video quality is pretty poor.
And have your tried watching French in Action? 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 38 of 58 12 January 2015 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the feedback Mohave and Jeffers...
re: French in Action - I did watch approximately the first dizaine and admit I was likely getting a lot out of it, but there were huge gaps too. I think I left them staring at each other in the middle of the street. I had been missing most of what they were saying when a character would go off for a full minute, and little to none of that would be covered after (such as the woman standing in line complaining about the dragueur). I promptly bought the textbook from a third-party on Amazon so I could follow along on those sections. It showed up a week later and I haven't touched it since... go figure. re: Extra French - I saw the first two episodes, and found them funny and easy to understand, but probably stopped due to the aforementioned poor video quality. I can't remember if I was watching them with subtitles on (sans doute), but I like the idea of starting over without them and see how far I can get. re: Assimil - I haven't figured out where to plug this into my life. Videos can be watched on the treadmill, I spend a lot of time on the computer so Lingvist and Duo are no-brainers, and Michel Thomas and Pimsleur tend to end up in a driving or cleaning time-slot. I feel like doing Assimil right means I need to sit at a desk and concentrate on it which is something I keep planning to do later in the day, but then it never gets done. So far browsing the book and listening have been decoupled, and I've done none of the shadowing, just repeating in the exercise portion. It might be able to be my pre-bed event, but right now that's the FSI Phonology course. Weekly Goal Modification: Since I don't have anything accomplished yet for the week in Buffy, I shall change this part of my weekly goals to 6 episodes of Extra French and/or French in Action in a blend that will be determined by my mood :) ---- What I learned today: fusil de chasse - shotgun (gun of hunting?) via Lingvist chacun pour soi - every man for himself via Google Translate the various translations of underground do not mean anything subversive in French, per Google and it would seem that they call it "Le métro de Londres, London Underground ou The Tube" per fr.wikipedia.com ---- Aristotle n'etait pas belgique. Le message central du bouddhisme n'est pas 'chacun pour soi,' et le 'London Underground' n'est pas une movement politique. Ces sont tous erreurs, Otto. J'ai verifié. - de Un Poisson Appelé Wanda Edited by s.mann on 19 January 2015 at 12:46am 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 39 of 58 18 January 2015 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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This week for me was all about the passé composé. I tackled it in Duolingo at the end of last week, and
now I’m noticing it everywhere! It was all over Lingvist this whole time, but I just thought they were strangely structured sentences, or even idiomatic up until now. I just wasn’t getting it until I actually had to do it. I’m still having problems with choosing between être vs. avoir forms sometimes, but otherwise just getting to that topic has clarified so much in my reading and listening. In a bit of hubris I attempted to skip to Lesson 9 of FSI Basic to “solidify” my new knowledge, but found out that the lesson lengths grow pretty long at that point (5+ hours) in the course and tapped out after 2 tapes worth. I did not finish my work on FSI Phonology and really feel like I needed more than one go through on it anyway. I am putting it off for now due to a paradigm shift on my part. On further reading of the 'LR manifesto', I have decided I am going to accept the doctrine of: 1st pronunciation recognition (via my F-F Anki deck); 2nd Natural-listening (via LR, RFI, L'avis de Marie, FIA, etc) 3rd pronunciation production (FSI Phonology) 4th speech production (Pimsleur > FSI Basic or People) If nothing else it will narrow my choices for things to work at the same time, which I really need. I also became motivated to work through my Duolingo course more quickly. Duolingo has become my de facto grammar base. I feel like any Duolingo skill I’ve learned I can at least consider ‘tackled’ though not ‘mastered’. I've been working at a measured pace of approximately 1 new lesson per day. I have decided that now that there’s no failing on the web app that I should be able to tackle it more quickly as long as I put more than the 20-30 minutes a day I’ve been doing into it. Mainly, I want to get to the subjunctive, but I’ll have to work through passive voice, pluperfect, gerunds, and future tense first, along with a lot of vocab. (Simple past is even further down the tree, but so far it seems, well, simple to identify.) I watched all 13 episodes of Extra French. I think it went really well because later in the series there were a few times that I didn't catch what they said, looked down for the subtitles, and they weren't even on or working, but I hadn't noticed several minutes into the show. It’s worth another watch since I was 70% on understanding the dialogue (though 100% on getting the gist), but not too soon. Until then I think I’ll start back up with French in Action now that I'm feeling more confident about it and I have the textbook for when I need a crutch. I did some stuff outside of my plan too. I decided to tackle Populaire again. I took the .srt file I downloaded, copied the text into a Google spreadsheet, and used the =GOOGLETRANSLATE function to get a rough translation for each line. Since I’ve watched it with subtitles three times already, I essentially know how they translated it without looking, and I’ve been going through and correcting some of the bad translations while noticing some things that they Anglicized but I’d rather know what the French really says. I’m only up to the 45-minute mark as of now, but when I’m done I'll rewatch with that on the laptop and see if I get more of the French. Just doing the translation corrections I’m noticing some nuances I didn't catch before, like Rose actually has a more familiar and coarse manner of speech, probably indicating to a native that she’s from a small town. Additionally I'm noticing a few places where the spelling is wrong on the French. It’s not a big deal, but it’s fun to be that “in the weeds” on the project. (I’m not in a hurry on this, I just wanted to document when I got started on the spreadsheet for the most part.) Week in Sum: Lingvist - Average 21 new words per day (not a true 21 of course since direct translations from English and stuff I covered through Duolingo are in there) Duolingo - Got through 1 more skill than planned, tree is all gold, and I’m feeling good. Phonology and Michel Thomas - this week was completely useless for audio-based stuff. I mentioned above I'm going to drop Phonology for now, but will get back on Michel Thomas next week. L’avis de Marie - I wasn't as structured about listening to it as planned, but listened and read along nigh daily, though not sure how much progress I’ve made on it. Her next emission should touch on the CH issue, which will be interesting. Next week: Lingvist – minimum 150 cards per day, but no minimum or average number of new words this time. Do 1 listening and 1 reading from the site per day. (3.5 hours*) Duolingo - All gold and get to passive voice. (3 skills, 19 lessons) 100xp per day, 100% on skills. (5 hours) French in Action – I don’t want to make watching anything a chore, but this will be the thing I watch if anything. (? Hours) L’avis de Marie – continue with the daily listen without reading, then reading while listening again until a new one comes out or I understand it all (start working backward in the series if that takes less than the two week wait for another episode) (3.5 hours) RFI – scan the headlines in English and then listen to the broadcast while reading the transcript daily to see how much I get. Finish by translating any passages I didn’t understand even in writing. (2 hours) Michel Thomas – do it… (5 hours?) GLOSS – do at least one of the 2+ reading exercises. (1 hour) *Just to clarify, I’m posting estimated hours so I don’t over-commit myself to a full workweek worth of study activities, but I'm not keeping track of how many hours I’m actually working on it. It probably doesn't really match up well since I work in a lot of meta activities. I should stop doing that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 3996 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 40 of 58 18 January 2015 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I continue to be impressed with how much you accomplish each week! Keep up the great work!!
1 person has voted this message useful |
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