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| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5996 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 9 of 78 18 July 2008 at 4:12am | IP Logged |
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To my avid readers, you are lucky, you will be getting a bigger post today. I know that the last few have been sorely lacking in information, and as I will be going to the Châteaux de la Loire over the weekend I will endeavour to put a bit more substance into todays report.
This week I have: Focussed on getting L'accords du participé passé correct. I have made significant progress in this, but it is still not perfect. Imparfait, Passé Composé and Plus-que-parfait have been covered. I am 'comfortable' with passé composé and imparfait, and I have good feelings towards the plus-que-parfait. This will only improve with usage. Covered Stratégies pour présenter mon parcours lors d'un entretien, et j'ai appris les phrases utile pour créer un CV. J'aurai un bilans cette après-midi où je devrai écrire une lettre au responsable de l'Association Echanges Jeunes en présentant mon parcours et en rappelant l'origine de mon intérêt pour la France. Alors je vais faire le répétition dans un instant. I downloaded Mnemosyne yesterday. Added 120 words to it today. I think it could be useful. But putting the words in is a pain in the arse. Does anyone have a ready made file they want to give me? Eh? Eh? No?....I suppose I will just keep on keeping on. *EDIT 19.9.08: This failed for me, I just can't be bothered doing it all the time* I will have a new teacher today, mine is going on her summer vacation for ten days. Should be good, it will be nice to have a change, I am enjoying the classes less and less. But they are useful. I just don't play well with others (read Russians). German girl gave me German beer from münchen yesterday, for my birthday present. Was nice of her no? I am prefering the Western Europeans to the Russian speaking bloc that has formed... But that is neither here nor there. I read another 20odd pages of Boule do Suif yesterday, as I didn't feel like actually studying. Encountered a fair few words I didn't know, but I just kept going. I still feel like I am getting somewhere. The story I am interpreting might be different to what Maupassant intended, but it is interesting nevertheless. I just remembered that 'Benoit' over at the Polyglot Forumshas proposed a language exchange. I will have to get back to him next week. Hopefully this will serve as a reminder to myself. Went to the pub last night with some friends. Had a nice conversation over my two glasses of red wine. Apparantly I am absorbing the culture too easily. Being the only one there drinking wine, rather hypocritical comments regarding alcoholism and baguette indulgencies were made. These were taken in the same good humour that they were given. I would class last night as a linguistical success. As I was able to really stretch my skills. I am happy because they didn't seem to be making any effort to slow/dumbdown their speech, and yet I followed along, reasonably, well. Negative: I went to the orthography room at my school. Hated it with a passion more fierce than a thousand burning suns. Put me in a bad mood the rest of the day, and is the main reasion for the abruptness of the previous post. Forty-five minutes of staring at a wall with a headset on, repeating what I heard with a condescending orthograph? orthogriphist? she-who-does-orthography correcting me through the headphones isn't my idea of fun. Apparantly my nasal pronunciations are subpar. Doesn't surprise me, but it is nice to know what I need to work on. But I dont intend to return. That will have to do, I spent far too long typing it. As always, well often, maybe frequently but mostly sometimes, I remain, Thom. Edited by ExtraLean on 19 September 2008 at 10:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5996 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 10 of 78 22 July 2008 at 2:48am | IP Logged |
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Morning all,
Les Chateaux de la Loire are pretty damn cool. Met some nice folks. Had alot of French practice. Finished Boule du Suif, Madame Fifi, and I am onto the next short story. I had class all day yesterday, as is becoming the norm. Positive news is that two of the three teachers basically told the class to get their act together. Do more work at home, respond in class. The second one asked if she was going to fast for anyone. I don't think she needed my answer, as the German and I were playing rock papers scissors to decide who would answer the question. This is how slow the rest of the class is. I am hoping to see an improvement. I dont know what else to say today. I am thinking more and more in French at the moment. I had to actually stop and think of how I would write a phrase in English on msn, not too long ago. To my dear avid readers, I hope that you are all progressing nicely with your studies. Any questions, comments, 'g'day Thom how are you going? I REALLY REALLY REALLY HATE certain aspects of what I am studying, how about you?'s are more than welcome. Didn't get back to benoit. I am just too lazy. And I have plenty of French speaking parteners all ready. Yup, I am still me, Thom. Edited by ExtraLean on 22 July 2008 at 2:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5996 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 11 of 78 24 July 2008 at 3:46am | IP Logged |
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Went to the pub last night, spoke with some folk from my class and a couple of frenchmen. Was good practice. I haven't done too much work this last week. I have just been using the language, and that is pretty damn good in my books. Or so I tell myself to justify my lazyness. I need to do my homework before school, but I might just go curl up on the couch.
I have just remembered that one of the Frenchmen said that he couldn't tell I was an Anglophone by my accent. Makes me wonder just how I sound. Should I be immensly pleased, or worried? I think it is a good thing. I suppose I am just moving along the scale of: 'Well he is definitely from Australia => Well he is definitely English speaking => Well he's not from around here, is he? => You mean he isn't French?. Progress, I love her. I will leave this as a note to myself the next time I come back to my journal: NEED TO DO MORE WORK BY MYSELF. STOP BEING LAZY AND DO SOME STUDY. THE WORK FOR THE CLASS IS THE MINIMUM. Thom. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5996 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 12 of 78 26 July 2008 at 9:27am | IP Logged |
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I will take a moment to mock myself for my previous note to myself.
I have organised for a class mate and I to really up the anti for our study, being to study as much as we can together, on top of the work for the class. I think I will buy a REUSSIR le DALF C1/C2 book, and a french written grammar. Hopefully this will lead to competition, and thus growth. As I mentioned in another thread, I have decided to start learning Turkish. I have done a search for free online learning goodness. I think I have the alphabet sorted. And I am tossing up whether I will buy Assimil. I will keep track of both languages in here, that's why I changed the name. Tonight I have a dinner cruise on the seine with my girlfriends family and friends. So listening, speaking practice it is. As an aside, I am understanding more jokes, and following french tv with minimal difficulty. I watched Obamas speech/meeting with Sarkozy easily. Thom. Edited by ExtraLean on 28 July 2008 at 3:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Beti88 Diglot Newbie Poland Joined 5967 days ago 21 posts - 21 votes Speaks: Polish*, German Studies: Spanish, Swedish, French, English | Message 13 of 78 28 July 2008 at 2:13pm | IP Logged |
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you're doing great progress with French. good luck with Turkish!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5996 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 14 of 78 28 July 2008 at 3:30pm | IP Logged |
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Cheers Beti
French: The cruise was good, I recommend it for anyone spending a little bit of time in Paris. The Eiffel Tower lit up and it was wonderful. However, I think I was the only one who liked the food they got, the wine was comparitively shit, and it was hot and service wasn't all that impressive. However, the actual cruise was pretty cool. I received some nice compliments regarding my french, from the family friends who I hadn't seen for a while. They were amazed at the progress I made in the last month or so. Though my pronounciation of the word Trottoir got some laughs. Still, positive feed back is always nice. Did my 8 hours of French today. Made good progress with the subjonctif, and redid some stuff I had done before. Got the shits with my class, ended up doing a chapter of grammar during my normal afternoon class, was subjonctif. I understand, when, why and how to use it, I think. I just need to practice getting the conjugations right for the irregular verbs. these will come with time. My old teacher returned and we thus slowed down again and voilà, today I was told not to give the answers to questions, and to let other people have a go. This shits me off immensely. It turns out that anger is a good motivator for me. With 8/9 weeks to go, I imagine I will find a lot of motivation. All in all turned out to be more productive, but less enjoyable than normal. Apparantly a lot of people had problems with the speed which the replacement teacher spoke. We had her for nine days, and noone said anything about it. This amazes me, I will blame the differences between cultures, but make reference to the apparant idiocy of the majority of my class mates. I can only say that they will reap what they sow. I found the last week or so of lessons nice and refreshing, motivating, and perfectly comprehensible. This week I aim to finish off two of my books, make good progress with my Advanced Grammar work book, and maybe buy another advanced workbook to work through. Turkish: Revised the alphabet, listened to some songs: I like one of the first bands I was pointed to (Mor ve Ötesi, *edit* just found Manga, I like them too. Search for them on youtube if you're interested) more than all of the French ones I have found so far, sauf grand corps malade, mais il est un autre type de chanteur. I have found an online newspaper to look at and will cast an eye over it now and then, but it won't do me too much good for a while. This afternoon I formed a tentative plan for how I will approach learning Turkish. I am going to try to do the low cost approach. I may not get Assimil, I will think about it more, I would be much happier if I could find a free copy online but oh well. I might just try to wing it with online resources, I think that there is plenty out there. The thread I started here has some interesting stuff and I hope that it only gets bigger. I am going to rely on my ability to speak well/adjust to different accents quickly and start off by slowly assimilating the grammar and vocabulary of the written language. It's how I think that I learn. I am not the biggest fan of Pimsleur, Michel Thomas, or FSI, so I am just going to go with the flow and see where I end up. I am hoping to find some nice podcasts with transcripts etc, as they aided me immensely with French. I think that that will do for now, Good luck to you all, and I remain, Thom. Edited by ExtraLean on 28 July 2008 at 4:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5996 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 15 of 78 30 July 2008 at 10:30am | IP Logged |
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Français:
Alors, des bonnes nouvelles aujourd'hui. Demain je vais essayer le classe structuré pour obtenir le Niveau B2. C'est à dire, le niveau plus haut que lequel je fais maintenant. On, moi et une pote, essaiera demain, et si ce serait à mon/notre goûte on changera pour le prochaine leçon. Je suis très très content que c'est passé comme ça. I suppose the only problem with changing classes is that I probably won't have time to work on Turkish this week/next week, as I imagine I will need to catch up. I am happy to be doing it with my German friend, as she is coming over tomorrow morning so we can try to be prepared for the class in the afternoon. It is at the same time as my normal class so it doesn't change anything, I suppose that it won't be on Mondays that I do the full day though. If I find the class to difficult I think that I will buy the book anyway, it is tailored at attaining the B2 certificate and I am told that the excercises, subject matter, etc mirrors that of the exams. For those of you who care it is: édito: méthode de français. Heu, élodie, Mabilat, Jean-Jacques, Les Editions Didier, ISBN: 978-2-278-05829-7. Since I last posted I have finished the chapter on the subjonctif in one of my books, started the next chapter which is the gerondif and the present participle. This morning I spent the best part of two hours on msn with a girl I know from Quebec. Thus, writing practice and written comprehension skills put to the test. Went well. Turkish: Just searched for some decent sites to teach myself. Found the course offered at the Australian National University, sussed out the textbooks for that. I have an idea of what to buy if I get around to buying now. But as I said above, I will put it on hold till I am happy with my progress in the new class, should I stay in it, which is highly likely. Good luck t'all ye who doth delve into the dazz'ling depths of language learning. * Edit* Apparantly I now speak French. Considering the fact that it is something I do every day, I suppose it is correct. And I do fulfil the criteria posed for basic fluency. whoop whoop. I figure that I have a B1 understanding, who knows. I found out today that some people in my class have attained that, and we all know my opinion of some of the people in my class. *edited again* I have found that my local library,Bibliothèque Batignolles Adresse : 18 Rue des Batignolles stocks 61 different Assimil courses. So, I have access to the audio, and now only have buy the book that comes with it from FNAC for 20 euros or what not. Score. This is most applicable to Turkish which is on hold, and anything else that grabs my interest, but I might get the French as well. It won't hurt. Thom. Edited by ExtraLean on 30 July 2008 at 3:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5996 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 16 of 78 31 July 2008 at 9:56am | IP Logged |
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Ok, well that was interesting.
I must say that there is just a bit of a difference between the classes that I was in, and the class I am going to change into. I am glad I spent the last month or so building up my self-confidance, because today it took a hammering. I now realise just how much work I still need to do. It is a completely different style of class, a whole magnitude of difficulty higher, new and amazing vocab, phrases, grammar etc. a more lively class, higher expectations regarding output, and on top of all that it frightens me. All in all, I think this is a good thing. I am taking a half an hour break, before I sit down and start to work my way through the text book, do the homework, and generally try to make progress. I am happy, I understand what I need to do, and I feel that it is just, almost, nearly possible for me to do so. But f**k me, have I got some work to do. *edit* made it into the class, the teacher wants me to be happier though, and apparantly my scrawling handwriting isnt legible enough, source of great frustration for her. Found out I have a reputation at the school, Thomas le Terreur or something equally laughable. Apparantly I come off as a surly bastard. Oh well. Must do some work over the weekend, mostly grammar, and writing practice. Thom. Edited by ExtraLean on 01 August 2008 at 1:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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