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Slow Learning: FR, HI, ancGR TAC 2015 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5474 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 89 of 164 06 October 2014 at 12:49am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Yes quite disappointing behaviour indeed. Shocking in fact. It's a good thing you've come clean here and admitted fault. The police are on their way. If you don't resist arrest, go quietly and continue to admit fault, your sentence should be reduced by a day or two. We might even throw in a Turkey sandwich on brown bread without any butter if you are extra well behaved.
One useful series, and one not so useful set of stories. Le Petit Nicholas sounds like a very useful series. I have some short stories of Petit Nicolas (8 in my iBooks) but am yet to try them out. Thanks for sharing Jeffers.
Another good series it seems worth my while pursuing in future. I haven't watched much of Un village français lately either.
It's interesting to get your perspective on Hugo ... in 3 Months as these have been my must commonly used courses over all languages I have studied - meaning i've used this course for all languages i've studied, i've not done this with another course. I've used it for French, German, Dutch and Spanish - only completed it in French and Dutch, 3/4 of the Spanish and German versions. They have not been easy courses for beginning off with in studying a new language, but rewarding in terms of getting a thorough overview indeed in a short period. For the German version in particular I felt there was almost too much covered in 13 weeks in the German version. ie condensing very long sets of Grammar rules into each week and trying to commit that stuff to ROTE memory wasn't fast going. If not trying to memorise it probably wouldn't be as daunting. Then how you answer the questions that follow the grammar correctly without committing these rules to memory while understanding them, i'm not sure. Prob better to get a 'feel' for the language over time, but with a condensed course that won't hapen. For the other languages I didn't find it as daunting. I would still recommend it as one of the beginning courses among at least a few courses for a beginner, particularly if one is very pragmatic- ie likes grammar presented in clear concise sections explaining their rules and listing the variations of each grammatical 'rule'. It's a good course to get a thorough concept of the basic framework of a language imo. Keep up the good work Jeffers. I've called the arrest off, but be warned, such behaviour doesn't go unnoticed by a prime minister, good thing you're a King. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 90 of 164 06 October 2014 at 1:59am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Yeah, I think you guys are both doing great as well. In reading your posts and experiences with Hugo, I'm considering sliding it in at the end of this year when FSI goes into review mode. The Prime Minister in me thinks Hugo will be helpful for my continued study next year, since I'm a grammar lightweight. The King in me says give the people what they want and give it to them now, which would be more listen/reading. We'll have to wait to see how this plays out. My decision point is still a couple weeks away. Edited by luke on 06 October 2014 at 2:01am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4907 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 91 of 164 11 October 2014 at 12:34pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Miracle, un poste après seulement une semaine!
French Sadly, "Boulevard du palais Thursdays" came to an end last week, as TV5 Monde finished season 14 and they're not showing the new series (hopefully they will eventually). I really enjoyed this series, so yesterday I bought the novel it's based on for my kindle: Les orpailleurs by Thierry Jonquet. I'm a bit nervous to start it, since it will be my first French novel for adults, but I was able to read the blurb on amazon.fr with little problem, so I'm hoping with the Kindle dictionary it will be fine. "Boulevard du palais Thursdays" is now going to be "Chérif Thursdays". Chérif is an Arab police detective in Lyon. Surprisingly for a TV officer, he likes to break the rules, whereas his new partner likes to stick to the book. Nice to see that someone is trying to break out of the formulas (can you see my sarcasm sign?) Despite intentions, I only worked on one chapter (ch 5) of Hugo French in 3 Months, and I didn't even finish it. I am finding it useful for reminding me of some foundational principles, but it is a bit dull. I still plan to complete it (as quickly as possible), and then move on to the advanced Hugo book, which looks more interesting. Anki I recently stopped adding new words to Anki when my reviews were getting into the neighbourhood of 200 per day. I've gotten them down to a more comfortable 150, but I won't add any new words until the reviews are below 100 (which may take another month, a couple weeks, I really don't know). Hindi For yesterday's "Bollywood Friday" I watched the action/comedy "Bol Bachchan". It was actually pretty funny, but a lot of the jokes required you to know the world of Hindi cinema pretty well. The main character, Abbas (a muslim name), goes to a village, where he has to break a lock on a Hindu temple in order to save a boy from drowning. When people ask his name, his friend jumps in and says, "Abhishek Bachchan", since he knows the crowd would kill him if they knew he was a muslim (since he violated the temple). Abbas asks his friend why he picked such an important name, the name of a famous actor. The joke here is that Abbas is actually played by the famous actor Abhishek Bachchan. Thus begins a web of lies that gets more and more complicated as the story continues. In the stories they have to spin, "Abhishek Bachchan" ends up having 3 mothers, an identical twin from another father (yes, you read that right), an identical aunt to his birth mother, etc, etc. It is quite funny, but it kind of fizzles out in the end. Edited by Jeffers on 11 October 2014 at 12:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4907 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 92 of 164 20 October 2014 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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French
I've now watched four episodes of Chérif and it's growing on me. It's a little bit more lighthearted than other policiers I've been watching. Not particularly deep or cutting edge, but an enjoyable way to bask in spoken French. I'm awaiting delivery of Camera Café DVD 1, a comedy about the conversations which take place around the water cooler in an office. Each short episode takes place entirely at the cooler, filmed by a single camera. I expect it will be a good way to listen to more or less natural conversations. I listened to Les vacances du Petit Nicolas for the third time, and I'm about 1/3 of the way into my second reading of the book. The audiobook isn't as good as Le Petit Nicolas (the original), but the stories are fun. I've been working on Pimsleur Ia for 10 minutes most weekday morning. My son and I are working on it while I drive him to school. It's funny because he watches the CD timer like a hawk, and presses stop at exactly 10 minutes. After dropping him off I usually put on Pimsleur IIIa, and I did unit 13 of that this morning. I finished the first chapter of Les orpailleurs, and it was tough going. I had to look up a lot of words, but using the Kindle dictionary for most of them didn't take much time. I think a tough book is a good thing, if it's not the only thing I'm reading. The book is 398 pages long, so I wont be finishing it in a hurry. Hindi I missed "Bollywood Friday", and watched half of Dhoom:3 on Saturday, which unfortunately killed my 24 week Hindi streak on the Super Challenge, because I didn't finish it until Sunday. I really need to get back to doing a bit of regular reading in Hindi every week. I'm normally a person who can only focus on one of my languages at a time, but I was going well with balancing both Hindi and French during June and July. If I really want to progress in both, then I have to find a way to do at least a bit of reading in each every week. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5234 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 93 of 164 20 October 2014 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm a bit obsessive about that streak thing. I read or watch something just so I can put in an entry, even if I don't complete a book I still log some pages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4907 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 94 of 164 24 October 2014 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I haven't gotten as much reading done this week as I would have liked, but tomorrow will be a different matter. My son is going to Comic Con in London, and I quickly volunteered to give him a ride because I can have the day to myself in London. First of all, I'll make my way to Foyle's, which has the best foreign language department I have ever seen. Then I hope to spend most of the day reading, and moving between quiet places to read.
I found this list of quiet places to read in London. My first stop after dropping my son will be Foyle's, which is also first on the list. After spending some money, and hopefully some time reading with a coffee in their Jazz cafe, I'll walk over to the British Museum and see what their reading room is like. It looks huge, and to me that might make it a strage place to read. But I'll try it for a while for its place in history, if nothing else. After that I'll probably have to search out some lunch, and then take the tube down to Southwark to check out the Canada Water Library. It's a weird looking building from the outside, but the inside looks like a welcoming spot to read. I sort of think that those three spots will be enough for the whole day, but I'm not 100% sure. If I have more time, I might visit the British Library. Meanwhile, enjoy some pictures: Foyle's: 
British Museum Reading Room: 
Canada Water Library (outside): 
Canada Water Library (inside): 
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| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4907 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 95 of 164 02 November 2014 at 9:29pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I really enjoyed my day out in London last Saturday, but it was full of mixed results. Foyle's was awesome: I ended up getting 3 CLE easy readers with mini-CD on sale (only £2.50 each), and I took the plunge and dropped about £60 on Assimil Using French. I got the set that has 4 audio CDs and 1 mp3 CD.
The Using French mp3 CD is awesome, because it has an mp3 for each lesson, and it also has a folder for each lesson with a separate track for each sentence. So if there's a sentence you're having trouble with, you can hear it separately. In addition, the mp3 tracks have the lyrics, so if you switch lyrics on with Windows Media Player, you can see the sentence while listening to it. If I can get this working on my phone, it will really revolutionize working on Assimil on the go. Assuming all their mp3 CDs have these features, I really recommend Assimil mp3 CDs. I love physical bookstores, and I am sad to see them disappearing one by one. However, I've had a problem with Foyle's which makes me wish I'd shopped from Amazon. There is a minor scratch on my Using French CD, and the last 3 mp3 folders won't copy or play. I still have the full mp3 for those 3 lessons, but not the broken up versions. Foyle's says I can bring the set back and they'll replace it, but I have no idea when I'll next be in London. Amazon would have sorted this out with no additional cost to me. I was very excited to discover at Foyle's that Tinin has recently been published in Hindi! I bought two of them: काला द्वीप (The Black Island) and टिनटिन तिब्बत में (Tintin in Tibet), and went to the Foyle's coffee shop to start reading. They made an excellent cappuccino at Foyles, but it was quite loud so I only stayed about a half an hour (reading 10 pages of Tintin). From Foyle's I walked over to the British Library, hoping to spend an hour or so reading at the famous and historic British Library reading room. Unfortunately, when I got there I found out that the reading room is now used for money-making exhibitions, so that was a wash-up. I walked down the street and decided to have lunch at a branch of Prêt à Manger, since it sounds French. It was crowded and noisy, but I enjoyed a nice cup of quinoa and lentil soup and read for about half an hour (reading Les orpailleurs by Thierry Jonquet). I walked out and found a really nice real French restaurant two doors down! Next time I'm in the area, I'll have to try the Savoir Faire on New Oxford Street. My next disappointment was when I went down to the Canada Water Library. I expected to find it a quiet place to read, but it was crowded, with almost every available chair taken. I went down to their cafe, and found that it was closed (they are short of staff to run it). However, down the street was a really nice place called the Canada Water Café, where I had an excellent cappuccino and read in peace for about an hour. From there I went back to the freakshow known as Comic Con to pick up my son (I got lots of reading done on the tubes), and we enjoyed a nice dinner in an Italian pizzaria down the street from the Sherlock Holmes Museum on Baker Street. All in all, it was a grand day out, despite some setbacks. I still haven't found a nice quiet place to read in London, but I am really happy with my purchases and the progress I made on Les orpailleurs. Next time I take my son to Comic Con, I'll try the British Library... surely that's not been turned into a pricey exhibition room? Edited by Jeffers on 02 November 2014 at 10:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Elenia Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom lilyonlife.blog Joined 3854 days ago 239 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto | Message 96 of 164 03 November 2014 at 1:04am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I've never read in the British Library, although I know many people who enjoy
reading/working there, so you should be successful. The Westminster Library off of Leicester Square is quite a nice one. It's a fairly small library with a tiny reading room on the top floor, which was still in use last time I went there. It might be one to have a look at next time you're in London. Otherwise, I quite like reading in the Waterstones Flagship in Piccadilly Circus. Their foreign language section is awful, but there are chairs on every floor (and one level even has a table), a café in the basement and another bar/restaurant on the top floor. I've sat there reading for hours. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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