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French: Consuming Massive Input | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| rlnv Senior Member United States Joined 3950 days ago 126 posts - 233 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 31 14 September 2014 at 1:15am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm starting a new log (again!) to reflect a significant shift in my approach to French. Recently I have crossed over a line from primarily using methods to primarily using native input. Please allow me some latitude with my use of the term native input, as I'm including graded readers and easy texts in that realm, at this time.
I'm now devoting less 25 percent of my time to courses since having completed Assimil New French with Ease in August. It feels great, and I'm really excited about it. My approach going forward: Massive input (~75% of time). Reading, reading-listening, radio, French television, anyway I can consume French. I include all inputs as part of my approach, but foremost will be reading as an activity that I'll spend the bulk of my time and am tracking closely. Next up will be lots of time spent watching shows. I am using simple front/back and cloze Anki cards on interesting sentences or structures from the books I'm reading. Earlier in my studies I used Anki to work on single word vocabulary, and frankly, it was a horrible experience. With the context from sentence structures, I'm putting much more in my memory bank and it's not at all painful. Output (~25% of time). The time I'm spending on structured methods doubles as my output time. I'm using FSI French Phonology now, and when it's complete I will pick up where I left off on FSI French Basic. I like FSI, and it serves as a good way to spend time on output. My goals: + Have fun. + Read 1,000,000 words from books by the end of 2015. This number will not include reading online news, forums, etc - only books. + Watch many seasons of French shows. + See how far massive input will take me. + Learn firsthand if massive input will pull my output skills along for the ride. Tracking: I'm keeping a spreadsheet of books read, along with number of pages and an estimated number of words per page. This will give me a rough idea of how many words I'm consuming. I'm sure if it was possible to know the true number, it would differ from my estimate a fair amount, but this will be good enough for my purposes. I will try to count words as fairly and consistently as possible. At the time of this writing I have read 54,205 words. Books completed are: McGraw Hill Easy French Reader Lire en Français Facile A1: Le Blog de Maia Lire en Français Facile A2: Nico et le Village Maudit Le Petit Chaperon Rouge Lire en Français Facile A1: Si C'etait Vrai Lire en Français Facile A2: Julie et le Bateau Fantôme Le Chat Botté Eli A1: Molière - Le Malade Imaginaire Lire en Français Facile B1: Luca Sur La Route Les Fées Peau d'Âne CPLI: Le Voyage de sa vie Edited by rlnv on 14 September 2014 at 1:22am 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4046 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 2 of 31 14 September 2014 at 10:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi, in my opinion your program is very good and if
you can stick with it it will bring you very far quite fast. Bonne chance! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rlnv Senior Member United States Joined 3950 days ago 126 posts - 233 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 3 of 31 15 September 2014 at 4:25am | IP Logged | ||
Merci. J'espère que tu as raison ! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rlnv Senior Member United States Joined 3950 days ago 126 posts - 233 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 4 of 31 15 September 2014 at 4:34am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm going to share my thoughts on some of the books that I've finished or have partially read. Le petit prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Ilya Frank's Reading Method): This was the first story I stared reading earlier this year (I think April). I only got maybe 20 percent of the way before putting it down. It was simply too difficult at the time for me. I was spending far too much time with unknown vocabulary and verb conjugations - even with the parallel English. In my case, it was a poor choice on my part to pick it up that early. Even as slow going as it was, I found the story engaging and the accompanying audio very enjoyable. I have a long queue of books to read now, but I plan on finishing this one at some point. Lire en Français Facile: I have five of these stories from the Lire en Français Facile series of books. They are all graded and come with audio CD's. I found the stories not overly enjoyable and they were fairly short. They did provide me with a lot of new vocabulary and reading-listening with the provided audio was helpful. Overall I thought they were very utilitarian and I did definitely benefit from them. ELi Molière - Le Malade Imaginaire: This was truly a great read, and the provided audio excellent. The voice actors top notch. The performances passionate, engaging, and performed with great affection for the characters. I loved the scene with Angélique and Toinette discussing Cléante, with the reasoning and intonation in Angéliques voice - excellent. What a pleasant surprise this book was. I will definitely be reading more Molière in the future. This simplified version has me hooked. I have three more ELi classics my queue that I'm greatly looking forward to. CPLI Le Voyage de sa Vie: I will remember this book as the first one that I was able to read about 20 pages per hour (~175 words/page). That pace represented about double what I've previously been doing. I think I needed to do less than a dozen dictionary look-ups with this book of 56 pages. It felt good to just read. The story itself was not difficult, and combined with all the vocabulary I've been picking up, went fast. It is was also an enjoyable read compared to the Lire en Français Facile books. Sure the story was predictable, but for early readers I liked it. I have more from CPLI, and am reading Ma Voiture à Moi now. It is similarly enjoyable for a graded reader. A couple of my favorites. 
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| WeetBixKid Newbie Australia Joined 3724 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Studies: Persian | Message 5 of 31 17 September 2014 at 11:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good luck! Edited by WeetBixKid on 17 September 2014 at 11:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5531 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 31 18 September 2014 at 12:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Trop cool ! La lecture est difficile au début, mais si on peut trouver — et lire — deux ou trois bons livres, ça deviendra beaucoup plus facile.
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| napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 5015 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 7 of 31 18 September 2014 at 6:37am | IP Logged | ||
Felicitations ! Je trouve ça merveilleux.
Il a forcément raison. Je me souviens du premier livre que j'ai lu, Harry Potter tome 1. J'avais essayé de le lire deux ou trois fois mais il fut toujours le meme resultat - je l'ai abandonné apres les 15 premieres pages. Puis je m'ai trouvé chez des parents eloignés ou il n'y avait aucune trace d'internet et rien a faire, sauf la lecture. Alors, j'ai du m'en debrouillé sans : j'ai lu le premier tome en une semaine. Je me soviens d'avoir recherché presque tous les mots de toutes les pages au début. Le deuxieme tome d'Harry Potter m'a pris 5 jours. Le troisieme fut moins temps encore. Le premier livre est toujours le pire et ça prend du temps mais ça devient beaucoup plus facile apres. Bonne chance et bonne lecture ! Edited by napoleon on 18 September 2014 at 10:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7204 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 8 of 31 18 September 2014 at 10:02am | IP Logged | ||
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I, too, have been inspired by your post and path. I've revamped my studies to follow a similar route.
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