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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 9 of 48 08 September 2011 at 9:04am | IP Logged |
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Week 12: Quelle désastre
I was out of town for two weeks, and was facing long flights and plenty of down time. I wanted to make significant progress on my lessons, and loaded up my iphone with two complete FSI lessons and all of the Assimil lessons, and downloaded the Anki app. My phone was stolen three hours into the trip. And since I don't travel with my laptop, I only had my books to go on. I didn't do anything for three days, then decided I might as well just study from the books. I'd read the lesson, cover it up, try and repeat it in my best accent, and do the FSI drills as best I could. And it was easy. Oh so easy. I finished FSI lesson 8, made it half way through lesson 9, and started thinking I could finish the first part of the course by the end of September. Maybe, I thought, I could finish Assimil too! But as we all know, reading is the easiest part, and listening comprehension the hardest. This is why I could pass French in college without really understanding much in real life. And I finally hit a section of FSI that was so pronoun-intensive that I realized that I had to stop and wait til I could listen to the recordings at home. SO this week is all catch up. I'm going back over the Assimil lessons I only read (52 through 66), and then will start FSI from 9.5. I also need to update about 25 chapters of Assimil vocab into Anki. It's a bit rough falling behind! And I'll take it slow and steady. I'm studying so that I can order fromage from the fromagerie and paté from the boucherie when I'm in Paris, not so that I can read Le Monde! The rest of September is all French. And then I'll need to make some decisions. I'm taking an unexpected surf trip to Mexico over Thanksgiving, so I might take a four to six week detour into improving my Spanish. I'll keep up the French passively then, though I'm not sure how. December will be all French, and then I need to figure out how to work Arabic and Italian into the mix! But one step at a time. Next week I'll test myself with Journal and see how I'm doing. Right now I'm not feeling like I made a lot of progress, though I think I've set the stage for some rapid gains. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 10 of 48 08 September 2011 at 10:03am | IP Logged |
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Great log, I admire how you are able to stick to your plans despite everything (sorry to hear about your phone). You seem to be progressing well, I'm sure the Journal won't be easy for you soon. Good luck with fitting the rest of languages into your shedule.Probably won't be easy but it is definitely doable with your motivation :-) Edited by Cavesa on 08 September 2011 at 10:04am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 11 of 48 14 September 2011 at 6:34am | IP Logged |
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Week 13: Me vs. The Linear Projection Fallacy
I was making such rapid progress for awhile - I was finishing an FSI lesson each week, and was going through the early Assimil lessons like a rocket. I thought, I'll finish FSI Volume I by the end of September! And I'll be able to start Assimil Using French this fall! Life doesn't work like that. FSI Lesson 9 introduced the passé composé and multiple pronouns in the same lesson, and then mixed in with negative and inverted questions. Mon dieu. It was like being in school all over again. On paper I could handle this. It wasn't that hard. But listening and repeating it? The consonants seem to disappear, to be barely whispered, and I struggled hard. I listened to lessons again and again. I did the lesson three times, and did worse the third time than the first. My poor little brain begged for relief. I'm gonna move on to Lesson 10 at the end of the week. There comes a point where we just have to move on. It also took me two long sessions to upload all my new Assimil vocabulary into Anki. I will never fall behind again. The past couple weeks have been chaotic, and so was my studying. There wasn't anything methodical about it; I would just try and expose myself to French to keep it fresh. That doesn't work for me. I think I wasted a lot of time and energy. I've realized that I need to follow a format, or a plan of attack. Chaotic and scatter-shot studying did not work! I'm back to approaching the lessons one step at a time. And I splurged on a treat!!! ... I ordered four graphic novels on Amazon France. They are part of a series commissioned by the Louvre, and each is by a different artist. They look awesome. For those interested, here they are ... Le Ciel au-dessus du Louvre, Bernar Yslaire (auteur) and Jean-Claude Carrière (scénariste) At the request of his friend Robespierre, David endeavors to paint the most challenging work of his entire career: a representation of the Supreme Being-a sort of incarnation of the spiritual aspiration that Robespierre seeks to impose during the Reign of Terror. 
Aux heures impaires, Éric Liberge Bastien, a young deaf man, is going for training at the Louvre. He meets a mysterious character by the name of Fu Zhi Ha, who introduces himself in sign language as the night watchman, and the two quickly form a friendship. One night, the watchman reveals the true nature of his job to his young friend. The artists breathed all their creative force into the works of art, giving them each a soul. But these forces are like caged lions with an uncontrollable need to break free from their frame to avoid becoming moribund and irreversibly altering the art itself… 
Les Sous-sols du Révolu : Extraits du journal d'un expert, Marc-Antoine Mathieu An expert is hired to catalogue a vast, half-ruined museum; he encounters inhabitants living in the lower reaches who have no understanding of the location or its contents. 
Rohan au Louvre, Hirohiko Araki Rohan is a young student who dreams of becoming a mangaka. His life changes the day he meets a young woman who introduces him to the world of art. She tells him about sculpture, music, and painting - particularly a "cursed painting" by a Japanese artist long ago acquired by a curator at the Louvre. Then the young woman suddenly disappears. 
cool stuff, eh? Edited by kanewai on 14 September 2011 at 6:36am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 12 of 48 20 September 2011 at 11:05pm | IP Logged |
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Week 14: Slow and Steady
FSI: Moving on from Lesson 9 was a good idea. Lesson 10 has been going smoothly. Though the weather has improved here, so I'm biking to work again. Which means no more listening to French tapes while I sit in traffic. I find that FSI drills work fine in the car, but I have a hard time staying focused when I try and sit down and do them at home. It remains deliciously dated. I can now ask ma secrétaire to collect her crayons, take a message en steno, and then to make three copies. Assimil: To lesson 74, so more than half way through the passive phase. I caught myself rushing through it too hard, and trying to charge through the chapters so that I could finish in the next couple weeks and move on to the advanced Using French. I don't think that's an effective method! I need to remind myself to work through this slow and steady, and to just keep my head down and grind on, and trust that I'll end up at a decent level. My new routine is to do a single lesson over lunch or on coffee break. That gives me time to do a passive and an active lesson each day. Action has fallen by the wayside. I still could use it to develop a more natural sounding French, but it's at such a basic level that I don't really have the patience to watch a full episode online. Nor do I want to spend $70 for the DVD set! and introducing ... FSI Modern Written Arabic. Back on Sept 7 I wrote as we all know, reading is the easiest part, and listening comprehension the hardest. This is why I could pass French in college without really understanding much in real life. It took me until this week to connect this to my plans for Arabic. Or rather, my lack of plans. The FSI course is all about reading. I don't think I could handle two full language courses right now, and my French isn't good enough yet to just "maintain." But I find that I can handle one full course (reading, listening, speaking French) and one reading course (Modern Standard Arabic). And so I'm doing about twenty minutes a day of Arabic reading, and it's been fine. I finished three lessons, taking about two days to do each. I might need to spend more days on each moving forward. I'm not gonna push it, and not gonna stress about it. I'll think of it as my "passive" phase, and do this at least through the end of the year, and see where it takes me. Even at this slow pace I should be able to finish Volume I by then (there are three volumes, though!). And at some point in the Spring I'll make a push for actually speaking Tunisian Derja. I'm really looking forward to being more confident in reading Arabic. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 13 of 48 01 October 2011 at 9:12am | IP Logged |
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Week 16: Wrap Up and Respite
I'm not quitting, just moving on to a new phase. I'll be posting in the French/Arabic Study Group, but I'm only looking to just maintain the French that I've learned - there's no need for an active log for that. I'll refocus on French in December, and maybe revisit this log then. And here are my thoughts on my 4-month French semi-intensive (it was intensive for me, at 30" minimum a day ... I know that's light weight for some folks in these parts!): Intro: Pimsleur 1. I did this back in the Spring, and don't really count it as part of my study. It was more a refresher, since I haven't studied French since 1990. It was a good intro, and I think Pimsleur is a strong system for European languages. Pimsleur Japanese and Arabic, on the other hand, just frustrated me. One month: Pimsleur 2 . This started well, but became excruciatingly painful by the end. It seemed the editors ran out of steam, or any original idea, and it was lesson after lesson of, Do you like to play tennis? Ask Alain if he likes to play tennis. Ask Alain if he will play tennis on Tuesday. Tell Alain that you did not play tennis last month. Tell Alain that you did not play tennis last week. By the end I wanted to tell Alain to shove a tennis ball up where le soleil don't shine. Even though Pimsleur helped me a lot, I don't think I ever want to do a course again. 12 weeks: Assimil to Lesson 84 (out of 113), FSI Vol 1 to Lesson 10 (out of 12). This was an awesome combination. I highly recommend it. They each balance off each other quite well. I could do FSI drills while cooking or driving, while I could do Assimil when I had time to sit down with a book. I wanted to finish FSI Volume 1, but I'll have to pick it up again post-break. So it was a great combo, but I wonder if Assimil might not work better if done straight through, rather than alternating with another system. I think it's designed to reinforce words and concepts at certain intervals. FSI, not so much - it's all drills, and it didn't seem to matter so much if I did another system then came back to it. Maybe next round I'll try finishing FSI first, then doing nothing but Assimil, and see how that feels. French in Action As much as I enjoyed this series, I never got beyond Lesson 5. It just didn't compel me enough. Part of the reason was that I was making rapid progress with FSI and Assimil; this seemed a bit slow and back to the beginning. And then some. It might be nice to watch a bit now that I'm in the "maintenance" phase. Anki I ... uhm ... don't hurt me, but I can't keep up the enthusiasm for my Anki deck. I started with a bang, but there was so much vocab being introduced that it became a real pain to keep the deck updated. Like FIA, I might find it more useful in the coming maintenance phase. C'est tout! I am nowhere near as far along as I thought I'd be. It's easy to forget just how massive an undertaking it is to truly learn a new language! My goal now is to maintain what I have, then after Thanksgiving (end of November for the non-Americans) I'll refocus, finish FSI Volume 1 (2 chapters to go!), finish the Passive phase of Assimil (29 chapters to go!), and maybe (maybe!) start Assimil Using French. If not in December, then definitely before next Spring. For all these I had to get comfortable with the idea of talking out loud, in the car, or at the coffee shop, or even at home when no one was around. I'd make sure I'd have my book visible so that I didn't look too crazy! And I don't think I can go back to any of the "Teach Yourself" or "Living Language" type books, although there was a point (pre HTLAL) that those would have been my first and only choices. quick edit: my graphic novels all arrived. Et je les vachement aime. Edited by kanewai on 01 October 2011 at 9:20am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 14 of 48 01 October 2011 at 11:54am | IP Logged |
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Congratulations on your progress! You've really done a huge chunk of work in quite a short time.
The BDs are a great choice when it comes to maintaining the language, they are not as boring as most graded readers and still easier than novels. A good thing for maintance however is to listen to the language sometimes as well. Not too much, it's only maintenence but still. I usually notice my ears are forgetting much faster than my eyes but it might be different for you. I'm not sure whether stopping in half of Assimil won't get you a huge step back and in need of revieweing at least part of it continue smoothly after Thanksgiving. But of course it's up to you, I don't dare to say more because I have never tried taking a break that far in Assimil. With FSI, I don't believe it matters too much. So, enjoy your Arabic and good luck with both languages. P.S. Thanks for the inspiration about talking aloud when learning. I need to work more on that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 15 of 48 07 December 2011 at 8:59am | IP Logged |
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And I'm back on Plan A: French and only French for the next two months. I might
"cheat" and try some Arabic on the weekends, but I've realized that I really do need to focus on one language at a time. I had done about 15 weeks of study, then took 8 weeks off to focus on Spanish. I had some exposure to French, mostly through reading graphic novels. But for the most part, I was Franco-free. After my experience with Assimil Spanish in Mexico, I realized that I was rushing the course too much. This round I'll slow it down, even though I really, really want to finish the course. The past week I went back to FSI French, picking up right where I left off at Lesson 11. And it was easy at first, and I thought: the break really helped! I'm speaking French even better than before! Well. It only took me four days to go breeze through the first seven tapes ... and then four more days just to finish up the last one. That was a rude reality check. I still didn't fully get every exercise, but it was time to move on. I'm now on Lesson 12, which is a review lesson, and the last one in Volume 1. It starts with a lot of translation drills, which is nice. I was missing the kind of oral translation exercises you get in Pimsleur - this is one thing that is really lacking in the Assimil/FSI combo. This week I intend to finish Volume 1. I might do each tape twice for this last lesson, just to make sure I get it down. This month I'll also try to finish the Assimil active phase, or come close to finishing it. I'm not sure what my next steps will be come January. It'll be some combination of FSI Volume 2, Pimsleur 3, and / or Assimil Using French. I wasn't really planning on going back to Pimsleur, but now I'm thinking I could use it just to gain confidence in speaking off the cuff. Edited by kanewai on 07 December 2011 at 9:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 16 of 48 19 December 2011 at 7:08am | IP Logged |
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FSI 13: La vie monotone d'un petit bourgeois parisien
Assimil 85-91: A visit to Beaune, le Tour de France, etc. Am I actually detecting a touch of humor in FSI? Or have I just been studying too much lately, and am seeing irony where none was intended? Most of Lesson 13 dealt with how to interview a bonne to help the madame with the kids. I learned that it is difficult managing a house by oneself, and a woman needs a good maid, nanny, and - if she's lucky - a nice French hunk pour faire le gros travail. I kid. FSI doesn't teach you how to hire a hunky handyman. It's only implied. Content wise, this was an easy lesson: the imparfait, and verbs ending in -re. Most of this I've seen in Assimil, or remember from college. And it was a relatively easy week with Assimil, too. I find that I'm over the hump, and don't need to think as hard to process each lesson; they're starting to flow a bit more naturally. If you count the active and passive waves as a unit each, I'm a bit less than 2/3 of the way through the course, and am on track to finish the passive wave by the New Year. That feels hella good. I don't think I could have a casual conversation with anyone yet, but for the first time I feel like I'm getting closer. I saw a review from another posting that said, with Assimil, you go months without being able to converse, and then suddenly: you can. Let's hope it's true! Edited by kanewai on 19 December 2011 at 7:12am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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