Hendrek Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4883 days ago 152 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Persian
| Message 17 of 36 16 February 2012 at 2:23am | IP Logged |
Good! You should check out the parent site, euronews.net as well. You can switch the news page between languages and all of the news commentary videos seem to have exact transcripts below. You can even do some short L-R with it.
Throw the URL into lingro.com and you can easily see the pop-up definitions of unknown words, too... not too bad! Good luck
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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 18 of 36 22 February 2012 at 9:21pm | IP Logged |
I have finished Pimsleur Level 1! Woo Hoo.
It does feel nice to complete something. FIA is a year long project, since I'm only doing 1 lesson a week, and assimil has over 100. but still, even there it is nice to see that I am making progress.
I considered shelving Pimsleur and moving on to FSI, but I enjoy Pimsleur and think that I might be a bit more prepared for FSI Basic once I finish level 2 at least. Then after FSI, I'll see if I want to comtinue with Level 3.
For the most part, I'm doing french everyday, even if it's only 20 minutes. I hit a bit of a snag over the weekend, I missed both my Sunday and my MOnday Assimil lesson and Tuesday, couldn't seem to get into that days lesson. Maybe it was jsut a blah moment, but I do notice that the lesson difficulty is increasing. I'm glad I started with French with Ease as opposed to French with Toil, but since I have it, I do plan on doing it after this round of Assimil.
Once I hit lesson 25 (3 more lessons) I will return to the first lesson and start doing dictations so I can test my ability to hear and understand the French.
I've also been neglecting Bref. I need to watch some more. Also, has anyone seen Plus Belle La Vie? I might order a volume and see how that works for me
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kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4890 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish
| Message 19 of 36 22 February 2012 at 9:30pm | IP Logged |
I think Pimsleur 2 really adds on to Pimsleur 1; I'd highly recommending doing both! I'm
doing Level 3 now, after having done FSI Vol 1 and Assimil. It feels like a refresher
course after doing the others; I'm finding it useful also.
FSI takes forever! I found it easier to do it in spurts, and mixed up with other
programs.
Have you looked at FSI FAST? I am trying it for Italian, and find that it gives a nice,
if rapid, over-view of the language. I
Edited by kanewai on 23 February 2012 at 1:16am
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DreamCH Tetraglot Newbie Switzerland Joined 4665 days ago 18 posts - 25 votes Speaks: German, Swiss-German*, French, English Studies: Dutch
| Message 20 of 36 23 February 2012 at 1:06am | IP Logged |
For some reason, I did the same proficieny test one week ago (scored 57%). For me, it`s a relaxing thing to go slowly trough a beginner course, mainly because already 90 percent of all words are known. Heck, at lesson 4, a good explanation about quel/quelle/quels/quelles caught my eye :-).
On the other hand, teach yourself (the advanced one) hasn`t a structured approach (IMO), but the texts are challenging enough.
keep it going...
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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 21 of 36 23 February 2012 at 5:30pm | IP Logged |
New learning plan with anticipated completion dates
So based on the first 6 weeks of learning, I am making some adjustments to my plan
Completed:
Pimsleur 1 (2/21)
In Progress:
Pimsleur 2 (4/13)
Assimil French w/ Ease Passive Phase(5/21)
Assimil French w/ Ease Active Phase(7/9)
French in Action (1/31)
Michel Thomas Basic (3/31) - lower priority
To follow:
Assimil French Without Toil
BBC Ma France
FSI Basic Vol 1 & 2
Pimsleur 3
Assimil Using French
So far I like my set up of audio lessons on the way to work and some book learning at home. And Assimil is a manageable portion, although I see the time expanding as we enter the active phase. We'll see how it works out, especially as I intend to start school this fall and I'll have to make better use of the time available to me.
Edited by blackdahlia on 24 February 2012 at 4:23am
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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 22 of 36 23 February 2012 at 5:34pm | IP Logged |
Kanewai: thanks for the feedback. I was worried about that with FSI, so I'll have to see about weaving that in. I didnt pay much attention to the FAST course, but I'll check it out too.
DreamCH: I haven't looked at the Teach Yourself series yet, but if its worth it, I'll see if my library offers it. And congrats on the 57%, I'm hoping I see my score take a big jump by the end of the year. I found some other tests and these test for specific levels, so it'll be nice to have something to be able to somewhat objectively measure progress.
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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 23 of 36 27 February 2012 at 4:27pm | IP Logged |
So hours done this week, 5.5. However, i know there was some timt I didnt log in. This accounts for Pimsleur, Assimil, FIA. I also logged some time playing in lyricstraining and reading another French book (a really old Living Languages French book).
I swear the pauses in Pimsleur seem to be shrinking. Or maybe the phrases are just becoming a bit more complicated. And while I am enjoying Assimil, I do wish that there was more a story that we were following. I've read that French without Toil has a storyline, so I guess that will be my treat.
I found copies of French Harry Potter pdfs and spendt about a good 30 to 60 minutes reading through them. I think they are still a bit advanced for me, but I could understand chunks of it. Or maybe I've just read them so much in English, that I knew what was happening. It's an experience reading them in another language. I also found a couple of the audiobooks. I would eventually like to own them all.
So this brings me to my rant of the week. Why is it do freakin hard to find Harry Potter in French? Or rather for a decent price? And what does Folio Jr mean? Is it just a label for a children's book or is it an abridged version? And let's talk about hte audio books. So far I've found 1-4, do the audiobooks for 5-7 not exist? Maybe I dont need them, I'm still not sure how I want to use them and I have some time, but still.
Sigh. I want to order from Amazon France and I've trying to decide what to get. I'm thinking some Asterix, some Tintin. Maybe the Harry Potter collection (but the collector set is 69 Euros, yikes, still I think it will be better to read a book than a pdf. Any other suggestions?
Tonight I start my dictations with Assimil. I'm hoping it will train me to listen better. French is filled with little nuances and if you miss something or mistake it, it completely changes the meaning of the sentence.
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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 24 of 36 27 February 2012 at 4:38pm | IP Logged |
Sometimes you can get the books pretty cheap if you watch on eBay. I have searches "saved" for Harry Potter translations - I've gotten many of them for $6-8 a piece, which is a steal (for foreign language books in the US).
I think the Folio JR books are the whole book, it's just in a smaller-sized book. I've LR'd the first 4-5 chapters, and everything (so far) has been there.
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