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TAC’14 2ième - J’aimerais être bilingue | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5472 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 46 12 February 2010 at 7:45am | IP Logged | ||
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This is my learning log for 2010 and beyond.
The TAC 2014 section will begin on page 6. I have been studying French for just over 3 years now and believe I am somewhere between intermediate and advanced - classified as B1 by a school in Montpellier France last Feb. Fairly advanced in grammar knowledge, reading and writing skills but still stuck at intermediate in speaking and listening. This started for me as mainly a winter passtime, something to do from Nov to Mar when my sailboat is out of the water. To summarize the past three years: Motivation: I chose French because it is an official language of my country, because of the huge amount of resources available nearby, because I wish to voyage up the Saint Laurence river in my sailboat right through the heart of Quebec, and finally because my home town in northern Ontario is now more than 60% francophone. This is my first attempt to learn a language and I really don't think I would have been able to stick with it this long without these strong motivating factors. Initial Steps: I started with self study using the Living Language Ultimate package and followed that with 4 weeks at a language school in Montreal and then several week long courses at the Alliance Française (which I will hereafter refer to as AF). Disappointed by the rate of progress I tried to throw money at the problem by taking private lessons with an instructor I met at AF. In this way I learned that neither a classroom nor a private teacher can teach me a language efficiently. I then took control of the process myself and utilized a plethora of resources - internet, radio, tv, travel, books, and even the occasional AF class and private tutor with self study making up at least 80% of the time. This has worked much better. Vocabulary: I have learned all vocabulary from real world contexts, either written or spoken. I was afraid to use any word learned out of context for fear of saying something silly like If I told someone learning English that I was going on vacation and they asked "Are you taking an aircraft?". This would create an image in my mind of towing a 737 behind the car just in case. Like some on this site, I have found that a word is not either known or unknown but rather it progressively works its way into my vocabulary finally (hopefully) ending up in my speaking vocabulary. After I have seen it several times in print I remember what it means; after hearing it a few times I recognize it when spoken etc. The biggest problem for me was the final step of actually thinking to use a word (or phrase) when I speak. I was speaking using maybe 15% of the vocabulary and grammar that I knew! One useful exercise I used to promote words and phrases into an active speaking vocabulary was to memorize short passages of text, forcing me to learn someone else's way of saying something. The real benefit came when I started to forget them and ended up mixing and matching phrases thus forming new stuff. Since the goal was not to retain them anyway, forgetting was a good thing and some part of what I learned was henceforth always available on the tip of my tongue. For example, in conversation, after telling someone where I lived I would often say "Dans cette ville, il y a ..." (In this city there is ...) followed by something. I would always phrase it like this since no alternative came to mind quickly enough. I am now more likely to just say "On y trouve ..." instead (One finds there ...) which is shorter. This way of expressing the same thought was used in the very first thing I memorized and I never forgot it. Listening: This was by far my biggest problem but with large amounts of listening practice I have greatly improved in the last year. I never would have believed that after two years of study that my listening comprehension would still vary from 100% down to literally 0%. I would listen to news broadcasts and understand 95-100%, then change channel to stand up comedy and understand nothing. This was clear to me one day while checking into a hotel near Quebec city. Talking to the lady at the front desk I understood every word she said and vise versa, not a word of English was spoken. My feeling of accomplishment did not last long however because moments later on the elevator there were 3 teen girls chatting amongst themselves and I could not pick out a single @#$%* word! They were speaking very fast and no doubt using plenty of slang, contractions and idioms. Goal: I have no aspirations of learning multiple languages or even of achieving native fluency. I would like to achieve a better than average second language fluency. I also desire to continue to study the distinctions between the French in France and Quebec/Canada and develop some competence in both. Maybe I'll make it a subgoal to speak French better than Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper : ) Thats all for now. Cheers to Adrean and Liam... Edited by microsnout on 20 January 2014 at 4:05pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Adrean TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member France adrean83.wordpress.c Joined 6169 days ago 348 posts - 411 votes Speaks: FrenchC1 | Message 2 of 46 12 February 2010 at 11:42am | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome to the team Microsnout! It's nice to have you on board. (pun intended)
Maybe you can tell us about some of the resources you are going to use this year. What type of T,V shows, books, websites etc. do you like to use. Perhaps you can share them with us here. You are very lucky to live almost in a francaphone country. There must be resources and oppurtunities to use your French everywhere.
I know exactly what this feels like. I see it almost everyday here in Ireland. There are lots of young groups of French who speak a strange language which has no resemblance with French at all. When you corner one of these people and have a chat you can understand them. Whats with that? Do you have any further goals? Do you intend to do the B2 test this year or are you brave enough to attempt the C1 at some point this year? I'm very happy that we're a proper team again. It will be good to motivate one another. Obviously being new to this forum you might not know there are an abundance of resources available to you which this forum has proposed and you might pick up a thing or two reading the posts. So welcome to the forum and to THE team! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Liamohalloran Diglot Newbie Australia Joined 5448 days ago 12 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 3 of 46 13 February 2010 at 2:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Bienvenue to team E!
I second Adrean's view that you very lucky to be studing french in a francaphone country if anything beacause you have to chance to speak it. While in France I would make it an objective on some days to speak to three different people whether it be at the post office, department store, on the street. I got real satisfaction whenever I did it. I have an idea about what you mean about the difference in 'French' and 'French Canadian'. There is a show on TV5 (can't remember shows name) from Canada that I saw, the accents and slang were so different that I decided to switch off incase it might damage my 'French' understanding. It's comparable in a way to the accent difference in southern France to Paris or Lille. You have a very attainable goal for the challenge, especially considering you French is at a good level already. Happy studies! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5472 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 4 of 46 14 February 2010 at 12:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Adrean , Liam - here are some thoughts on resources I use - past and present.
Reading I have not read nearly as much literature and native books as you Adrean. I was very impressed by the list of books you have read in your 09 log. I was in fact until recently avoiding books with the literary tense 'passé simple' because I did not think it would help me with conversational skills. I have about 24 audiobooks for learning French graded from A1 to B2 from publishers like CIDEB, Hachette and CLE. As well as reading and listening to them I also typed each of them (they are not long). I did this because I wanted to use the text of the stories with computer software I have created and to get used to my new french Canadian keyboard (which thankfully is only slightly different than what I am used to - unlike the one's I saw in France). This exercise had unexpected benefits - particularly spelling! I now think my spelling in French is better than in English. For some reason I find the spelling of French words more logical than English ones. It also created an intuitive understanding of grammar since I found myself glancing at the source less and less often as my understanding grew. I am now starting to read a wider variety of materials but greatly prefer to read off the computer than physical books. I use the Ultralingua software dictionary on my Mac and love to be able to just press F1 with the mouse over an unknown word to pop up a dictionary definition - its just so much faster and allows me to read more stuff. Far from literature, I like the series of bande dessinée books by Québec author Michel Rabagliati starting with "Paul à la campagne". They are fun and full of highly informal colourful talk like "Ok, Correc' simonac!! Ch'us pus un bébé!" Listening I like to listen daily to "Journal en français facile" from rfi.fr. I liked the audio from the books "Grammaire en dialogues" published by CLE - débutant and intermédiare. Very conversational everyday situations used to highlight grammar principles. Am definitely planning to use Yabla this year to get the most out of that subscription. There is a number of Canadian podcasts I listen to from the CBC including one in English "C'est la vie + Word of the week" which is about life in French speaking Canada. In one episode of this I was amused to hear one speaker explain a French idiom which he thought was of local origin but in fact I had already learned it - in Montpellier France! The audio CD set called "Smart French" was very useful. It was just a collection of interviews with French speakers (from France) but it explains the way people really speak, not what is usually taught in schools or used in audiobooks. For example it explains how the word 'de' will disappear and the 'd' will sound like its tacked on to the previous word making "tout de suite" sound more like "toud suite" plus many other speech shortcuts that make spoken French different from the way it is written. News broadcasts: I try to listen to these daily, both from Paris and Montréal. I understand that the speech used is far from the informal speech on the street and it is very heavy in its use of the passive voice "A man was killed.., Mistakes were made.. ". A year ago I found online a collection of 600 short news stories read by 21 different speakers all from Québec and with transcripts. This was very useful to me and still is - I play it in shuffle mode on my ipod often - because up until then most of my listening resources all came from France. Movies: I need to work more with movies this year. I have not watched enough yet. I do find the subtitles practically useless however. They don't match the dialog and the distraction of reading at the same time as listening reduces my aural comprehension by about 10 to 20%. For anyone looking for a highly entertaining Québec film, I strongly recommend "La Grande Séduction" (subtitles in french and English). A favourite of Québec premier Jean Charest - he recently gave a copy to Prince Charles on a recent visit. Travel Surprisingly there are not abundant opportunities to speak French where I live. I live in Toronto right now and it is very multicultural but not highly francophone. I do not need to go too far however, both northern Ontario (where I came from) and eastern Ontario (where I used to live) have large francophone populations, and of course there is Québec and New Brunswick. I do not have any plans to travel to France at this time but I am still considering it between March and April as I quite enjoyed my 4 weeks in Montpellier last year. In the summer I am hoping to get the sailboat in the water and venture up the Saint Laurence at least as far as Montréal. Finally in regard to testing, I think I would be interested in taking the B1 test to see what that is like. I am still not confident enough in my verbal skills to try the B2. Edited by microsnout on 14 February 2010 at 12:27am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Adrean TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member France adrean83.wordpress.c Joined 6169 days ago 348 posts - 411 votes Speaks: FrenchC1 | Message 5 of 46 25 March 2010 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Microsnout,
You made a great start to the challenge and wrote some interesting and concise posts but it's gone a little quiet....Just jot something down here whenever you feel it no matter how big or small. It would be good to hear how things are going with your study. How is Yabla going as a learning resource for you? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5472 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 6 of 46 04 April 2010 at 8:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Great Music for French learners
Well I was going to update my log so people don't think I have disappeared but... feeling a bit lazy, I will delay that a few more days and post some recommended tunes for those who like to use music in their studies. First four artistes from La belle province... (Québec) Les cowboys fringants Someone has kindly created this montage with complete overlaid lyrics... Les étoiles filantes My favourite from 'Les cowboys' with partial lyrics, a dark theme and progressively more disturbing images. PLUS RIEN ***** Mes Aïeux - one song, two versions This version of Mes Aïeux's best known song has lyrics in both French and English. Dégénérations and once more - live à la fête nationale du Québec live version ***** Vincent Vallières - two songs From his album "Chacun dans son espace" Le temps passe and from his album "Le repère tranquille" Café Lézard ***** Pierre Lapointe from his latest album "Sentiments humains" Au bar des suicidés ***** and one from Ontario... franco-ontarien Damien Robitaille Its hard to find lyrics clearer than this song (like all the songs on his first album) Mètres de mon être also from his first album "L'homme qui me ressemble" Je tombe and from his 2nd album "Homme Autonome" Mot de passe ***** and lastly, one from France Dionysos I like this tune and the animation with it.. Tes lacets sont des fées It has a Live version too. (I have complete lyrics to all songs) Edited by microsnout on 04 April 2010 at 8:47am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5472 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 7 of 46 30 June 2010 at 7:36am | IP Logged | ||
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Time for a long overdue update to my log - at least to reassure my EN teamates that I am still here. It also may be the only update of the summer - before becoming more active online in the fall. I have just returned from a 3 day immersion trip to Quebec city. I find that a short immersion like this is more about testing your progress than actually making significant progress. I stayed two nights at a bed and breakfast (Le Gîte du Fleuve) and attended La Fête Nationale du Québec which is also my birthday. Yes, every year my birthday is a huge celebration and holiday in Quebec. The first night I climbed the 400 steps to the Plains of Abraham to attend the party/concert but decided to return to the gîte early which proved to be a great idea as I found the hostess and her sister sitting in front of the house and I joined them for over two hours of conversation. In the morning at breakfast I found another guest at the table who was very interesting to chat with in French. He was a Québécois from Montreal who creates French television shows. Unfortunately after 10 min or so, a couple from Rio arrived. They were very nice people but we had to switch to English to include them in the conversation even though both the Québécois and the Brazilian ladies English was only intermediate - and I certainly don't know any Portuguese. The third night I tried staying with a local native speaker found on couchsurfing.org, an idea I got from Benny (the Irish polyglot) from fluentin3months.com. This worked out great, providing an entire evening of conversation with a native speaker and a nights accomodation for free. You can see the references left by my host and myself on my profile here I made an intersting discovery concerning my speaking ability. It takes me 10 to 20 minutes of conversation to "warm up" before I reach my best level which I think explains why I sometimes speak very poorly when someone says something in French unexpectedly when I have been in 'English Mode' for some time. After this warm up period, I do very well indeed and sometimes surprise myself while thinking "Wow, did I just say that? Where did that come from?". Then after about 2 hours my brain seems to fatigue and my speaking level starts to decline, mistakes become more common and I stuggle to form quality output. Don't know if anyone else has experienced this? Finally, several months ago I found a tutor on the site http://www.language-school-teachers.com/ and tried telephone lessons a couple times a week. This proved very useful. At this point in my study I place almost zero value on conversation practice with other students and prefer to pay a reasonable amount for tutoring with an experienced native speaking teacher. I am not doing this right now as I am living aboard my sailboat for the summer and it would cost too much using a cellphone but I will definitly resume this in the fall. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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