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TAC 2011 - Team Ohana – Le Cinéma Rex | ||
Tags: Dabbling | France | 6 Weeks Challenge (6WC) | Immersion | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | English | German | French | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5336 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 169 of 198 29 August 2011 at 11:11am | IP Logged | ||
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Week 34 : August 22nd – 28th
Before I write about my week, I have to announce something I only just found out (literally less than a minute ago) and that I'm super excited about: I've been admitted to the minor French at my university! WHOOOOOO! "Admitted" here means that I was quick enough in signing up to get a good spot on the waiting list (apparently the French and Spanish minors are hell to try to get into because they're so popular) but we shall all pretend this is an achievement anyway. I'm so happy I could dance right now. So starting next week, I'll be taking a course on French language aquisition (one hour of grammar, two hours of listening/speaking and two hours of reading/vocabulary every week) as well as a course on French cultural studies, all of it taught in French of course. I'm a little bit daunted by it all because I've heard horror stories about vocab tests where you have to get 80% correct to even pass the test, let alone get a good grade, and the study guide goes on and on about how much hard work doing a language minor requires. Mostly I'm just really excited, though. I was impatient for the semester to start before but now I really can't wait! As for this past week, it's simply been awful. I've been depressed, unmotivated and tired and most of my free time was spent emailing the Uva administration to make sure I was registered for the right courses (I was originally going to make a snide remark about said administration but considering the previous two paragraphs, I will shut up and bask in the glory of being a French minor). I'm sort of desperate for the start of my classes in a week from now because my inconsistent schedule is driving me insane. Plus, when I have schoolwork to do, language learning is a pleasant distraction whereas when I'm free to do what I want, it's another obligation keeping me away from the state of complete inactivity that I've been sinking into far too often this summer. French Week 34 (51): 4 h. 30 min. 2011: 630 h. 30 min. Only four and a half hours of French this week, which I'm pretty sure is an all-time low. On the bright side, I did spend most of that time reading like I had promised myself I would. I am nearing the end of Manon des Sources and after that I plan to read any one of the seven or eight other books by Pagnol that I bought in France. I love his writing and his stories and the level is just right for me now. I especially love the little mistakes he puts in the speaking/writing of some of the less intelligent characters because it always makes me feel really good about myself when I spot them. For next week, I want to finish Manon and get started on a new book. Since I'll be thrown back into a French immersion environment for seven hours a week (excitement!), I also want to watch some TV and a least one film to get used to the speed again. The starting level of the French minor is supposedly B1 so I should be able to handle that. They claim to bring us up to a B2 by the end of the year. We shall see. --------------------------------------------------------- 6 Week Challenge German: Week 4 Week 4: 7 h. Total: 87 h. Not a great week for German either. I believe it's mostly because I'm getting a little tired of studying it because I'm not passionate about any of the materials I'm using. I'm also having a problem with Anki because I'm still using my father's laptop since mine is once again in need of fixing. I've installed Anki on this one but I'm too lazy to figure out how I can download them onto my own laptop as well and that makes me kind of reluctant to add cards to my decks because I might lose all of it anyway. I finally started on Assimil and am now on lesson six. As expected, it's all ridiculously easy and I'm having trouble focusing because of it. I work at a speed of about three lessons in ten minutes, even when I do all the exercises and listen to the dialogue twice. Thankfully, the fact that I'm using French as my base language means that some of the notes are interesting because they focus on parts of the grammar that are the same in German and Dutch and that I would never have thought about if it hadn't been pointed out to me. For next week, I am setting myself a challenge: no film watching. A lot of my "study time" is simply exposure to the spoken language which is very useful but I feel it's creating an enormous gap between my listening and my speaking skills which were at very different levels to begin with. I have a German co-worker with whom I speak German sometimes so I'll try to do that a little more often (she's very supportive whenever I try so it shouldn't be a problem) and I also want to write on lang-8 again, which I should do much more often. The only problem is that I never know what to write about. --------------------------------------------------------- @ Ellasevia: I don't remember calling it a bad week in so many words, but you're right. I guess I've been getting a little too accustomed to my lofty scores from the last couple of weeks. Once school starts back up again, it's probably going to be hard to get used to only studying for ten to sixteen hours per week again. I love my phrase book! I've been flipping through it to see how complex the sentences get and it reminds me a little bit of a Michel Thomas course only with actual information in it instead of sentences like "I cannot do it that way because it is not acceptable for me." Yes, Tatoeba should have a warning label displayed on their homepage somewhere. Something along the lines of "May cause addiction" or "Keep away from language nerds". Every time I log on I intent to use it to find some good sentences in French/German and instead I always end up translating another two hundred sentences into Dutch. Edited by ReneeMona on 06 September 2011 at 7:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Vos Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5567 days ago 766 posts - 1020 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Polish | Message 170 of 198 29 August 2011 at 11:51am | IP Logged | ||
I tend to do little reviews of things, such as a book I've just read or a film I've seen, a new album I'm listening to or perhaps a show I went to. Writing a little review about something and explaining what it was about/how it was etc, is what I find to be the most beneficial in regards to using new vacabulary and grammar. And considering you're always reading and watching something, you should have plenty of things to write about in German! Good luck with it by the way Renee. Enjoying it thus far despite the uninspiring materials? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6784 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 171 of 198 29 August 2011 at 3:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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630h of French? Niiiiice. I've only just started on French and I think I've just found a
role model :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iolanthe Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5642 days ago 410 posts - 482 votes Speaks: English*, DutchC1 Studies: Turkish, French | Message 172 of 198 03 September 2011 at 10:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ik heb net door je Annecy posts gelezen en heb gelol-d over stuk over de Harry Potter film. Je doet me denken aan mijn nicht die ook heeft gezegd dat het het eind van haar kindertijd is :D
Succes met je minor in Frans! Ik denk dat het zal meevallen want je zit toch op een hoog niveau als je (Franse!) leraars zo positief over je waren :) Edited by Iolanthe on 03 September 2011 at 10:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5471 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 173 of 198 05 September 2011 at 9:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Tu parles sans doute mieux français que moi maintenant... ;)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 174 of 198 06 September 2011 at 12:15am | IP Logged | ||
I can be positively brilliant in Russian for a sentence or two - it is the follow up that gets me. And thank you for your nice comment on the photo. I am lucky to have an 11 year old daughter who is a great photographer, and can take a fat middle aged woman (me) and make me look like that. I look a lot better on the picture than in real life, but at least it is a recent picture, it was taken in July. And gratulations on getting into the French studies you wanted! I am sure you are going to knock the socks of all the other students!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Élan Senior Member United States Joined 5445 days ago 165 posts - 211 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian | Message 175 of 198 06 September 2011 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just wanted to pop in and congratulate you on your amazing 6WC performance. Congrats also on getting into the French minor. I'm going to drink a glass of champagne for you! ;D
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5336 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 176 of 198 06 September 2011 at 11:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Week 35 : August 29th – September 4th
I wish I had something a bit more cheerful to report on my first anniversary as a language student (yay) but this week sucked. It was better than last week, but that's not saying much. I'd been looking forward to the start of the semester but thanks to everything I had to take care of, I'm now already stressed out before I've attended a single class, which is probably a record. I don't usually lose my motivation and become lazy after at least one or two weeks. Anyway, let's focus on the positive. Tomorrow I officially start my classes. Apart from the French ones, I'm not really looking forward to my English courses because they're all linguistics classes (I prefer the literature ones) but I have made sure I have all my classes spread out over just three days so from now until early December, I will have four-day weekends every week, which should be enough time to cram in a lot of self-study on top of the inevitable homework. French Week 35 (52): 11 h. 10 min. 2011: 641 h. 40 min. As I was watching Grey's Anatomy in German last week, I was constantly tempted to change the audio to French so this week I went back to the beginning of season 1 and started watching it all again, only in French this time. I'm now a couple of episodes into the second season and it's going very well. I watched the first two seasons amost a year ago and I'm noticing a huge difference in my comprehension level this time around. The last time I was following the story pretty well but this time I understand almost every word and I'm learning lots of new words, collocations and ways of expressing things. A lot of the medical talk is still lost on me but it's not like anyone really needs to know words like intercostobrachial or hemopneumothorax (unless you play a lot of hangman). I finished Manon des Sources and also watched the film again. I saw it with English subtitles which I didn't think I needed and they were actually kind of distracting but I couldn't turn them off. I really hate subtitles unless they're in the same language as the audio and are an exact transcription. I've decided I want to read the Marius - Fanny - César trilogy next but I haven't had time to start yet. --------------------------------------------------------- 6 Week Challenge German: Week 5 Week 5: 2 h. 30 min. Total: 89 h. 30 min. This is getting embarassing. Not only did I not keep my promise to myself not to watch any films but I'm pretty sure it's all I did. I say "pretty sure" because I haven't done any German for several days and hardly remember what I spent those two and a half hours doing. I think the problem is partly my burned-out state and partly the fact that I love German, just not as much as French so it's hard to stay focused. Considering that my motivation has hit rock bottom, it seems silly to try to set lofty goals for the last week of the challenge. Doing anything German-related will be enough. I have a couple of books lying around that I've been wanting to start reading but I wasn't sure if I could handle the level yet. One is about Die Weiße Rose and the other is Der Vorleser. Since it's the last week of the challenge and I'm not particularly motivated to do anything else, I'll just try my hand at one of them and see how far I get. EDIT: Note to self: check your numbers before posting. --------------------------------------------------------- @Vos: Thanks. That sounds like a good idea but unfortunately I hardly ever watch/read anything I've never seen/read before so I'm usually not that inspired to write about it. I still enjoy German once I actually manage to make myself study it properly but those moments have been scarce over the last two weeks. @Numerodix: Wow, thanks. I don't think I've ever been anyone's role model before. I shall try my best to live up to the title. :) @Iolanthe: Ik ben inmiddels weer een beetje bekomen van de schok maar het is nog steeds moeilijk te geloven dat er niet meer om de een of twee jaar een nieuwe film uit zal komen. Gelukkig heb ik er alle vetrouwen in dat ze over een paar decenia gewoon weer een nieuwe serie verfilmingen zullen maken want dan zijn de speciale effecten natuurlijk hopeloos verouderd. Ik heb er nu al zin in. :) Ik hoop inderdaad stiekem dat ik een beetje een voorsprong zal hebben want ik heb me laten vertellen dat er ontzettend veel tijd en werk in een taalminor gaat zitten dus het zou erg handig zijn als het niveau net een beetje onder het mijne zou liggen. @joanthemaid: J'en doute sérieusement mais merci quand même. :) @Solfrid Cristin: I have the same problem in French (and in English, come to think of it) so as a result I tend to keep my sentences as short as possible to minimize the risk of making a mistake. I'm trying to get rid of this annoying tendency but you know what they say about old habits... Thank you. I really really hope you're right about that because I have absolutey no idea what to expect of the other students in terms of their level. The only prerequisite to be admitted to the minor is to have passed the national French exam at the end of high school, which I did so I should be fine but I have a feeling that people who are starting a major French right now were probably a lot more invested in their high school French class than I ever was. We shall see. @Élan: By "amazing performance", I assume you refer to the first few weeks of the challenge, when I was acually doing something. I've kind of given up on it by now but I plan to do better on the next challenge, or rather, I plan to be more consistent. I hope you enjoyed your champagne! :) Edited by ReneeMona on 20 September 2011 at 2:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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