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emk
Diglot
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United States
Joined 5474 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
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 Message 57 of 101
18 July 2012 at 10:24pm | IP Logged 
sillygoose1 wrote:
(which I am quite fond of now as compared to before, thanks emk :D)


No problem! Just don't try to learn more than 10 or so a day (20 at the outside) for
the first couple of weeks, because the reviews stack up in a rather horrifying fashion.
You can easily do 40 cards in one day, but just wait until you need to review 5 sets of
40 cards at once. Not fun. Anki's a marathon, not a sprint.

Once you have a good gut feel for how reviews add up, you can go faster if that works
for you. I just stepped up from 3 to 6 hieroglyphs a day, for example.

Also, if a card is real headache to learn, suspend or delete it. If you need it, you
can always add it again later when your brain is ready. If you try to learn it by brute
force, your Anki reviews will get clogged up with nasty, hard words. Also, if two words
are interfering with each other, delete one of them or add context.

I think that covers all the ways to make Anki your happy place and not a endless
nightmare of painful reviews.

Quote:
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!


Glisser is really important, and you'll see entinceler all the time in
books. Not so sure about glousser, though. :-) Grabbing almost everything at
first is a good strategy, because there's a good chance you'll need it. You can get
more selective as your Anki backlog gets bigger.

Enjoy your book!
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sillygoose1
Tetraglot
Senior Member
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566 posts - 814 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French
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 Message 58 of 101
19 July 2012 at 4:12am | IP Logged 
Awesome, thanks for the advice!

Is Anki automatically set to do just 40/day or is there some sort of option I have to set?
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emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5474 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 59 of 101
19 July 2012 at 7:00am | IP Logged 
I think it's set for 20/day. Look for the "Study Options" screen, and consider adjusting
it so that you can deal with 5 days worth of card reviews on top of whatever you're
learning on a given day. So if you can deal with 100 reviews and 20 new cards, leave it
as is. If that sounds like a drag, shrink it a bit.
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sillygoose1
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566 posts - 814 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French
Studies: German, Latin

 
 Message 60 of 101
25 July 2012 at 2:24am | IP Logged 
Finished Chapter 4 of Harry Potter and Lesson 21 of Using French.

Harry Potter is like learning a whole other language right now. That could be because it's just what I need to advance, or it's just too literary.

I've slowed down on logging EVERY unknown word on Anki, just infinitives at this point. And some phrases.

It's getting really fun so far, but I feel like I should have started with Le Petit Prince first, though. I'm not sure why I didn't.

Oh well, that can be next up.

Well, not much else to report really. I'm just going to keep plugging away at Harry Potter and Using French for now. Since this is all I've been doing, I'm just going to update this log again when I finish one of them first and I'll report back the results.
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sillygoose1
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Senior Member
United States
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566 posts - 814 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French
Studies: German, Latin

 
 Message 61 of 101
16 August 2012 at 4:37am | IP Logged 
I was half way through the 16th chapter in Harry Potter, but couldn't go through with it. I started to lose interest and I also started to realize that none of the vocab would be all too useful. The main reason was that I lost interest. I mainly like poems, short stories, and essays. Anything else that requires reading won't keep my attention long. Sad, I know. :/

At one point I was reading 93 by Victor Hugo in parallel with Harry Potter. I got half way through that and realized there was way too much "literary vocabulary" and other fillers. I also read The Raven, French version.

I have been collecting Hugo poems with the audio however. Veni Vidi Vixi looks exciting.

Assimil has been becoming such a drag. I'm becoming totally bored with it. This has never happened with Assimil before. I did my last two lessons in maybe, 10 minutes each. I had to review later during the day just to internalize it more.

I haven't been doing any speaking or writing. I can't find anyone to speak/write with. I've been making up scenarios in my head to specifically practice sayings and conjugation.

I had started to watch the French dubbed That 70s Show. Got halfway through season 5 and got bored because I saw them all at least 2-3 times. I understood a large amount of the audio though.

Recently, I discovered that most of the movies and shows I listed some pages back did not come with subtitles, so I have to save them for later and start hoarding shows that do. Fortunately, I found a good amount to make up for it. The movies I was the most interested in, L'instinct de Mort, Un Prophete, and J'ai tue ma mere, have no French subtitles to be found anywhere. I might use English or save them for very last.

I'm finding that I recognize a lot of words, for example, in the news. But sometimes, my mind cannot link the meaning to them. I find that weird. It's like, I'm just listening to words and they mean nothing. The news and radio are pretty good for me. I can catch about 70% that has to do with international affairs, and I'm going to start listening to a philosophy podcast, since it's one of my favorite subjects. We'll see how that goes.

I really want to start my third language, but I'm not sure when I should start. Should I wait until I can understand most movie/tv dialogue or what? I guess I'll wait until I finish Using French or after I watch all of my shows/movies with subtitles.

Also, I saw the movie Les Fugitifs today. The subtitles really helped me with what to look for in speech even though it wasn't 100% accurate. Some words were missing.

T'as, T'es, Y a, etc. Plus some words and expressions like "bordel de merde" and "salaud"

For anyone looking for a French movie to watch for the challenge, I recommend that film. Very funny and sweet at the same time.

I start school in a little under two weeks and I will be done Using French (if I can still stand to use it) by the time classes start picking up in speed. I'm going to save Business French for later.

Well, that's what's happened in the past three weeks. Tomorrow I'm going to start my Camus collection and Le Petit Prince. I'll probably start Braquo after I finish my books. I feel like I'll be ready to declare basic fluency after I finish these books, Using French, and maybe the first season of Braquo and some other movies.

Edited by sillygoose1 on 16 August 2012 at 4:48am

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sillygoose1
Tetraglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4578 days ago

566 posts - 814 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French
Studies: German, Latin

 
 Message 62 of 101
18 August 2012 at 8:48pm | IP Logged 
Phew, Assimil became fun again. I guess it was just a few off days I had.

Good thing it became fun again, because tomorrow's lesson 48 looks fun. It's about a detective leading an investigation.

I've started to L/R La Chute by Albert Camus. It's really a great book so far. I really love his style of writing. It's like literary philosophy and not just point blank in your face philosophy, which can get boring.

It's funny how some days I can't remember anything, but then all of a sudden, the next day feels great like I have a really solid level in the language. I'm fairly certain stress has a lot to do with it.

Right now it feels like that by the time I finish all of my books and movies, I won't be able to improve without spending time in a francophone country. I can't imagine how long it must take to reach a C1 level from home, unless someone's TL is English, then I can understand. Even then, that seems like a stretch.
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sctroyenne
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Joined 5333 days ago

739 posts - 1312 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Spanish, Irish

 
 Message 63 of 101
18 August 2012 at 9:02pm | IP Logged 
I have encountered some French people who got to C1 maybe even C2 without ever leaving
the country. They were geek types who spent a lot of time on the internet and downloaded
a lot of TV series in English. It may be easier to do so with English but it's possible
to construct a French bubble here (just as it's possible to construct a native language
bubble in the TL country and thus failing to reap the benefits of being there). Try
setting up some immersion and give it some time and you may be surprised at how high you
can get.
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sillygoose1
Tetraglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4578 days ago

566 posts - 814 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French
Studies: German, Latin

 
 Message 64 of 101
22 August 2012 at 4:27am | IP Logged 
Yeah but the problem is I'm not sure where to access French TV shows outside of downloading them. Shows in English are very easy to come by in my opinion as there are so many. Plus the top internet language is English too :/ Would you happen to know of any forums or streaming TV?

Anyway, an update. Well, I played a video game in a Quebecois server and they all ignored me. Plus, none of them talked over the voice chat thing and the French they typed was like "che" or "je sais" or "c" for "c'est", so that didn't help too much. Also, they type in a French/English mix. I conjugated a verb wrong so I think that's why they didn't respond. Oh well.

I watched an episode of Engrenages today. The only subs I can find are in English though, but I figure any exposure is good exposure. I was surprised at how well I could understand the words I knew, which was about 30% of the episode. You can imagine that, being a crime show, the other 70% was slang/informal speech, etc.

I'm halfway finished La Chute by Albert Camus. The man was a genius. I just love his writing so much.

I think I need to start watching the movies and tv shows I have. In my mind, since I'm still going through Using French, it seems like I should wait to watch movies until I'm finished with the book.

Tomorrow starts the 52nd lesson of Using French. I may be completing it a week sooner than I thought because I do my revision lessons the same day as my 6th lesson.

Hopefully I'll finish La Chute within the next two days and try to finish Engrenages Season One or start Braquo with French subs and finish it by the time I finish Using French. I should also try to find conversation partners soon also.


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