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PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5477 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1
| Message 353 of 439 21 November 2014 at 1:40am | IP Logged |
luke wrote:
Je commence ... euh, lesson dix de French in Action. Ce n'est pas bon
quand on ne peux pas utiliser un
clavier avec l'orthographe juste.
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Typing foreign accents with
standard keyboard
I'm pretty sure this is the original site I"ve used to type foreign symbols, accents,
etc. There are a few methods but here I found the most practical. Typing Alt + another
key then another to get one accent is rediculous, but here I found a really easy
formula using the international US keyboard. For example the cedilla I just type '
then c (ie '+c = ç). and the same for á é í ú and so on. The other accents are easy
too â. Anyway it's worthwhile trying this out.
I also have a 3 phase study routine now
hour 1: FIA (leçon 6 maintenant)
hour 2: reading/or using Yabla + some flaschard use
hour 3: Assimil NFWE
So not much difference there.
Fry an egg in my face, know what i'm sayin?
I ain't no PM either for realz realio is my dealz, word
tout mon amour... d'accord, pas tout, juste un peu,
Premier Ministre Péteur Mullembourg
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7206 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 354 of 439 21 November 2014 at 4:40am | IP Logged |
PeterMollenburg wrote:
luke wrote:
Ce n'est pas bon quand on ne peux pas utiliser un clavier avec
l'orthographe juste. |
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Typing foreign accents with standard keyboard
I ain't no PM either for realz realio is my dealz, word
tout mon amour... d'accord, pas tout, juste un peu,
Premier Ministre Péteur Mullembourg |
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C'est bon ce que vous dites. Je vais remplacer mon clavier avec le truc que vous me racontez. Merci bien
Monsieur le PM.
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7206 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 355 of 439 02 December 2014 at 2:04am | IP Logged |
The Beauty of The Lingvist - The biggest thing I'm acquiring from http://learn.lingvist.io/ is a finer understanding of the way French is spelt and the sounds that accompany its strange writing system. The Memorize section has a blank for a word you are supposed to type in. Because the right word will fit the blank exactly, you get subtle cues about how the word might be spelled. If there is an accented character, that is available and it helps in the educated guesswork.
I'm one who has under studied the written details of the language, so this computerized challenge has been very helpful. You have to get the word right. If it's mis-spelled, you will have to re-type it. That's good. If you are off by an accent, I don't think it counts the word as wrong.
Along the same line of coming to understand better French orthography, my extensive listening background is called into play when I know how a word sounds but haven't paid much attention to the exact spelling. I'm starting to understand how French words should be spelled, based on their sound.
I'm also starting to notice how certain verb tenses are conjugated, particularly some common irregular verbs.
One thing I like about Memorise is that, although it starts out with simpler, more common words, it does bring in verb tenses that generally show up later in a course. Maybe with my background, I've zipped through some of the early stuff, but it doesn't seem that way.
I think my experience would be entirely different if I started learning French using the Lingvist. I don't think I would care for the method so much, since each sentence and word is generally not related to the previous word or sentence. That hasn't bothered me at all because I'm focusing on orthography, getting my word count up, trying to keep over 90% correct answers, and just letting my obsessive nature for some things take its course.
Other stuff
FSI - I'm on tape 4.5 or so in my "half silence" review of Basic French. So far, so good. There are a few things I want to repeat more so they become automatic habits. The leur/leurs modifier is one that I note, as well as numbers. Basically, I'm trying to take all the drills from "correct answers" to "conditioned response".
I don't think I'll finish my FSI review before the end of the year. I'm trying not to push it. I'm looking for a solid base before I start the second half of the course.
French in Action - Whereas The Lingvist seems like I'm playing a game, French In Action feels more like I'm in school. It is super effective. The workbook exercises are great. The coherence of the course is phenomenal. The no holds barred, full speed ahead nature of a lot of the audio is agreeable. I like that the instructions in the audio and the workbook are now all in French. By the way, I'm on lesson ten.
Most of my work with French in Action since the advent of The Lingvist has been confined to reviews in the automobile. I'm on a business trip now. Previously, that would have put the goal of banging through another FiA lesson in my cross-hairs. Now, I'm thinking I should open that book, but maybe I'll just play with The Lingvist for another hour or so tonight. Bad boy.
Assimil - Using French is in salle de bain. I'm reading and listening though it more like a book rather than a course. I think it's helping reinforce the vocabulary work I'm doing with you know what (I've been talking about it a lot lately). I think this role, as a vocabulary builder and solidifier is perfect for my Assimil studies right now. It's low stress. I don't feel I have to read the notes or do the exercises.
I listened to lessons 120-140 from French Without Toil before the plane took off. Same deal. Vocabulary enrichment.
New French with Ease is filling in once in a while in another context. I haven't been reading straight through it. I've been taking that more like a thorough review. I don't do it every day.
All the Assimils I think are good foundation courses.
I've spent plenty of time on this update. The dog ate the first one.
My last little glimpse into the future - I like thinking in terms of big foundations. You can see the continued work with FSI Basic French. Assimil is filling a gap role now. French in Action is meant to be and will become again a lynchpin for my studies. This Lingvist guy though has snuck in and is butting out the others just a bit. That's not bad. A break is good. Varying methods is helpful. I'm now imagining whatever I learn from the 6000 word Lingvist can become part of my foundation. It sure is a lot more fun than Anki. My time committment per word has been about one third, which is encouraging. Perhaps when one gets excited about a method, it means it's effective. I'm making a mental note of that now. Go with the flow.
P.S. One detail that was in the part of the post the dog ate was that the Lingvist says I've learnt 2222 words in 15.5 hours. I've spent about an hour or so in the Listening and Reading sections. I see the Listening time gets added into the "Total Time Spent" calculation. I don't know if reading is also added somehow. I had a link to Jeffers big reveal of The Lingvist. Some of my findings and early experience is noted there.
I also added http://frenchbyfrench.com/ dialogues to my memory stick. I'd discovered it quite some time ago, and it's got a lot of great potential. The Lingvist lifted a bunch of the dialogues, which was the impetus for me adding them to my memory stick. One great thing about FrenchByFrench is that the dialogues tell an ongoing story. It's all full speed French and there is a lot of colloquial language. It's first rate. I listened to the first fifty dialogues on the way to the airport. They aren't that long, which helped get them into the rotation.
P.P.S. - There's a bunch of blonde jokes on The Lingvist. If you don't like blonde jokes, you can give it a thumbs down. If you have an infantile sense of humor, you can give it a thumbs up, like I did.
Edited by luke on 02 December 2014 at 3:03am
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7206 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 356 of 439 06 December 2014 at 2:02am | IP Logged |
I've been hitting the Listen and Reading sections on The Lingvist, the cool,
free, French learning site these last few days. I am noticing more of the colloquial vocabulary in those
sections, which is nice.
I'm back in town, so maybe I can get back on track with something other than The Lingvist. Today, I'm just
past 31 hours and have 3544 words in the bank.
I read a bit of some other French stuff on the plane, Le Contrat Social and Le Rouge et Le Noir. They
seemed just a bit easier than the last time I'd looked at them.
It's pretty amazing that my post from about 4 days ago had me at 15.5 hours and I've just about doubled that
in the last 4 days. Then, I was at 2222 words, now 3544, so my vocabulary acquisition rate is dropping a
little, but I haven't hit a wall yet. I'm maintaining over 90% of the cards correct. I do best in the morning, but
it's addicting enough that I do it whenever I get a few minutes, and those few minutes turn into many more.
C'est bonne pour le coeur.
Edited by luke on 06 December 2014 at 11:52pm
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| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4910 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German
| Message 357 of 439 06 December 2014 at 1:10pm | IP Logged |
That is pretty dang awesome. I imagine that most of those 3500 words are words you were already familiar with, right? But still useful to practice the spellings and learn them in new contexts.
So what do you think is driving you forward in Lingvist? What about it do you find addictive?
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7206 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 358 of 439 06 December 2014 at 11:43pm | IP Logged |
Jeffers wrote:
That is pretty dang awesome. I imagine that most of those 3500 words are words you
were already familiar with, right? But still useful to practice the spellings and learn them in new contexts.
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I am familiar with most of them. There are perhaps a couple hundred seem entirely brand new. Some of
those are colloquialisms like flinge or flic. Others seem like brand new words like buter. There are new
cognates like dette, and they are generally the easiest. Some are new forms of words I may be familiar with
like aerienne (with an accent on thef first e). Anyways, I do feel like I'm learning more words and the Lingvist
makes you learn them because they will keep coming back until you do.
Jeffers wrote:
So what do you think is driving you forward in Lingvist? What about it do you find addictive?
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I have no idea. The word counter and percentage of word statistics and the bar charts for new words learned
on the dashboard are neat, but it's much more than that. I'm probably soaking up something that I've long
ignored, which is the details of the writing system. Noticing where accents fall, how frequent they are,
noticing the common orders of three vowels in a row, and also pronunciation and how that is related to
spelling. Although the computerized voice may perhaps be less than ideal, it does emphasize the underlying
algorithm embedded in French pronunciation.
As far as what's driving me forward, it doesn't matter too much. I'm learning and filling in gaps. We all get
that at various times doing different things.
I do have an idea that I'm getting ready to send them. It would be nice if the percentage column in the
Reading and Listening section had some sort of percentage of words you have missed in Memorize. As I
imagine the percentage of known words works, a word is counted as "known" if you've typed it correctly.
Now, if you've missed the word, it will keep popping up, and it won't let you get too far ahead. E.G, you can't
have 1000 unknown words, or, if you do, you'll probably not find the site enjoyable and won't use it.
But anyway, back to the algorithm idea. Say a reading says I know 87% of the words because I've typed
them correctly. Let's say also that of that 87%, I have missed some words in the reading once, and some
more than 5 times. That part of the algorithm could be configurable, or they could come up with something
their computer linguist things is sensible. It would be helpful when selecting a reading to know that, say 5%
are "hard" words, meaning I've got them wrong more than 5 times in Memorize.
Does that make sense?
One other part about the "unknown" words is that, if you've not seen the work in Memorize, it will be counted
as "unknown", whether you actually know it or not. I don't know that anything has to be done with that fact.
The main thing about this idea of a "hard word" rating is that I could start to focus on readings where I know it
has words that have been difficult to memorize for whatever reason. That would provide a little more
coherence to the course.
A couple other things. I get the idea that the Lingvist corpus may actually come from the Reading and
Listening section. If it does, that's a good thing. If it doesn't, at least the colloquialisms and other rarer words
are common in some corpus or context.
Edited by luke on 06 December 2014 at 11:53pm
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7206 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 359 of 439 09 December 2014 at 2:50am | IP Logged |
42 hours, 33 minutes, 4095 words.
Ten and a half hours more on The Lingvist, about 550 more words since the last time I noted the count. That puts the current rate at about 50 words per hour over the last 3 days.
I've been giving a bit more time to the Read and Listen sections. There are about 160 audio tracks left. I've been doing the shortest ones first. The next one is 2 minutes, 26 seconds. I have 90 readings left. I'm in the two page readings now.
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| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5477 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1
| Message 360 of 439 11 December 2014 at 1:26am | IP Logged |
luke wrote:
42 hours, 33 minutes, 4095 words.
Ten and a half hours more on The Lingvist, about 550 more words since the last time I
noted the count. That puts the current rate at about 50 words per hour over the last
3 days.
I've been giving a bit more time to the Read and Listen sections. There are about 160
audio tracks left. I've been doing the shortest ones first. The next one is 2
minutes, 26 seconds. I have 90 readings left. I'm in the two page readings now.
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I must say you're going great guns at the moment Luke... keep up the solid work! Throw
a cat at a bat before ensuring it's had a sturdy hearty meal of chilli bean chicken
with some rope thrown in for good measure... Keep it up!
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