blackdahlia Pro Member United States Joined 4730 days ago 64 posts - 66 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French Personal Language Map
| Message 9 of 36 09 January 2012 at 1:35am | IP Logged |
So according to my log, I'm done 3.98 hours this week. That included morning Pimsleur lessons and evening activities such as MT, BBC, and lyrics training. There's probably more that I didn't list, but it works out to about 30 min a day. This upcoming week I'll try to work up of 5 hrs. I'd like to do 6-7 hours each week. I also might start Assimil earlier than planned, but we will see
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blackdahlia Pro Member United States Joined 4730 days ago 64 posts - 66 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French Personal Language Map
| Message 10 of 36 10 January 2012 at 4:07am | IP Logged |
Pimsleur CD 9
Got my order from Amazon! So now I have
-French in Action textbook (and they list an advanced video course that I will have check out)
-French Grammar
-Le Petit Prince
-French Songs for Children
I've noticed my throat feels kinda sore after Pimsleur. I think it's just me getting used to the pronunciation. Hopefully it goes away soon.
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blackdahlia Pro Member United States Joined 4730 days ago 64 posts - 66 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French Personal Language Map
| Message 11 of 36 23 January 2012 at 3:37am | IP Logged |
Ack, so it's been two weeks since my last update. I noticed I didnt put as much time into French as I has hoped, but a lot of that was due to the holiday weekend and some traveling.
Week 1: 3 hours, consisting of Pimsleur on my commutes
Week 2: 2 hours, mostly Pimsleur with some MT and FIA lesson 2. I did a few German lessons, but those dont count as I'm not supposed to be doing German this year.
Listening comprehension is still difficult, but I feel like it's slowly coming bit by bit. Also, my pronunciation.
I haven't gotten bored with Pimsleur. there were some slow moments when we kept talking about wanting to drink wine or beer with someone and trying to find a certain street or blvd, but now we're moving along. Michel Thomas is good as well, but yes, that woman is an idiot.
Plan for this week.
- 1 Pimsleur 5 days per week (right now, I'm really only getting in 4 lessons)
- FIA lesson 3. I would like to go back over old lessons as well, but we'll have to see how to add that in. Also, I wonder if it would be smart to watch a video, then read the transcript, and then watch it again to see if I absorb any more.
- Michel Thomas, as least 2 cds
I also think I plan on starting Assimil by February
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Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5396 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 12 of 36 23 January 2012 at 3:41am | IP Logged |
You can count the German, too.
I was never one for linguistic monogamy, anyways! =)
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blackdahlia Pro Member United States Joined 4730 days ago 64 posts - 66 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French Personal Language Map
| Message 13 of 36 07 February 2012 at 4:31pm | IP Logged |
Whew 2 weeks since my last update.
1/23- 1/29
I did about 1.92 hours. Not very good, but this was the week of my bad cold, so not much got done.
1/30 - 2/5
This week was considerably better, I did 6.33 hours, although 1 hour was just listening to music, but hey, it's French exposure so I'll count it.
I've completed 21 lessons of Pimsleur 1, so I'm a bit behind, but no big deal. This morning's lesson, they started using more French which is good, but it's definitely an adjustment to understand what they want me to do. I haven't been too regular with MT, but its ok. i pretty much just use it as an extra.
FIA is going well and I'm happy to see that my listening comprehension is coming along. I know that one hindrance is my current vocab level, but that will come with time. I am enjoying the series and we haven't even started with the story yet.
I also decided to change up my schedule and start with Assimil. Since I have prior French exposure, there was no real reason to wait. One lesson a day is definitely plenty, but I did double up for 2 days so that Sunday could be my review day and ...yeah. It was doable, but not something I want to make a habit of doing.
Current path
-Pimsleur I (in the mornings)
-Assimil (in the evenings)
-FIA (saturdays)
To follow
-finish MT Basic
-Pimsleur II or FSI Vol 1
-French without Toil
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blackdahlia Pro Member United States Joined 4730 days ago 64 posts - 66 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French Personal Language Map
| Message 14 of 36 15 February 2012 at 5:25pm | IP Logged |
So last week I did an even 5 hours. I'd like to start adding more activities, even if they aren't dedicated study hours, more music, more listening to radio programs, something.
On the plus side, I also learned the words to Alouette. It's not like it's a challenging song, lol, but I'm happy that I can sing along with the commercial now.
As I was doing Assimil, I realized that I need to dedicated more time to reviewing previous lessons, so I'm trying to decide the best way to do it without goin overboard. Currently, my plan is to just review the previous days lesson b/c I think waiting until Sunday to do all the lessons of the week isn't very helpful.
I also think that I want to add an intermediate step between the passive and the active. At about lesson 25 I think I will start doing dictees (dictations) from lesson 1 on. I'll play the audio and write down what I hear. I think this will help me to tune my ears to the french and start learning distinction sin the language b/c a lot sounds alike. Ex, avion a prendre and avion apprendre (which confused me to no end). Since it's not translation, I dont think I'll be messing with the assimil process too much.
On an entertainment, I like Bref (thanks garyb) and I like a few other tv clips I found on canal's page. It also excited me to no end to discover than I have several dvds that are dubbed with french audio or have french subtitles. Nice to know I wont have to go out and buy a bunch of neww materials. And I still have some French movies dvr'd that I need to watch. I might make a point of watching 1 each weekend.
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Hendrek Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4883 days ago 152 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Persian
| Message 15 of 36 15 February 2012 at 7:03pm | IP Logged |
FYI, I just found this site:
http://www.euronews.net/services/lessons/
They offer video-based lessons in a few languages, including both German and french. I've barely tried it for Italian, so I don't know exactly how useful it will be, but hopefully it is.
Hendrek - Romantics teammate
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blackdahlia Pro Member United States Joined 4730 days ago 64 posts - 66 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French Personal Language Map
| Message 16 of 36 16 February 2012 at 1:51am | IP Logged |
Hendrek, it's a great site!
Thanks so much for sharing
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