tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4665 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian
| Message 57 of 329 05 January 2013 at 3:46pm | IP Logged |
Today's Assimil NFWE:
1. Lesson 86 (Passive): Not too hard. A couple new vocab words:
rouillée
un cancre
I also missed "mal au genou" before looking at the text, because the speaker really ran the words together.
2. Lesson 37 (Active): Quite simple. I didn't remember the word for curtain (un rideau). I think I may add some more "inverse translation" type activities, in addition to Assimil. One idea I had is to get English dialogue from some favorite movies, create a French version, and have Francophones check it on Lang-8. :-)
3. Lately I've been thinking about whether I want to sit a DELF exam (probably B1) at the end of this year. That could provide a nice goal to work toward. I have no idea what the deadlines are for signups and whatnot, but I'm putting some thought into the prospect.
4. I really want to learn Norwegian! If at the end of 2013 I feel I've made acceptable progress with my French, my (very tentative) plan at the moment is to do simultaneous study of Norwegian and German in 2014, using French-based Assimil courses. :-)
Edited by tastyonions on 05 January 2013 at 3:48pm
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emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map
| Message 58 of 329 05 January 2013 at 4:04pm | IP Logged |
tastyonions wrote:
3. Lately I've been thinking about whether I want to sit a DELF exam (probably B1) at the end of this year. That could provide a nice goal to work toward. I have no idea what the deadlines are for signups and whatnot, but I'm putting some thought into the prospect. |
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Your passive French is a lot further along than mine was by Assimil lesson 86. Maybe this is because you're doing a lot of other cool stuff on the side. But at your current rate, I think you'll be ready for the DELF B1 long before the end of the year, provided you spend the obligatory time flailing around on lang-8, Skype and Verbling like the rest of us and practice those active skills. :-) That might seem pretty intimidating right now, but it won't after another month or two of the active wave.
tastyonions wrote:
4. I really want to learn Norwegian! If at the end of 2013 I feel I've made acceptable progress with my French, my (very tentative) plan at the moment is to do simultaneous study of Norwegian and German in 2014, using French-based Assimil courses. :-) |
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Sounds fun!
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tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4665 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian
| Message 59 of 329 05 January 2013 at 4:40pm | IP Logged |
emk wrote:
tastyonions wrote:
3. Lately I've been thinking about whether I want to sit a DELF exam (probably B1) at the end of this year. That could provide a nice goal to work toward. I have no idea what the deadlines are for signups and whatnot, but I'm putting some thought into the prospect. |
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Your passive French is a lot further along than mine was by Assimil lesson 86. Maybe this is because you're doing a lot of other cool stuff on the side. But at your current rate, I think you'll be ready for the DELF B1 long before the end of the year, provided you spend the obligatory time flailing around on lang-8, Skype and Verbling like the rest of us and practice those active skills. :-) That might seem pretty intimidating right now, but it won't after another month or two of the active wave. |
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Thanks for the vote of confidence! :-)
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tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4665 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian
| Message 60 of 329 06 January 2013 at 3:08pm | IP Logged |
1. Lesson 87 (Passive): This one wasn't too tough, either. It was mostly a review of different uses of "faire." Some new words and idioms:
une bêtise
faire des histoires
on vous a refait / on vous a eu
faire d'une pierre deux coups
faut le faire
2. Lesson 38 (Active): This one was difficult! I seemed to have forgotten (or not yet activated, I suppose) a number of different things in it, and not just vocab. To add to this, I think it was the longest lesson yet. I think I will do it again tomorrow (in addition to Lesson 39) to nail it down.
Edited by tastyonions on 06 January 2013 at 3:10pm
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tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4665 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian
| Message 61 of 329 07 January 2013 at 2:46pm | IP Logged |
1. Lesson 88 (Passive): I found this one pretty difficult. New words:
un téléviseur (I'm sure I must have heard this before...)
une redevance
enchaîner
inédit
This lesson included a few instances of the pattern "qu'on peut [infinitif]", which I have started noticing a lot recently. Like in this goofy video: "Regarde tout ce qu'on peut faire !" It also included the subjunctive of vouloir for the first time I can remember, with "qu'on le veuille ou non."
2. Lesson 39 (Active): This one wasn't very tough at all. Went quite smoothly.
3. Some general Assimil-related remarks: I am mostly quite happy with Assimil. But I think that it would have been more enjoyable for me if I had started trying to "activate" things earlier (even if that isn't what Assimil wants you to do). Assimil gives you so many good example sentences, and introduces new patterns slowly enough, that it seems like extracting grammatical patterns from them (plus the grammar notes) for immediate usage would have been both useful and pretty simple, and I'm kind of wishing that I had done that. Maybe I'll do that with Norwegian and German if I study those next year. I don't know, we'll see how things shake out.
4. Grève à France Inter - "En raison d'un appel à la grève par plusieurs organisations syndicales nous ne sommes pas en mesure de diffuser l'intégralité de nos programmes habituels." :-(
But they're playing some nice music instead of normal shows, and I learned the expression "être en mesure de [infinitif]" from their little notice.
Edited by tastyonions on 07 January 2013 at 2:52pm
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Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 62 of 329 07 January 2013 at 3:04pm | IP Logged |
I am impressed at how advanced the vocabulary is for a language course. People often ask what you can do when you have finished a language course, where to go next, but I would almost think that after doing Assimil French you could go straight to native material. What do you think?
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tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish
| Message 63 of 329 07 January 2013 at 3:06pm | IP Logged |
Yeah, there are a few idioms in there I haven't even seen yet. I doubt I would have a
problem with the text in general.
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tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4665 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian
| Message 64 of 329 07 January 2013 at 3:12pm | IP Logged |
I've never come close to completing another language course, so I can't compare Assimil to anything else in terms of vocabulary, but I will say that I can get the gist of many factual articles and opinion pieces now without looking anything up, and can often follow the general thrust of things from native radio shows. But most fictional stuff is still too hard to understand much without subtitles / transcripts, I find, probably because dialogue tends to be faster, less clear, and more colloquial.
I have also watched and listened to a *lot* of native material right from the beginning, even when I could understand only like 3% of what was being said, so whatever I learn through Assimil is always getting reinforced.
Edited by tastyonions on 07 January 2013 at 3:13pm
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