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TAC ’15 French Spanish Celtic Adv Study | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5392 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 57 of 336 19 August 2012 at 4:42am | IP Logged |
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Thanks! Yeah, a few years ago I just had a decent level of French from classes but then
all of a sudden life decisions had me upping my level to become fluent. TV made a big difference along with a bunch of practice. I haven't picked a "flavor" of Spanish to go for but I think I'm favoring Latin American Spanish (as diverse as it is) though I think quite a few of my resources are European. I like Argentinian rock so maybe I'll go for Argentinian or if I end up with a bunch of Spanish speaking coworkers I'll be influenced by them (most likely Mexican and Central American). So far from what I gather people are much more liberal with the tú form in Spanish than in French. I noticed that plenty of ads use the tú form. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5392 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 58 of 336 20 August 2012 at 1:45am | IP Logged |
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So in preparation for a DALF exam one major thing I'd need to work on is the writing
portion. The challenges are learning the structure of what's wanted (because the French are *very* particular about this), work on being able to do so without any reference materials (so really know my connectors, verbs, and genders, get really good at proofreading), and work on being able to do this quickly. I read through the chapters in my book Production écrite Niveaux C1/C2 by Causa/Mègre on La reformulation, L'organisation des écrits, Le résumé, and La synthèse de documents. I had already been taught a résumé a couple of times but because the teachers didn't really explain why we were doing it, I didn't really take the assignment very seriously. Now I know that the French are really into these things (résumés and synthèses are sometimes used for concours). I had originally thought that the C1 exam had a résumé and C2 had a synthèse but I actually need to write a synthèse and an essay for C1 and a long essay based on a collection of documents for C2. So I'll do the exercises from the book that take you through the steps of preparing to write these texts then I'll start practicing writing them based on articles I find in the news. I don't know if I can keep up with a pace of one a day but I think I'll aim for 2-3 résumés and 1 synthèse a week. I started typing up sentences from Madrigal to create an Anki deck. I think I'll also work on converting all the usted forms into tú forms as she only covers it shortly at the end and it seems like tú gets a lot more use. I'm not going chronologically - I'm hitting chapters that I marked as essential so that I work on stuff I really feel I need to work on but if I keep it up I may get the whole book done sometime. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5392 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 59 of 336 20 August 2012 at 8:22pm | IP Logged |
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I read through the first chapter of Harry Potter with the English like a bilingual
reader and I really enjoyed it. I feel like I'm getting into the swing of things and the only thing holding me back from reading it without a crutch is vocabulary (and being able to glance at the translation as I go along makes it much more pleasurable). I really like the cram the whole language into your head at once method which lets me do this rather than take forever to see the conditional. The perfect tenses are pretty hard for me and I noticed while reading that they really do get used all the time. I don't have much trouble with pretérito versus imperfecto but mixing in these perfect tenses will take a bit of work. I was really excited when I watched a news program late last night on Telemundo - Al Punto. So far with Spanish language television I have gotten little snippets here and there but I miss a lot of the global meaning. With this show I got a lot of global meaning. They had an immigration lawyer on talking about the Dream Act and how it would affect different cases, they discussed the Republican ticket especially their views on immigration, the campaign and social media, and Julian Assange. I got the global sense of a lot of their arguments, and even made out some full sentences. I'm far off 100% but I really feel that full (or most) comprehension of news will be soon within my grasp. I'm now an advocate for listening to some native materials early on - I think the biggest benefit is it reduces intimidation. I'm already accustomed to native speed Spanish so I won't need to adjust to it. I tried going through the exercises for preparing to write a résumé in French. They were pretty hard - I didn't feel good about them at all. It doesn't help that the first excerpt was insanely hard - I did do better on the next ones but I'll need to consult some more resources/friends to get this down. I read some more Stiglitz and my reading was way better this time - I was actually pleased with my accent. It really does come and go. Noted down some more words I had problems with, which included every combination with "institutions", and found quite a bit of vocabulary (a lot of econ terms). I looked for an audio book but sadly one was never made. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5392 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 60 of 336 22 August 2012 at 5:06am | IP Logged |
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So some potentially big news! I've been job hunting and today after an interview I decided that since I was already dressed up I'd do some pavement pounding and try walking in places and dropping off my resume. Well, I passed a boutique hotel, filled out their application and handed it in with my cover letter and resume directly to the Front Office Manager. He was clearly Irish and it seems maybe Irish-speaking as well (his name on his name tag was spelled in Irish with accents and everything). Well, I put learning Irish in my language section just because it might be a point of conversation and so hiring managers see that I'm a serious language learner (so they can take me more seriously when I say that I'm learning Spanish).
Well, just a few hours later he calls to schedule an interview for Thursday. I'm pretty psyched as it's common to have to wait at least a week to hear back and I didn't expect much at all from a random, unsolicited application. But Irish, of all things, may have gotten me this interview. And if I'm so lucky as to be hired, I may actually have an Irish conversation partner. I certainly expected Spanish partners and maybe even French (certainly among guests - this neighborhood can be like a Little France sometimes) but never Irish. Though this means that I'll be reviewing and cramming my Irish between now and Thursday! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5392 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 61 of 336 23 August 2012 at 12:40am | IP Logged |
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"Cramming" Buntús Cainte a bit (doing a lesson, taking a break, reviewing and then going on to the next lesson). I'm also reviewing a transcript of Pimsleur Irish and it just makes me wish that they had a full course. I can see that I have quite a bit to assemble a mini conversation with and so it would have been nice to have a full course. The different dialects are getting to me now - I look up something online about pronunciation or leniation and I see that there are several options depending on the dialect. I fear my Irish knowledge will be quite a mishmash.
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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 62 of 336 23 August 2012 at 2:14am | IP Logged |
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Good luck at your interview. That's so awesome to find something like that. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5392 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 63 of 336 24 August 2012 at 4:41am | IP Logged |
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Thanks! Got back from the interview - it was pretty short. And there were three interviewers so we didn't get to chat about Ireland and languages that much. He isn't a bilingual Irish speaker but he has had all the Irish classes throughout his education. He also seemed impressed by my learning French and going to France. He said I should get a call to schedule the next interview and hopefully that will really happen (sometimes they don't call back). So my cramming didn't pay off in the interview but it did help solidify some things in my mind (especially the last few courses of Pimsleur which were difficult for me the first time around). It's not a bad start - some basic greetings, asking for directions and how to invite someone back to your place for a drink. What more does a tourist need? ;-) Edited by sctroyenne on 24 August 2012 at 6:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 64 of 336 24 August 2012 at 4:26pm | IP Logged |
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Hi, sorry to interrupt, but I'm a bit confused as to which country you are in at the
moment. I gather from briefly looking back that you were in France until recently. Are you in the UK at the moment? Good luck on the job front wherever you are. Au revoir. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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