tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4663 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian
| Message 17 of 80 19 May 2012 at 10:30pm | IP Logged |
A little over a week since I last wrote. I have a good excuse, though: I was hundreds of miles away from my computer hunting for a new apartment.
Hour 015 (13 May 2012): Spent the whole time working on listening comprehension. Watched some videos from Français Authentique on YouTube, then tried to understand a random movie with no subs (Les Grandes Vacances). Practice was severely limited the past couple days due to lots of time spent with my future in-laws.
Hour 016 (14 May 2012): One hour of pure listening practice using audio from LingQ lessons. French pouring into my ears pretty much nonstop and my brain managed to make sense out of most of it.
Hour 017 - 018 (15 May 2012): Watched ninth episode of French In Action. Listened to LingQ content and podcasts from Français Authentique.
The next few days (16 - 18 May) were spent looking for apartments, but I still managed to get a lot of listening done (on an MP3 player) during "down" time. I would say it was about 2 hours on both the 16th and the 17th. I didn't keep track precisely, and I wouldn't call it proper "focused study," but I still think it was quite helpful. In addition to podcasts and some Ling stuff, I listened to the same RFI Français Facile that I mentioned earlier, and understood more than last time.
So it looks like I put in 9 total hours of various kinds of practice for the week from 11 May through 17 May. Not quite my goal of 10, but still more than I have done in any previous week. Onward and upward. :-)
Edited by tastyonions on 19 May 2012 at 10:31pm
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tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4663 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian
| Message 18 of 80 20 May 2012 at 12:26am | IP Logged |
I forgot to mention that a recent development has given me some extra motivation to learn more French: I will be getting married next summer, and my future wife and I have decided to take a trip to France shortly thereafter. :-)
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tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4663 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian
| Message 19 of 80 21 May 2012 at 6:39pm | IP Logged |
Je vais essayer d'écrire un peu en français, mais je ne sais pas encore beaucoup de grammaire (on dit "sais" ou "connais"?), donc je pense que je vais faire nombreuses erreurs. Je vais essayer d'écrire des phrases chaque jour, pour améliorer mon français.
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microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5469 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 20 of 80 22 May 2012 at 6:35pm | IP Logged |
Félicitations pour votre mariage! Amusez-vous bien en France.
I can only see one error in the above post ironically concerning the phrase "nombreuses erreurs". In this case you
need the indefinite article 'des' but there is a rule that when an adjective appears before a noun, 'des' becomes
either 'de' or d' as in the phrase "J'aimerais apprendre d'autres langues" or in your post "je vais faire de nombreuses
erreurs"
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tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4663 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian
| Message 21 of 80 22 May 2012 at 7:45pm | IP Logged |
Merci pour les félicitations et pour votre aide. :-)
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tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4663 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian
| Message 22 of 80 24 May 2012 at 9:05pm | IP Logged |
I have been good about studying lately, but bad about keeping records of the methods I used. A half-hour study session in LingQ has just brought me to Hour 30, so I figured I would set down what I have for the past few days:
18 May: Hour 023
19 May: Hour 024
20 May: Hour 025
21 May: Hour 026, 027 [FIA, podcasts]
22 May: Hour 028
23 May: Hour 029 [2 episodes FIA]
24 May: Hour 030 [1 episode FIA, 30 minutes LingQ]
A lot of this time was podcast listening, but I also spent some time here and elsewhere writing a little French. I think I will put more time toward active skills soon.
Once I feel confident enough speaking somewhat extemporaneously, I would like to start a video log on YouTube to keep a record of my progress, hopefully updating it regularly at set dates or after completing a certain number of hours. Although I guess I might do some scripted stuff before that, so that people can let me know how badly I am butchering the pronunciation. :-)
Edited by tastyonions on 24 May 2012 at 9:08pm
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tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4663 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian
| Message 23 of 80 26 May 2012 at 9:53am | IP Logged |
A couple little notes:
I have found that short study periods (15 to 30 minutes) are more useful for me than long ones. They're less intimidating, easy to fit into the day, and make it easier to keep my concentration for the whole time.
A silly thing: I have caught myself reflexively saying "point com" (with the French pronunciation) in my head when I type web addresses these days. This is probably from listening to a lot of podcasts that give their web addresses at the end, heh. :-)
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tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4663 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian
| Message 24 of 80 31 May 2012 at 6:08pm | IP Logged |
It's only noon and I've already studied an hour and a half today. :-)
I started practicing reading things aloud. I find that after the first month of studying the language I'm getting a bit impatient with using passive methods alone and want to start working on production. Getting used to saying long stretches of French aloud seems like a good step in that direction. Right now I am just using lessons on LingQ so that I can read a sentence out, then listen to the recorded speaker to see if I did anything obviously wrong, but I really think I should upload some audio files soon so that any native speakers who happen to read my log can critique my pronunciation, if they care to.
Edited by tastyonions on 31 May 2012 at 6:10pm
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