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TAC 2011 - Team KEN - French and German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Adrean TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member France adrean83.wordpress.c Joined 6169 days ago 348 posts - 411 votes  Speaks: FrenchC1 | Message 18 of 66 11 February 2011 at 7:38pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks very much Teango and Buttons. Thanks for all the supporting messages before, during and after the exam.
Vous êtes tous les deux vraiment magnifique! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Adrean TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member France adrean83.wordpress.c Joined 6169 days ago 348 posts - 411 votes Speaks: FrenchC1 | Message 19 of 66 20 February 2011 at 2:52am | IP Logged |
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Not so much as an update but just a chance to share a couple of French songs which I've grown to like recently.
This is a video of Jodie Foster speaking excellent French. I aspire to be at her lofty level. She has a little accent and she starts talking at 44 seconds in. This song was the title track for an excellent film called 'Les nuits de la pleine lune' by Rohmer. Brigitte Bardot also had a musical career. Her best of is amazing! This song is called Bubble Gum This song was recently covered by Charlotte Gainsbourg. I think the original by French Canadian Jean-Pierre Ferland is better. This French roackabilly song is too catchy. I love the clip. This catchy song was the title track to the film 'La Chinoise' by Jean-Luc Godard in 1967. A nice beat to a strange subject. Finally a German song, more specfically Swiss German from 1979. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Adrean TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member France adrean83.wordpress.c Joined 6169 days ago 348 posts - 411 votes Speaks: FrenchC1 | Message 21 of 66 28 February 2011 at 12:02am | IP Logged |
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I have shifted and returned focus back to French the past two weeks. I connect my laptop up to the net once a week to download the new podcasts from my favourite shows. Most of all I enjoy movie critic programs. So this past fortnight armed with a big notebook I started listening out for connectors. 'Connectors' is a concept I took from Splog/FluentCzech. It's essentially filler which makes the sentences stick and give a sense of fluency to a learner when he/she speaks. It could be just one word that you hear a lot or a small group of 3-4 words. Some examples in French 'de maniere' ' de toute facon' 'en effet' 'ca lui empeche de..' ' si j'ose dire' 'tous qui concerne..' etc.etc. I literally have 10 pages of this stuff now which I have to find a method to learn and to incorporate into my own active vocab. All the connectors I found were actually taken from live speech and I've often jotted down the same phrase 3 or more times because of it's repetitiveness.
I've also borrowed/stolen another idea of Splog/FluentCzech and that is word maps. I've taken the verb 'to take' in English and looked at the various combinations and connotations this verb has. I literally printed off 8 pages from an online dictionary. Examples are to take as in an object or person which is different in French, to take a job, take an offer, to take criticism, it takes patience, to take on, to take off, take after, take aback, to take away (as in subtract food) etc.etc. I think I might take just a little detour from Splog's method and create and use my own audio for all this to sink in. I find I'm very much an audio based person so I will kind of make my Michel Thomas a la me. I try to watch the French news each day which is on twice a day on free to air tv on a very good channel called SBS. I finished reading a book called 'Backpacker Australia' about a French guy who takes a working holiday visa for a year before he turns 30. It was very easy reading and I admire his courage. I'm also nearly finished reading a book called 'Hymnes a l'amour' by Anne Wiazemsky about a girl growing up and the songs of Edith Piaf touching her life and people around her. I've also re-seen a couple of films I saw last year, ' La Femme Infidele' and 'Les Uns et Les Autres'. ------------------------------ As for German, I have now worked through the Michel Thomas foundation course two times. I have been most of the way through the two c.d vocab course and I have finished the first c.d of the advanced course. I'm finding it exceptionally difficult, Michel has us saying things like 'If I would have seen it I would have liked to have bought it'. Very hard stuff. I'm also in the third week of the Hugo 3 month course. I'm finding it a very good supplement for Michel. Have also done the beginner lessons of Pimsleur. That's all for the past two weeks. Talk soon eh? Edited by Adrean on 28 February 2011 at 12:04am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6358 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French | Message 22 of 66 28 February 2011 at 12:07pm | IP Logged |
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Your 'connector' and 'word map' strategies sound really intriguing! I definitely need to check out Splog's ideas in more detail.
Hope you keep us updated on how you do the transition from passive to active vocab. :) You seem to be progressing nicely. How much do you need to consult dictionaries/translations when you read French books? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Tournesol Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5362 days ago 119 posts - 132 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchC1 Studies: German | Message 23 of 66 01 March 2011 at 11:22pm | IP Logged |
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Your description of word maps reminds me of collocations. For collocations in French there's the Dictionnaire des
combinaisons de mots. Almost as good as being around a native speaker but not quite. Here's a link to an online collocations dictionary http://www.tonitraduction.net/ 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Adrean TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member France adrean83.wordpress.c Joined 6169 days ago 348 posts - 411 votes Speaks: FrenchC1 | Message 24 of 66 07 March 2011 at 11:38pm | IP Logged |
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Yeh that definitely has something to do with what I'm talking about Tournesol. I tried the site however and it was exceptionally hard to understand. I looked at a collocation site for English and it looked really good.
Lately I've been taking a slightly more proactive approach to my studies. Last time I mentioned going over the verb 'to take' but also 'to go' 'to do' and in French 'tenir' 'faire' and so many more. The more I dig the more the depth and richness of French opens up to me. It seems the more I search the more I uncover and the more I have to learn. It is at times very demoralizing. Take 'to take' for example, you have perhaps about 50+ French verbs to describe the many variations of the verb 'to take', just open up a large dictionary and you have several pages in very fine print. I've also borrowed a pretty well laid out and presented book called 'How to correct you French blunders'. I'm just speed reading and learning or relearning several things in the process. I've also had the Hugo advanced French book which I bought prematurely, I'm using it now just to flick through during 10 minutes here or there nothing series. I stumbled upon whilst going through a Robert and Collins French/English dictionary a 'Language in use supplement'. At the moment it is exactly what I'm looking for. It's basically 27 topics such as 'suggestions','advice', agreement', 'apologies etc.etc. They are basically connectors and show you other ways to express a thought. For example when making a suggestion I could say 'Si je peux me permettre une suggestion' or 'A votre place' or 'Si j'etais vous' or more assertively 'Rien ne vous empeche de..' 'Vous feriez mieux de..' ' N'oubliez pas de..' or using a question 'Est-ce que vous avez songe a.....?' 'Que direiz-vous de....?' That is just a small selection from just one section. I love the fact that you have tentative suggestions, assertive suggestions, direct questions, tenetative questions, assertive questions, or asking for suggestions. THat's just for one sections. ME, being an audiodatic learner I'm going to get my voice recorder and record these sentences. ---------- As for German I've worked my way through MT advanced course. I'm working through the Hugo 3 month course. I'm using a French to German book called Langues Pour Tous. So coming along slowly but surely. Edited by Adrean on 07 March 2011 at 11:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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