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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Swift Senior Member Ireland Joined 4610 days ago 137 posts - 191 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French, Russian | Message 41 of 91 14 July 2012 at 11:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I read about 30 pages of LGC (Le Grand Cahier) today, learned quite a lot of vocabulary
and took some vocabulary down from the first 20 pages of LGC. So today was a pretty good day in terms of the work that I did; however, I have some uncertainties nagging at me so I figured I'd ask for advice from anyone who is reading. 1. How do you determine when you are doing too much vocabulary? I know there are other methods of learning vocabulary that don't involve searching words and then using methods to memorise them, but strictly focusing on this type of learning, when do you determine you've done enough for the day? At the moment things are going fine, I learn between 50-100 words a day, stop when I am tired or bored and can remember over 90% of them the next day (looking at one column of the sheets I do out). I just want to ask if I am doing something detrimental? 2. Similarly, what about taking down words? I feel like I don't want to take down too many for several reasons: -Taking down words lazily that I can easily figure out given time to think about them -Don't want to have too large a backlog of words; this will widen the time between contact with the words and actually learning them. For me, learning words within 24 hours of encountering them makes them stick a lot more easily. -Analysing every word on a page or in a chapter really tires me and is oddly demotivating (at least at my present level). But at the same time I kind of feel in a rush to learn as many words as I can. It can also be hard to decide which words to "pick". 3. So far since the end of school I have only really been covering 3 areas: listening, reading and speaking. Overall, I feel that I have these areas fairly well covered. I am now realising that I should probably start writing again. My mind immediately turns to lang-8. Any other recommendations on writing that would be beneficial for my French/ what and how I should be writing? In regards to the above three questions, I realise that everyone has their own methods and that may very well be a reassuring response. Frankly, I am asking these questions because I am still trying to find my own as a first-time language learner! I don't expect anyone to hold my hand as only I can figure these things out for myself, but any advice from those more experienced than me is much appreciated! Edited by Swift on 15 July 2012 at 1:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5534 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 42 of 91 15 July 2012 at 12:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
If you're craving the vocabulary, I can't see any downside. :-) The only real danger of studying too hard is getting sick of it. But as you mentioned, all this stuff is really personal. So all we can really do is compare notes and swipe the occasional good idea from each other. In that spirit, here are some random thoughts. If you're using word lists, you might try reviewing them at increasing intervals. A couple of extra reviews (maybe after 4 days, 10 days and 25 days, or something like that) may substantially boost your long-term retention. Anki's excellent, too, if you're into that sort of thing.
Reading will get easier, and after a few hundred pages you'll probably start to get a sense for the most important words. Personally, I used a faint 0.5mm pencil to underline interesting words and just kept reading, and came back for the good ones later. Also, don't spend 100% of your time on intensive, word-by-word analysis of text. That requires intense concentration and you can only keep it up for a while. Spend plenty of time just having fun in French. I personally like to mix 4 parts shameless fun with 2 parts Anki reviews (which are basically fun study that I can do anywhere) with 1 part actual "study."
I just wrote whatever seemed interesting at the time. :-) It's better to write a smaller amount of good text, and correct it yourself before posting, than to write a larger amount of crummy text. Lang-8 helped me in two ways: 1) It allowed me to slow down my output and look stuff up. One of my major tools was linguee, which would let me punch in an English phrase and look at how professional translators would say it in French. I also used an English->French dictionary and confirmed the French words with Linguee or Google. This laid the groundwork for much richer speaking. 2) It got me lots of valuable feedback on where my grammar was broken. Who would ever have guessed that French has a partitive article? Sadly, not me, despite actually having learned it from Assimil years ago. As a rule of thumb, native speakers can tell you when something is wrong, but you'll usually have to learn the "why" on your own. To get the most mileage out of Linguee, I looked for list of new articles in French, and found out which French speakers give lots of good corrections. Then I did the best job I could of correcting their English diaries. Ultimately, I ended up meeting really awesome people. Anyway, I hope some of this is vaguely reassuring. You'll figure out what works best for you, of course. But never hesitate to experiment and switch things up occasionally— a big chunk of my A2->B2 progress came from experimenting with new ways to tackle specific problems. Bonne lecture ! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Swift Senior Member Ireland Joined 4610 days ago 137 posts - 191 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Russian | Message 43 of 91 15 July 2012 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks for the suggestions emk! Reviewing my vocabulary to help long term memory sounds
like a great idea. I had been doing it sometimes maybe once a week after the fact, but the interval type reviewing you pointed out sounds good. It doesn't take much time at all to read through a word list and see which words I have forgotten and then relearn them. I have used Anki and I liked it overall. However, I don't use it anymore because it was taking too much time to add my daily batch of new words to it, which started to feel counter-productive to me. As regards to everything else I'll say thank you and give it a try! Nothing really new to report today, more reading and vocabulary (and of course the obligatory speaking aloud to myself in French). I'm going to write an article on lang-8 about whatever strikes my mind. EDIT: Here is the piece I wrote on lang-8 about going to Paris and getting better at French: http://lang-8.com/407110/journals/1580994/Paris-et-le-fran%2 5C3%25A7ais Edited by Swift on 15 July 2012 at 7:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Swift Senior Member Ireland Joined 4610 days ago 137 posts - 191 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Russian | Message 44 of 91 16 July 2012 at 6:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm pretty happy with the work I did today. I've been feeling since I started up my
routines again that I was ignoring other parts of the language besides reading and vocabulary, so today I did another lang-8 entry, tried thinking and speaking to myself more, listened to some French and started making comments on forums/ articles that I read in French. You can read today's lang-8 post here if you want: http://lang- 8.com/407110/journals/1582359/Le-Grand-Cahier I really want to turn on my Xbox and speak with some French people, but I made a bet and a personal promise that I wouldn't use it at all for a week. It's not too bad anyway as it gives me the opportunity of finding other ways to communicate with French speakers. I went for about a 50 minute walk earlier and listened to one of my gaming podcasts. While I started have more trouble during the last ten minutes because of mental tiredness, I was happy with my level of comprehension beforehand. I even picked out some words I had never heard before, most of them gaming terms with a French accent that masks them. Considering this is a podcast where sometimes five people speak at the same time at high native speeds, I'm definitely making progress! Lastly, I must say that I am reading LGC a lot faster than my first French novel. With some breaks in between, I read L'étranger over the space of two months. LGC is a bit longer and I have already read 110 pages of it since Friday. I kind of wonder if I am going too fast, but then again I understand the gist of what is happening all of the time (sometimes only a few words on a page evade me), so I don't think there's anything wrong with it as long as there is no burnout factor. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| FELlX Diglot Groupie France Joined 4772 days ago 94 posts - 149 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 45 of 91 16 July 2012 at 9:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
« Comme j'ai mentionné dans ma dernière inscription [...] » Comme je l'ai mentionné dans ma dernière soumission/mon dernier post [among others] [...] « Ils n'ont plus l'amour de leur mère, ils ont les coups et les insultes de leur grand-mère. » This is correct, but this would be slightly better: Ils n'ont plus l'amour de leur mère, mais ont les coups et les insultes de leur grand-mère. [avoid repetition, indicate contradiction.] « [...] parfois moins que deux pages » [...] parfois moins de deux pages [on the contrary, you can say plus que or de, but this is actually more complicated.] « [...] et parlent d'un seul sujet, qui est nommé par le titre du chapitre. » This is correct, but this would be better: [..] et ne parlent que d'un seul sujet [since this is what makes you fascinated in the way the book is made] qui est désigné par le titre du chapitre. « Je me demandais la raison pour ce format bizarre et intéressant jusqu'a ce que je l'aie trouvée. » Je me demandais quelle était la raison de ce format [...] jusqu'à ce que je la découvre [au fil de ma lecture; suggestion] « Pas très longtemps après qu'on a commencé le livre, les jumeaux vont [...] » Au tout début, Vers le début du livre, les jumeaux vont [...] « Une chose qu'ils font est d'écrire des rédactions sur ce qui se passe dans leur vie. Ils mettent celles desquelles ils approuvent dans "le grand cahier". Alors, c'est comme le livre qu'on lit est ce cahier et donc on se sent comme tout ce qu'on lit est véritable. » Une des [better] choses qu'ils font est tenir un journal de tout ce qui se passe dans leur vie. Ils mettent les faits qu'ils approuvent dans "le grand cahier". Ce livre reprend le contenu de ce cahier, et donne donc une sensation de réel [au lecteur]. « [...] il vaut mieux rédiger quelques paragraphes et les corriger le meilleur que possible. Peut-être demain [...] » [...] il vaut mieux rédiger quelques paragraphes et les corriger le mieux que possible. Peut-être que demain [...] I hope all of these corrections won't discourage you. Your essay completely made sense to me after reading it once, these are overall only some minor corrections. Way to go! :) Edited by FELlX on 16 July 2012 at 9:34pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5534 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 46 of 91 16 July 2012 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Nice post! That's a lot more coherent than my first posts from early May. That's definitely in the ballpark for the DELF B2 composition écrite—at worst, you might need to fix a few errors and practice until you can do it without any reference materials, which won't take long.
Nah, that's a perfectly good speed. How are you doing with verb endings? Can you pick out which verbs are in the imparfait, the passé simple, the conditionnel, the futur simple and the subjonctif? Do you notice the gender of adjectives and articles? If not, you might want to mix in some shorter, more intensive reading sessions here and there over the next few weeks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Swift Senior Member Ireland Joined 4610 days ago 137 posts - 191 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Russian | Message 47 of 91 16 July 2012 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks very much for your corrections Felix, they don't discourage me at all. I realise
it is a cliché, but I'm always trying to learn more! Thank you also, emk. Of course I recognise all those things! Quite easily too be honest, and I don't mean to brag. The only things which I might not recognise right away are some passé simple conjugations, and more-so those of the subjonctif plus-que-parfait or imparfait. That's not too important anyway, those tenses are relatively rare from my experience, especially the last two. I thought the passé simple would be more common in literature, though; are my first two books just exceptions? Edited by Swift on 17 July 2012 at 12:24am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5534 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 48 of 91 17 July 2012 at 12:04am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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J'ai envie d'utiliser mon français un peu. Je souhaite que ce ne soit pas un problème.
:-)
Je viens d'acheter trois livres à l'occasion en français. Ils utilisent : * Charlie et la chocolaterie par Roald Dahl : le passé simple. * La triste fin du petit enfant Huître par Tim Burton : le passé simple. * Histoires mystérieuses 2 par Issac Asimov : le passé simple. C'est trois sur trois, y compris un livre pour enfants. Peut-être que tu as choisi deux livres populaires chez les apprenants du français ? Si l'on a deux sur deux qui utilisent le passé composé, ce n'est probablement pas un échantillon aléatoire. :-) Et maintenant je veux lire Charlie et la chocolaterie. Ce n'est que 154 pages, après tout. Hélas, il faut que je travaille et que je dorme. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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