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Gary’s TAC 2011 - Team Œ | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 81 of 104 06 July 2011 at 11:43am | IP Logged |
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It's weekly goals time!
- Go to at least one real-life French speaking event. - done. - At least one Skype chat - it's been too long since I did that. - done. - Watch a film and/or a couple of TV episodes. - done. - Write at least 1 more Hellfest diary instalment. - not done, didn't have time. - Read at least a chapter of Conversationally Speaking. - not done, didn't have time. Yep, last week was even busier than I thought because I was sorting out work stuff during the week, and the weather was lovely at the weekend (a fairly rare occurrence here in Scotland) so I wanted to enjoy it outside with my friends rather than sit in the house studying. I like to study and all but that's where I draw the line :). So for this week: - Meetup tonight (I'll arrive at least an hour late as I have other things on (I feel another "Wednesday night" rant coming on) so I'll need to make the most of the time I do have) - Write that diary instalment, read some of that book! - Talk every day, to myself if not to someone. I've been experimenting with talking to myself again and it seems to be helping, and I can do it quietly while I'm doing other things like washing dishes or walking somewhere. This book which I saw mentioned in another thread looks like it could be very useful to me, it explains a lot of the finer subtleties of the language that I've been wondering about and might help "clean up" my speech a bit. Also I'm going to get myself a Kindle, I've been thinking about it for long enough :P I'm sure it'll come in useful for language learning. Edited by garyb on 06 July 2011 at 11:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 82 of 104 15 July 2011 at 2:52pm | IP Logged |
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Goals all done except the diary writing, I've been too busy with work - if I don't finish all my work I might not get my time off! In other news I saw a very good film called Pour Elle, and my Kindle finally arrived yesterday and I've loaded some French stuff onto it.
The talking to myself idea seems to be helping slightly, although it can be hard to actually find something to talk about and find things that will challenge my knowledge. One time I found some enjoyment in watching people walk past my window and talking about them :). Meetup last week was good, a smaller group than usual so it was a good opportunity to talk. Then I had my once-every-month-or-two trip to the French-English Exchange meetup, or the English-English Exchange meetup as I should more appropriately call it. Not much French speaking, but we had some interesting conversations nonetheless. There's probably more productive things I could have done with the time, but it's always good to be out talking to people rather than sitting in the house alone studying, especially since I say I want to improve my conversation skill. And yesterday I went to Yakety Yak, and it was the smaller, more advanced group again so it was good and useful. I might start going there every week if I can and if it continues to be this useful, even if it means making my evening even busier. Goals: - Continue the daily speaking, but for longer periods (10 minutes and up). - Revise some of Assimil active wave. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 83 of 104 18 July 2011 at 3:55pm | IP Logged |
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I had a read of The French They Never Taught You (mentioned in my last post) and it's a nice short book that gave me a few very useful bits of info, as well as confirming a lot of patterns that I've noticed. I might look into some more of these intermediate/advanced level grammar/usage books, they're definitely good to refer to now and again, either if you're confused about a specific issue or just to check you're getting things right and to learn a couple of new things.
I finally wrote the second part of my Hellfest diary, on Lang-8. I had a free weekend, but ended up spending pretty much all of it playing guitar and I did precious little French study. I'm happy though, I really hadn't been spending enough time on music recently. It's Wednesday Meetup week, always something I very much look forward to! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 84 of 104 28 July 2011 at 1:59pm | IP Logged |
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I've not been on this site for a while, been very busy with work, but I'm still keeping up the French efforts of course, and still trying to come up with ways to improve my speaking.
Started using Anki again after giving it up a long time ago. I found a deck containing the sentences for Assimil French With Ease so I'm using that to try to internalise the all the useful material in the book. I reckon just having a good knowledge of all the words and expressions from that book would get me quite far in everyday speaking. No work next week, I'm already trying to make plans to be sure I make the most out of the time! I'm onto the second series of Engrenages now and very much enjoying it. I also have a backlog of DVDs to watch: 36 Quai des orfevres, Le placard, Une époque formidable, Le Manoir. I discovered a book+audio course called Streetwise French. I've always thought it would be great if these was a "third Assimil" that focuses on slang and colloquial language, and if my flick through Streetwise French is anything to go by, I've found it! Like Assimil it's made of dialogs accompanied by explanations. I don't think I'll get it right away though, as I still feel like my "regular" French needs a lot of improvement so I should keep focusing on that first. Yesterday I was watching some YouTube videos about accent reduction. These videos are almost all aimed at people wanting to improve their American English pronunciation, but as far as I can see, a lot of the general principles can be applied to any language. In particular they discuss speaking slowly and accurately rather than trying to speak fast, which I think could help a lot. I make a lot of stupid pronunciation and usage errors when I speak, and that's probably partly due to me trying to speak too fast and so not properly thinking about what I'm saying. Hell, even when I'm speaking my native language English I often make stupid mistakes or things just don't come out right, so maybe I should work on this in general. There's definitely something to be said for people who speak slowly but clearly and with well-chosen words, it gives an air of respectability and credibility. The guitarist's mantra that goes "speed is a byproduct of accuracy" could well be equally applicable to languages. Another recent discovery of mine is The Pomodoro Technique time management method. I've been trying it for about a week and it seems good, not only for improving productivity but also for keeping track of tasks and understanding how I've spent my time. Should help me answer the eternal question of "where is my time all going?", and get better at estimating time for tasks. Maybe I should also finish reading my copy of Getting Things Done (which I started a couple of years ago - yes, I'm aware of the irony). I'm not usually a very organised person, but I think considering how busy I am and how many goals I have, I really need to be using my time as effectively as possible. Edited by garyb on 28 July 2011 at 2:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 85 of 104 07 August 2011 at 7:37pm | IP Logged |
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Again not been on this site much, this time not due to being busy with work, but due to being off work and being busy doing more productive things than spending time on forums. I didn't get loads more French stuff done than usual, as I spent a fair bit of the free time socialising and sleeping, two things that I need to practise and improve more than my French :).
I can't tell yet whether my speaking slowly idea is helping or not. I didn't feel a significant improvement in my speaking at the meetups and on Skype last week, but it's early days; if my other speech improvement efforts are anything to go by, it'll take a good few weeks for the improvements to become habit and make their way from deliberate practice to my actual conversational speech. Same goes for Anki. Someone at the meetup did comment that my French is sometimes a bit hard to understand due to my accent, so there's definitely still plenty work to be done. Again running out of ideas for weekly goals other than keeping up the speaking and films and TV and study, and I'm mostly using Remember The Milk and Pomodoro to keep track of goals and time management now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 86 of 104 19 August 2011 at 1:22pm | IP Logged |
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My latest pronunciation and accent improvement effort: recording myself listening and repeating or shadowing Assimil dialogs. That way I get a "real time" idea of how my voice sounds compared to a native speaker's. Since I already know pretty much all anyone needs to know about producing the individual sounds, the point of this is to work on my accent in general, in particular rhythm and intonation of speech and the general "sound of my voice" - not the individual phonemes but the general quality of my voice, no idea how to better explain this or what the technical term is. As I always say, I expect it'll take some time for the improvements to reach my conversational speech.
Progress on the current experiments: speaking slowly seems to have diminishing returns beyond a "slow but still normal" speed, except for when practising specific words or short phrases; Anki seems to be helping a bit, it's definitely helping keep expressions fresh in my mind when I can then use in speech. One of the meetups (Yakety Yak) seems to take the French approach to business: nothing happening at all for the whole month of August. And I'm always busy on Tuesday evenings now, thanks to joining another band, so trying the Exchange meetup isn't even an option. This means I'm currently only getting to speak French with other people once every two weeks, which really doesn't cut it. Edited by garyb on 19 August 2011 at 1:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 87 of 104 26 August 2011 at 11:22pm | IP Logged |
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Usual story, not had loads of time for French but I'm making the most of the time I do have with watching TV, speaking, and Anki. Yesterday evening I met up with a French guy from a language exchange site and we had a chat. I generally had little difficulty expressing myself and a lot of the time I was speaking without even really thinking and using a good variety of expressions and vocabulary, and he was quite impressed. Beginnings of fluency perhaps? I'll admit it was quite an easy conversation about interests and work and so on, and I'm sure I'd have struggled if it had got into more complicated territory like opinions on current events or describing past experiences and the other more challenging topics that group meetups tend to steer towards, but I'm happy with it: I think the Pareto Principle applies as always - 80% of day to day conversations are about 20% of subjects, and being comfortable with the majority of conversations is great. And I should keep improving with the more complex subjects as I go on. So progress seems to be slow but sure.
Improving my social and conversation skill's still a priority of course, on which I found a great article. The article's on a site about picking up women, but the advice is general and applies to any situation where you're getting to know someone and want to move beyond small talk. I'm trying to apply that to my conversations, and it's had the nice side effect of making me more excited about meeting new people. I just found some Youtube videos of a young guy speaking humorously about everyday subjects, which is exactly the sort of thing I find useful and enjoyable. Good stuff. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 88 of 104 16 September 2011 at 9:12pm | IP Logged |
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It's been a wee while since the last update...
The bad: Language exchange partners. I've come to the conclusion that reliable language partners are rarer than hen's teeth. The guy I met up with a few weeks ago hasn't responded to me since; someone on another forum contacted me and we arranged a Skype chat to which she never turned up; I've lost count of how many people on SharedTalk and Conversation Exchange just stopped responding; and the one guy I do talk to regularly isn't a good timekeeper to say the least. I think the idea of a fair, regular, mutually beneficial language exchange is a fantasy. The good: Despite all that, I can't complain about not being able to speak enough recently. Yakety Yak's started again and keeps getting better, the Meetup is drawing a good crowd, the French cinema evenings are starting again, and the exchange meetup has merged with a "language café" that's at a fairly convenient time and location for me so I can actually make it most weeks, even if only for an hour. This meetup is of course varied and inconsistent but so far there's always been at least a few people there for French (which is more than can be said for other languages; I've seen a few people come to speak Spanish or German and being disappointed. So I've been able to have good conversations a few times a week, and I'm progressing accordingly (slowly but surely like I always say). Now that I've settled into my new job and I've generally sorted out my shit a bit more, I feel more relaxed and I have more free time. Most weekends I even find some time to - gasp - relax a bit! If things keep up like this I reckon I'll be on track to start Italian in a few months. I reckon around the Christmas period when I have some time off work I'll do some serious study to improve my knowledge and get a better grasp of the basics, then hopefully start having conversations with my Italian friends fairly soon after. I've had some interesting conversations recently. Subjects include: the large difference between "fluency" and "mastery", and the psychological aspect of language ability: speaking better with certain people and when you feel more relaxed and so on. Edited by garyb on 16 September 2011 at 9:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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