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Komma’s Log: Fr (TAC 15), En (TAC 15 | ||
Tags: Activating a Language | Advanced Level | Anki | Self-Study | College/University | Assimil | English | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Komma Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4048 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish | Message 1 of 21 09 March 2015 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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EDIT: I just joined Team Francais and Advanced English for TAC 2015 a bit late ^^
Hello everyone, I'm Komma. As I have a new project this year, I started a new log and hope to stick with logging and more important stick with learning :D Here you can find my old log about Spanish from last year. There I also introduced myself. Introduction In short about me: I'm female, 20 years old, from Germany, study Chemistry, like a lot of thing including learning languages.. I started with Spanish a year ago and then dropped it due to more important things like learning for exams and doing labwork. After a long day at university, I had no strength left to study languages. I also realized that I always only think of the french expression now when trying to speak Spanish. However, my French is very inactive. That is what I want to change. Before starting learning new languages, I want to improve/ activate the ones I already know. That is: French (activate and improve) and English (improve). Following my learning/ knowledge situation, plans and goals. French I started French in school about 8 years or so ago and had French lessons for 3,5 years. After that I made the terrible mistake of not preserve my knowledge. I haven't done anything for 4,5 years now (except of revising some words 2 years ago, but very halfheartedly). I realized that I think of Spanish words while trying to revise French and vice versa. That is annoying. I do know that it's a Spanish or French word (in most cases), but I just mess it up anyway. I still have a passive vocabulary knowledge (at least while reading), but listening or making up my own sentences is quite bad. In school I was quite good in French, but as it was taught in school I didn't really like it. However, now that I started refreshing my knowledge (started with Duolingo, listened to French music) I also realized that I do like the sound of the language. I actually prefer it to Spanish and I have a little "hook" because I kind of like some French music. My goal is to reach B1 or B2 by the end of the year. It says on my diploma (from school) that I should have the level A2/B1. The placement test I took at University 2 years ago stated me for something like the middle of A2. So B1/ B2 is realistic I think as a bit of French is still there in my brain. I haven't made up a real plan at the moment because the exam phase just ended and I had to take a few days off anything. I started with Duolingo as it is free and I get the basics. I'm not very happy with the audio though. It's sometimes really bad. I know, I'm not native, but it just sounds strange. I'm waiting for French Assimil to be available in our library. I'm not ready to spend money on it because I still haven't really finished/ worked seriously with Assimil and I'm still not sure whether that program is suited for me. I also want to get a grammar and some workbooks. I'm not sure which, therefore I search the forum and then make up my mind. If someone read this and has any suggestions, you're more than welcome to reply :D And I plan to build up and learn vocab with anki. I really liked it last time and I'm thinking about using sentences this time. Like that a word has a more explicit meaning than alone and if I think about a sentence meaning the same I think it's also good, isn't it? (I mean while revising..) I'm also planning to take a course at university. They are not very good, but with a native speaker and I have to do some soft skill subject, so why not French :D If anyone has suggestions for reactivating/ restarting a language you're welcome to reply and I already thank you in advance. I really like this Forum for it's huge variety of threads and suggestions. English My background: I started learning in grade 4 with very basic vocabulary. My father also did an English quiz with me every morning. I didn't understand anything at first and rather learned the right answers by heart, but I think it did contribute a bit to learning English. In secondary school (I think this is the best equivalent for German "Gymnasium"..) I was in a biligual class. We had 7 instead of 5 lessons English and starting in grade 7 we also had Geography, history and politics in English. I really like the language and as I watch a lot of TV shows I started to watch them in English as they were released. Otherwise I had to wait so much longer for a German synchro. It was very hard first, but now I would say I have almost no problem at all to understand TV shows, films etc. (I'm sure there are exceptions like regional dialects etc. but all I understand all the things I watch) I also started reading English books in grade 10 or so. My first was Harry Potter 7. Also I didn't want to wait for the German version. I needed like half an hour for page 1 as I looked up every third word. It got very annoying and I started to look up less and then didn't look up anything. I understood it very well and really learned more words (which I used in exams at school and improved my language and also the content of my essays :D) I'd consider my skills in English to be very advanced. Somewhere at C1 or so (I never took a test nor am I familiar with the requirements for the levels, so that's just a guess for now) My aim is to improve as I'm still not perfect and will never be. I'm doing my bachelor thesis this year and I might write it in English. I'm not sure yet, but it would be a good chance to improve and also to improve scientific English. That is what I want to study: I want to focus on scientific terms and written English. I also want to improve grammar. For grammar I still need to get (purchase or borrow it from the library) resources. I'm also interested in other advanced language matters. I thought about getting the book "Practical English usage". I borrowed it before and liked it, but I'm not sure whether it is suitable for "learning directly" from it or just look something up. For the scienfic side I think I will read a lot of papers. Which I have to do anyway in order to get information about my research topic. From that I will extract sentences, technical terms etc. and include them in anki. other languages As the year goes on and if my French study will work out just fine, I'm thinking about starting another language. I'm not sure about Spanish and French at the same time, but there are other languages that interest me, like Japanese, Chinese (I know this isn't a language by it's own, but I haven't any specific preference now), Arabic, Hebrew... Somehow all languages with different writing systems ^^ But first I take French to a higher level. What do you suggest about doing several languages at the same time. I mean not starting all, but what about being on level B2 or so in one language. Is that enough so that one could think about starting a new one? What about similar languages (as mentioned French and Spanish, with one at a higher level)? "last words" I'm sorry for this very long post. I hope I haven't frightend you and someone reads at least my questions :D I might ask somewhere else or find answers while searching the vast archive. Greetings and nice studying, Komma Edited by Komma on 12 April 2015 at 9:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5336 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 2 of 21 10 March 2015 at 8:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Hi, Komma! I believe that when you reach B2 your French will be on very solid grounds, so I really wouldn’t worry about interferences from other languages. The only drawback will be that the more languages you learn concurrently, the less time you’ll have to dedicate to each. Only you can judge for yourself whether that is a problem or not. Counterintuitively, many people here find that starting a new language is actually an advantage as it helps them stay motivated and focused on their long-term language learning programme. Good luck with your studying! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Komma Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4048 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish | Message 3 of 21 10 March 2015 at 10:42pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thank you Emme :)
I will see then, I think. While not being on a higher level and not maintaining the language and then trying to start a new and similar language is not a good thing. That's what I found out about while learning Spanish with some French left in my brain, but not activated enough. I just hope that, once my French is active again, the interference will be less. I mean I do know whether a word is French or Spanish, I just don't remember the right word while trying to speak or write ^^ 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Komma Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4048 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish | Message 4 of 21 10 March 2015 at 11:12pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Just a little Update
Today I visited our library. That was not very productive. I borrowed quite a few books, but I don't know whether I'm happy about them or not. I will see. The Assimil course isn't available until next week or so (though they should be given back today... -.-). Maybe I have more luck next week or try the other library I'm a member of. French Today I made the third French skill at Duolingo. It's nice to get into the language again, though I'm not fond of the audio. But I will try out some French pods in the next days. Here's a list of books I got today from the library: - Teach yourself (complete) French; the German Edition by Lextra - Etudes Francaises - Grundgrammatik (grammar) - Grammaire Progressive du Francais - intermédiaire and advancé - Lire et voyager: En Bretagne - Lire et voyager: En Provence As it is the only course I have here, I'll start with TY and flip through it and look what I still know. I also could take a look at FSI. The grammar is mostly for reference. The Grammaire Progressive books are workbooks which will be good to test what I know and what I learned. I'm curious about the Lire et Voyager books. I think it's nice to read something like that than course book dialogues. They also have an audio CD. For listening I listened to some French songs today (A bit of Stromae). And a few days ago I listened to a radio programme. However, this is not only with French music, but I listened to French advertising. And I didn't understand much, but wasn't paying much attention either. I think I'll use podcasts with a slower speaker. English I haven't started doing much here (except for reading through this forum, but as here are not only native speakers writing, I wouldn't count that..) I got the book "practical English usage" by Swan and a collocations dictionary. I'll flip through them from time to time and see what I can learn from them. I know that these books are no courses to work through but reading a few pages in the Swan and taking the dictionary as a reference is a good thing. 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 5 of 21 11 March 2015 at 1:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hi Komma, welcome to the community of French learners here.
I am a big Duolingo user (finished the tree, just reached Level 25 French which is the highest and am now using it for Danish) but to be honest I turn off the audio entirely. I think it's great for kickstarting reading, vocab and recognition of patterns in the language but there are many, many, many, many (x 1000) superior ways to get speaking/listening practice especially in French. So don't be afraid just to junk the audio/speaking component of it. Your English is fantastic, I can never hope to reach that level in another language and am in awe. :-) I didn't do the hard sciences but I have a Masters degree and am familiar with academic writing so I'm happy to assist if you need any advice. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Komma Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4048 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish | Message 6 of 21 11 March 2015 at 8:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thank you :)
Interesting. Do you turn it on for those listening and writing what you hear tasks? Or can you also switch them off? I agree, Duolingo is great for all you mentioned, and it's free. And it's fun :D I like it to get into the language again. I just do one skill a day, which is quite slow at the moment, but to me that doesn't matter.
Oh thank you. ^^ *blush* But that's only writing. I think speaking is still my weakest part. While talking to myself at home I mostly know the words, but when I have to talk to people I often just can't remember anything. But I don't really practice it and actually haven't had the opportunity to talk to natives. I know there are ways to find people via internet, but I don't trust the internet enough to do things like that. And talking to other non-natives will not really improve my pronunciation. 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 7 of 21 11 March 2015 at 8:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||
With the audio switched off in settings it just doesn't doesn't give you those tasks at all. So I just do exclusively the reading/writing tasks. Annoying the iPhone app still reads the words out loud anyway but it still doesn't give me the task. On the website it is totally, blissfully silent. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Komma Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4048 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish | Message 8 of 21 12 March 2015 at 6:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thank you redflag for telling me the thing with the audio. It's better now.
As I've been away all day yesterday, I couldn't continue my streak in Duolingo. I continued today then with 'food'. I realized that I have to be careful with the articles. I always make the most errors there. Often they are the same as in German, but as the Duolingo course is from English to French I don't think German to French and so I confuse the articles... For a bit of audio I started with page=4">learn French by Podcast beginner. I listened to the first two lessons on the train yesterday. I quite like them. There is still a lot of English, but these are the beginner lessons and it's good to get into listening again. And I also learned some new words (like l'hibou - owl). The only thing I'm not sure about is whether all the pronunciation was correct. As they said un hibou (or at least that was what I heard) at 2:05 of the audio file it was pronounced without the liaison. I thought it would be pronounced 'un_hibou' (_ = liaison). Also right behind un hibou they had the verb acher which means to chop. This one was very tricky as I mistook the English word for 'shop' and thought why don't they pronounce the 't' because in french it's "acheter". I listened to it just now and heard the difference, but I think that is a very bad example for a beginner lesson. Or maybe it was my headphone's fault or it's because I'm not native to English.. But apart from that I enjoyed the podcast. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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