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 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 1081 of 1317 23 July 2014 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Lots and lots and lots of conversations in French this week. Sometimes my brain is willing, sometimes it isn't, but increasingly, it doesn't make much difference: I can speak quickly, say what I want to say, and follow the conversation wherever it goes. My English conversational style is not especially easy to replicate in another language—I speak quickly, I read a lot, and I tend to get really involved in the subject. But this week, I finally feel like myself when speaking French, and not some kind of stripped-down imitation. (Of course, the really high-end stuff that I can do in English is still difficult for me in French. But that's not essential for day-to-day communication.)
So, yay. I've also just noticed that my listening has gotten better. Nine months ago, I could turn on VoilaTV, surf to a random channel (mostly the "France" channels and news channels, but not modern TV dramas or movies) and have a 50% chance of being able to follow whatever was on TV. A while later, I could understand at least 80% of 80% of the shows on TV. But yesterday, I could understand 80% of pretty much everything, and even more of most shows. I'm not even sure what I did to pull any of this off. Aside from my conference preparation, a few house guests and a couple of TV series, I've been neglecting my French a bit this year, without a Super Challenge to keep me busy. And this brings me back to the usual paradox: My French is good enough that I really can live in French. It's fun, it's a nice challenge, but I can do it. But at the same time, my French is good enough that it's hard to see big gains without spending big chunks of my life in French. And when I do immerse myself, my French comes to life quickly, like a plant that was looking wilted but which has just been watered. I still have plenty of work to do, of course: Fixing up minor grammatical errors, using a more precise and expressive vocabulary, reducing the remaining hesitations, and so on. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4910 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 1082 of 1317 23 July 2014 at 1:06pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Am I right that even when you're neglecting French, you probably do something with French almost every day? "Aside from my conference preparation, a few house guests and a couple of TV series"... what you call "neglect" is what a lot of people call studying hard.
I obviously have too much time on my hands this week, so I'm making too many suggestions. But here's another: I would guess as a programmer you already know a bit of Python (or at least know what it's about). But have you seen this instructional website in French? Cercles informatiques 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 1083 of 1317 23 July 2014 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Well, I do live in a French speaking household, and that keeps my French from going dormant. On the other hand, it's not a magic solution, either: As many heritage learners can attest, one household is just too small a community for somebody to master a language, and it's easy to get stuck at lower levels. Marital telepathy, two-way adaptation, shared experiences—all these things make it easy to get stuck in a rut. However, there is one big advantage that nobody ever mentions: I can hog the television with French series, and nobody will object too strenuously. :-) But all that aside, for the last couple of years, the only way for me to make noticeable progress has been to imbibe a huge amount of French in a short period of time: To read 1,500+ pages in a month, or to watch 60 hours of television, or to do something crazy and concentrated like that. And I haven't really done much like that this year. But somehow, now that I have an opportunity to use my French heavily day after day, I can definitely see real improvements since the last time I made a major effort. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4534 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 1084 of 1317 23 July 2014 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I think time for mastery for languages goes something like this:
|<-A1->| |<--A2-->| |<----B1---->| |<--------B2-------->| |<----------------C1---------------->| So I suspect you are making lots of progress, it's just that it takes much longer to get anywhere now. Edited by patrickwilken on 23 July 2014 at 7:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5477 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 1085 of 1317 24 July 2014 at 1:29pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Merci emk pour ayant partagé ces informations avec moi. J'ai décidé d'essayer de te répondre en français cette fois puisque je dois le pratiquer un peu plus je crois. N'hésite pas de me dire si je fais des fautes si tu veux. C'est intéressant que tu fais du kayak. C'est un sport que je pratiquais beaucoup avec mon père. Tous les jours après l'école et pour mon père après qu'il a fini au travail, nous allions faire du kayak ensemble sur la rivière ou le lac municipal au coin de chez nous. Maintenant on fait du vélo beaucoup plus souvent qu'on fait du kayak. Mais dans le passé mon père a représenté l'Australie dans le kayak, au marathon. J'ai toujours un K1 dans mon garage et depuis décembre dernier quand ma femme et moi avions emménagé ici je n'ai qu'une fois l'utilisé.
Merci encore :)
Tu peux toujours me dire des choses comme ça, puisque c'est toujours utile pour moi de les lire, de les comprendre, où même de les laisser peu à peu pénétrer mon esprit. Merci encore pour m'aider emk. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 1086 of 1317 24 July 2014 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
De rien! En anglais, on utilise le gérondif presque partout. Mais en français, on préfère l'infinitif. Et donc « thank you for having shared » se traduit par « merci d'avoir partagé ». On utilise les verbes avec « -ant » dans deux contextes principaux :
Ou même :
Mais en dehors de ces cas, il vaut mieux éviter les verbes qui se terminent en « -ant ». Pour plus de corrections, je te conseille d'aller sur lang-8. J'ai écrit une introduction à lang-8 qui pourrait être utile. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5477 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 1087 of 1317 24 July 2014 at 3:39pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Merci beaucoup pour avoir corrigé mes fautes, emk,
Je me suis déjà inscrit à Lang-8 en effet, mais je n'ai pas encore utilisé ce site qu'une ou deux fois. Néanmoins merci aussi pour m'avoir rappelé au site emk :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 1088 of 1317 24 July 2014 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I tried a little experiment this morning.
Yesterday, after several days of French conversation that went wonderfully, my French fell apart. I could still talk, but it stopped being fun to discuss anything complicated. This came as no surprise whatsoever; this random and unwanted suckage is a normal part of language learning (fr). And this morning, my French wasn't any better. So I tried a little experiment. I turned on France 5, and I left some documentaries playing on the television while working. I didn't even pay any particular attention. And a few hours later, I can once again do things like talk about freelancing, marketing and clothes shopping (just to pick a few random examples). Now, it's still a bit clunky compared to Tuesday. I'm making a more errors, I pause a bit more, and I still have some trouble wrapping my mouth around the words. But now I have actual momentum, and I can tackle complicated topics. All that simply because I left the television on in the background. With any luck, my French will finish its recovery shortly. But I wanted to try and capture how it feels. Apparently, rapid, interesting speech requires several different subsystems to be online at the same time (physical articulation, vocabulary lookup, sentence generation, etc.), and if one or more subsystems is responding slowly, speech falls apart. Part of the reason that this bugs me so much is that my standards are high: I want to be able to use French in much the same way that I can use English. Now, it's not going to be exactly the same, not without a ridiculous number of years in immersion, and probably not even then, but I'd settle for a workable approximation. I'm not convinced that everybody actually struggles with this. Maybe most people hit a reasonably high level, and can mostly talk without irritating dips in their ability, and without needing to leave the TV on all morning. I certainly get that impression from quite a few polyglots: they study a language for a while, and they seem to be happy with it, and maybe they even pass some high-level CEFR exams. I never hear them saying, "Oh yeah, on a good day my German is pretty reasonable, but I usually need to warm it up first if I want to bullshit about politics, and even then it sometimes falls apart for no obvious reason." (Well, Itchy Feet knows all about trying to keep up with natives. But Itchy Feet is awesome.) Still, I really love these weeks where I can use my French constantly with more than just one person. I very much want to do more of this. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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