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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4628 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 49 of 101 13 July 2012 at 7:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Good stuff. I envy the fact that you have the patience for Anki cards, I tried it earlier and it was soooo boring for me.
Why do you think some movies are better than others? Is it a vocab problem or their way of speaking/slang? One of the main reasons I wanted to learn French, besides traveling, is to enjoy the wide array of films in the language and truth be told, I'm worried that if I can't understand my first movie, I'll be really discouraged and want to quit. I'm assuming that it's just a matter of adapting to speech, right? I guess if I put the shoe on the other foot, then I take an American movie like Horrible Bosses, I can only imagine how hard it would be for a learner to understand that whole movie without ever living in the country because of the way they take shortcuts in speech and the colloquialisms. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5524 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 50 of 101 13 July 2012 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Heh. Well, I put fun stuff on my cards now. Horrible catastrophe stories from VDM, cool sentences from Buffy, kayakers being snarky on online forums, or the occasional breathtakingly awesome sentence from a book. And I leave the 10-minute timebox enabled, so I never get burned out in one sitting. Here's a scene where a science teacher has asked Buffy to explain how ants communicate. Her friend Willow is trying to pantomime the answers:
It's a pretty funny scene, and I chuckle whenever I review the card. A nice mix of this stuff makes reviews fun. So Anki's not for everybody, but it doesn't have to be a drag.
Heh, yeah, I actually needed subtitles for two episodes of the The Wire. Anyway, your first French movie will almost certainly be a blur, and that's OK. It's hard to complain if you're already reading cool French books and speaking French with people, right? :-) You gotta enjoy the stuff you can do, because it's a long road with much awesomeness along the way if only you look for it. Reward yourself shamelessly with the good stuff. Some movies are easy, and some are hard. There's a dozen different reasons, but I do best when I know most of the vocab, the actors enunciate a bit, and there's on-screen action to provide context for the dialog. But I keep understanding more and more… 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5383 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 51 of 101 13 July 2012 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Your listening comprehension will vary widely depending on the type of language used. Back when I first
got TV5 Monde I saw a movie, don't recall the title, which was a love story about a woman working in a cafeteria. It had been years since my last French class and this was before my year abroad yet I was psyched to discover that I understood most of it. Months later, with hours of French TV watching under my belt OSS 117 came on and I didn't understand a damn thing (I later felt vindicated when I visited the site Sons en Français and a scene from the movie was in the too hard to transcribe section). The amount of familiar language makes a huge difference as well as the speed of the dialogue. A slow, plodding drama will tend to be easier than a comedy with lots of snappy witty dialogue featuring slang, puns, idioms and cultural references. And so you'll go from feeling awesome to stupid back to awesome again each time you pop in a new movie. Working through Kaamelott right now feels like learning a whole new language at times. But the more I do it the better I get at following it and the more I pick up from conversations between French people speaking quickly with lots of informal language. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4628 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 52 of 101 13 July 2012 at 11:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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@emk, sctroyenne, Now I don't think I'll feel as bad if I don't understand everything the first go. Good thing you guys mentioned your movie experiences, because I wouldn't be able to imagine how discouraged I would be if the first film I watched was a Quebecois comedy! Haha.
Do either of you still use subtitles? If you did at any point, were they in French or English? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5383 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 53 of 101 14 July 2012 at 12:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If I can find exact French subtitles then sure, I'll use them but it's fairly rare that I do. I can go out to a
French movie here and understand mostly everything except for the occasional punchline to a joke (other stuff I don't understand at first I can start to understand through more context). Dubbed series usually have subtitles that are different so they're mostly useful for just seeing different ways to say something. Most French stuff I watch I do so online though some DVDs are good about having exact subtitles. I found transcripts online for Kaamelott though so I just work with those (and I need them though I can get the gist plus a bit extra without them). I've recently found a use for English subtitles again at this level: for dubbed series they're useful for seeing how they translated informal language and idioms to get a better sense on when to use them. Also, at this level I've found that close listening without watching the screen is good for really exercising my ear. At a lower level the visual is great for providing context to help figure out what's being said but now I find that the visual context tricks me into thinking I've understood more than I have. I can follow a storyline fine now, so what I need to focus on is getting as close to 100% comprehension of the dialogue as I can and listening without the visual keeps me honest. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5524 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 54 of 101 14 July 2012 at 12:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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You've got to either let the frustration roll off you, or turn it into motivation.
sctroyenne is right about about the whole "I rule! I suck! I rule!" thing. I've been through this cycle probably 20 times in 4 months. Eventually I was like "Screw it, I'm sick of the emotional drama, let's go watch Buffy. So what if I suck this week; I'm having fun." I'm still a good chunk below sctroyenne's level, and I'll take all the context I can get. Unfortunately, French subtitles are usually either missing or awful. I did use English subtitles for a while, with mixed results. Now I use transcripts as needed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4628 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 55 of 101 16 July 2012 at 3:01am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Today was one of those bad days one gets often.
I tried to watch an episode of the French version of Sesame Street, "Rue Sesame", and I could only catch about 15-20%. I'm sure it's because of the way they talked, because they always talk weird in children's shows. I had to get rid of it because, surprise surprise, it didn't hold my interest too much. Then, I got bored of only doing one lesson of Using French a day, so I decided to hop right in to some native materials. I L/R'ed the first two pages of Harry Potter. Also, I decided to give Anki another shot and look up all of the unknown vocab in Harry Potter and put them in the Anki deck. I found 64 words and one idiom in the first two pages. Not bad, maybe I underestimated Anki. The speaker of the audiobook talks extremely fast, I had to listen/read each of the two pages at least 3 times and even then I couldn't keep up with processing the sentences and meaning simultaneously. I guess it will come easier soon. Usually I have an OCD thing where I have to finish something first then move on, but I'm going to have to make an exception for French. I'm going to listen/read to books while doing Using French since that itself is also technically L/R. The only problem I have with Harry Potter is the use of the passe simple, but all I'm really trying to recognize is the stem of the word anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter all that much. As of now, I have set goals. All around B2 by December, C1 passive by next Summer. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4628 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 56 of 101 18 July 2012 at 9:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I finished Chapter 1 of Harry Potter and Lesson 15 of Using French today.
When I was going through Harry Potter, it was such a great change of pace and the excited-ness (yes I know this isn't a word) I felt to be jumping into native materials was equal to that as when I received New French With Ease in the mail. The Harry Potter audiobook has been going good so far. I had to change the speed of the .mp3 files because the guy who narrates it was going WAY too fast. After changing the speed, it was a lot more enjoyable. At first I would treat it as an Assimil lesson by analyzing everything and replaying each page until I could follow easily, but that wasn't too fun. I remembered that I'm doing this as a supplementary activity to Using French and this doesn't have to be like a course, so all I do with it now is enter unknown vocab into Anki. (which I am quite fond of now as compared to before, thanks emk :D) Honestly, I was shocked. The first chapter of Harry Potter alone introduced me to 240 vocab words. And that chapter was only 10 pages long! I'm not sure if "glisser", "glousser", or "etinceler" will be extremely useful in daily conversation, but it's better to be safe then sorry! Edited by sillygoose1 on 18 July 2012 at 9:22pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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