luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7206 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 401 of 439 16 March 2015 at 2:06am | IP Logged |
I listen/read through the first couple of parts of Descartes Discourse de la method from http://litteratureaudio.com/. It felt good. The first parts are the most interesting. The speaker uses a slow pace, which is perfect for where I'm at right now.
I've got several FSI tracks going. Hard core is still on tape 9.7. Marching forward in on tape 13.3. I'm previewing ahead as a listen only wave on my phone that is somewhere deep into unit 14. I'm not tracking that one very closely. I read ahead in the book while on a long flight, into unit 15 somewhere.
Syntopic reading continues to get a lot of focus. I look up words here and there that stick out. The material is at the right level, about 2-4 words per page that I feel like looking up. I've started shadowing some of the material. I hope to keep this up for about three more months to really bring it into "the corpus".
Mr. Anki is still getting one new card per day. Tonight, I have less than 200 cards that are not yet "mature". There are over 3000 cards in my deck. I still plan to keep this throttled for another 100 days or so, while syntopic reading and progress in FSI fill in some more cracks. Then I'll probably return to earlier methods like Assimil and Anki to do some more gap filling. When I do ramp up Anki, timeboxing is a technique I want to try.
That about covers it. I'm listening a bit to RFI and watching some videos here and there. I like the "francais avance" set I mentioned a few posts back.
Edited by luke on 16 March 2015 at 2:20am
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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 402 of 439 23 March 2015 at 1:36am | IP Logged |
Hi Luke, good to see you're still chugging along! I wonder if your jump in the vocabulary test is due to all that time you spend with Lingvist, plus your work on the Frequency Dictionary. They probably helped, anyway.
I've often wondered what you mean by "Syntopic reading". In my head I've been reading it as "synoptic reading", but I guess you mean something else. So what's it all about?
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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 403 of 439 23 March 2015 at 2:41am | IP Logged |
I got the term syntopic reading from the photoreading course.
Mortimer Adler also talked about syntopic reading.
To give an example. Sermon on the Mount is a great book by Emmet Fox. There are also chapters 5-7 of the gospel according to Matthew, which are the original source. Other books have been written on that particular sermon. Syntopic Reading is using multiple sources to get a broader perspective on a topic of interest.
Quick recap:
FSI Basic French - Doing Hard Core, I just moved past tape 9.7. I didn't have it down as well as I would like, but after a week or two, it's wearing me thin. On the "march forward with low expectations" wave, I'm on tape 13.3. My listen and understand wave is deep into unit 14 on my memory stick. (Almost all FSI is done in the car for me).
Syntopic Reading - My two primary books are going well. I've been at them for a month or so. I'll finish up my listen/shadow waves in the car. I don't hit every word, but it does help keep me focused on the material. My comprehension on this stuff is up a good bit. I haven't been reading as much this past week. I think this will wind down earlier than my optimistic projection. That's okay.
Mr. Anki - Somehow I added another 100 words to Anki. Mot 1800 is don, because I guess it's a gift to hold back on Anki enthusiasm.
I added two more decks to Anki. One is for my syntopic reading, but that one didn't get too far. I added about a dozen words, but haven't felt moved to put more words in Anki yet. I started another deck with about 5 words from a GLOSS lesson. Tonight I dialed up the daily new card in the frequency deck to 5.
Frequency Deck:
3159 Mature cards
177 Young+Learn
215 Unseen
14 Suspended+Buried
Taking a detour - I did a lesson on GLOSS last night at the 1+ level. I listened to the audio, then read the transcript etc. That juiced me up. Today, I did the lesson more properly. That was kind of a drag.
I'm thinking about taking a detour to focus mostly on getting a lot of comprehensible input and turning down the focus on FSI for a while. Most of my best study takes place in the car, so this is an important choice.
It would seem to make sense to use Anki to pick up the few odd words in my expanding corpus, and listen and shadow and read that stuff to consolidate and give me a breather from FSI. I will still do some FSI in the car, but I'd like to limit that to the truncated silence/listen only wave with more advanced lessons. The idea is to get some exposure to some more grammar, but relax on the drill and kill for a while.
GLOSS was kind of enlightening in that way. Just taking it easy and doing the audio and reading was pleasant. When I added in the structure of the course, it became a drag. The lesson was pretty easy, but it was work to get through it. I'm imagining I'd get 80% of the benefit in 20% of the time just doing the listening and reading through the easier lessons.
Edited by luke on 23 March 2015 at 2:48am
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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 404 of 439 23 March 2015 at 3:44pm | IP Logged |
luke wrote:
I got the term syntopic reading from the photoreading course.
Mortimer Adler also talked about syntopic reading.
To give an example. Sermon on the Mount is a great book by Emmet Fox. There are also chapters 5-7 of the gospel according to Matthew, which are the original source. Other books have been written on that particular sermon. Syntopic Reading is using multiple sources to get a broader perspective on a topic of interest. |
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Ah, thanks. So for language learners it's a form of "narrow reading" in which one benefits by reading different books but on the same topic.
As for GLOSS, that's always been one of those things I'd like to do "some day", but I've never gotten around to doing more than a lesson or two. Since you're doing so much else, I'd say just use it however it's most useful to you rather than follow the official lesson plans. One draw of GLOSS is that they have some lesser taught languages (like Hindi), so it can be good for some lesser-resourced languages.
Edited by Jeffers on 23 March 2015 at 3:48pm
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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 405 of 439 27 March 2015 at 11:07pm | IP Logged |
It seems like I'm revising my plans every week. So as not to disappoint my loyal readers, here's the new
plan.
I'm dialing French back to Listen mostly. I want to round out my communication a bit. That means dusting off
Spanish a bit more, bringing in some English Great Books I've been wanting to listen to, and trying to find
appropriate French audiobooks for pleasure.
So, the French livre du semain est Le Tour du Monde dans 84 Jours.
For study, I'm going to continue with FSI Basic French Part II using the "truncate silence" recordings.
There, I'm just listening to understand. I'm also reading the grammar points in the text. My goal is to get
through to the end and see what happens. Since it will be more new grammar points per unit time, I think it
will consolidate some things I'm half aware of from Assimil and other experiences. This will mostly be done
on the run and in short sitting with the text sessions now and then.
I've got Mr. Anki set to add 5 cards a day.
Mon beau-frere a Glioblastoma Multiforme. Il et sa femme ont demenage avec ma femme et moi. Ca
sera changer la vie pour quelque temps.
Edited by luke on 27 March 2015 at 11:08pm
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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 406 of 439 28 March 2015 at 12:35am | IP Logged |
I'm very sorry to hear that, Luke.
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Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 4008 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 407 of 439 28 March 2015 at 12:49am | IP Logged |
luke wrote:
Mon beau-frere a Glioblastoma Multiforme. Il et sa femme ont demenage avec ma femme et moi. Ca
sera changer la vie pour quelque temps. |
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Je suis vraiment désolé entendre de ton beau-frère. Je n'ai pas écrit à ce sujet avant, mais mon père a le
cancer. Mon père avait une tumeur de cancer dans son cerveau (métastases) et il a eu le couteau de gamma
ray. C'était un miracle! Si je peux te donner plus détails, envoie-moi un petit message. J'ai souvent trouvé
soulagement avec mon français pendant que les temps plus difficile. Je vais garder ta famille dans mes
prières.
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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 408 of 439 13 April 2015 at 3:12am | IP Logged |
Mohave wrote:
Je suis vraiment désolé entendre de ton beau-frère. Je n'ai pas écrit à ce sujet avant, mais mon père a le cancer. Mon père avait une tumeur de cancer dans son cerveau (métastases) et il a eu le couteau de gamma ray. C'était un miracle! Si je peux te donner plus détails, envoie-moi un petit message. J'ai souvent trouvé
soulagement avec mon français pendant que les temps plus difficile. Je vais garder ta famille dans mes prières. |
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Votre message est très gentil. Je espère que ton père fait bien.
Mon beau-frère est décédé il y a quelques jours.
In French, I've been listening to a Librivox recording of Apologie de Socrate, which has a nice narrative voice and Criton from litteratureaudio.com. I listen/read Apologie in Fr/Fr yesterday. I also listened to read it in English and listened to it in Spanish.
La Repubique is next up. The narrator also has done a good job with the recording. This one is on litteratureaudio.com.
I put Using French back in the bathroom slot. Lesson 1 today.
I've been listening to "truncate silence" versions of FSI now and then. I'm dialing back FSI and just trying to get familiar with the material. I'm around unit 16 on my various listening devices.
Anki is set to 10 new cards per day and has been taking less than 10 minutes a day.
So, for the time being, I'm putting a lot more emphasis on the "end game". I.E., trying to do things with French that I ultimately want to do. Since I've dialed back FSI, I've dialed back my focus on speaking for now. The FSI recordings are not very clear. I think it will be helpful to be familiar with the material, using the book, so I don't have to listen to FSI so loud as much.
More balance in my language program.
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