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TAC 2011 - Team Ohana – Le Cinéma Rex | ||
Tags: Dabbling | France | 6 Weeks Challenge (6WC) | Immersion | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | English | German | French | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5335 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 73 of 198 30 March 2011 at 9:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for your message, Adrean.
My biggest frustration in my French right now is actually that all my plans to practice speaking keep falling through. I was supposed to meet up regularly with a native speaker but she’s not answering my emails and my Meetup group seems to be dormant. I also instinctively prefer to hide out in my own little language lair so it’s hard to keep myself motivated to keep trying. I’m not sure if it counts either but I’ll admit defeat on the little prince front. I’m actually supposed to finish the last few pages before Friday so I plan to do that tomorrow.
*shakes head* Ils sont fous, les Français. ;-) Edited by ReneeMona on 03 April 2011 at 10:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5335 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 74 of 198 03 April 2011 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Week 13: March 28 / April 3
I can’t believe the first quarter of the TAC is already gone! It seems like the whole thing just started last week and I don’t feel like I’ve made any progress at all so far. I had a wee panic attack this week when I realized I only have three more months left before leaving for France and meanwhile I haven’t even found a way to practice speaking yet. It’s not my fault of course, since I can control neither the walls who refuse to speak back nor all the rude people who are not responding to my emails, so in the absence of speaking practice I’ve decided to try to write a lot more French in this log to practice at least one active skill and hope that its practiced-ness will somehow rub off on the other one. French Week 13 (30): 17 h. 10 min. 2011: 218 h. 30 min. Cette semaine j’ai commencé à lire mon premier vrai roman en français (Elle s’appelait Sarah) et je suis très contente de mes progrès jusqu’à présent. Il s’agit de l’histoire d’une petite fille juive durant la seconde guerre mondiale qui enferme son petit frère dans un placard. (ce n’est jamais une très bonne idée ; Je l’ai essayé avec le mien et il a failli de me frapper à me rendre inconscient, mais je m’éloigne du sujet…) Le style d’écriture est simple mais il y a des passages bien trop descriptifs à mon goût. Par exemple, je crois pouvoir dire avec confiance que n’ai jamais eu le moindre désir de savoir à quoi ressemble le corps d’un petit garçon mort depuis quelques semaines. Mais apparemment l’écrivain a cru que j’en avais besoin donc maintenant je le sais et je conseille aux personnes fragiles de l’estomac d’éviter ce passage à tout prix. A part ça c’est une très belle histoire. J’étais en train d’en parler avec une de mes amies l’autre jour et elle m’a dit qu’elle avait étudié le français à la fac auparavant et qu’elle a toujours une grande collection de livres français dont je peux me servir. J’ai aussi accès aux livres français de la bibliothèque facultaire donc je pense qu’il est grand temps que j’abandonne les livres d’enfants. (sauf le Petit Nicolas, bien sure, parce que je l’ai déjà commencé et je tâche de ne pas abandonner les choses avant de les avoir terminées. C’est ça être awesome !) Apart from that I don’t really have a coherent story this week so the rest of this post is just going to be a stream-of-consciousness. I warn you, most of this is me venting my spleen. - French in Action just keeps getting stranger and stranger. Mireille is now kicking the crap out of complete strangers for no apparent reason. 38 episodes down, 14 to go. - As soon as I am done listening to the Harry Potter audio book I am going to write to the narrator and beg him never to ruin people’s enjoyment in another book again. How dare he make Hagrid sound like a moron! Hagrid rocks! - I finished my first Awesomeness goal! I really enjoyed Le Petit Prince, though I grew tired of hearing about his flower and his three volcanoes (one of them dormant, that’s very important to mention) every other chapter. - As for my second Awesomeness goal…I’m not proving myself to be very awesome on that front. Perhaps it’s better to just not talk about it. The wound to my pride is still very tender…. Edited by ReneeMona on 30 May 2011 at 3:15pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Just a Dreamer Groupie Egypt Joined 5011 days ago 59 posts - 62 votes Studies: English, French | Message 75 of 198 04 April 2011 at 1:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm very happy about what you're doing in French this year, I want to express my admiration about your study , and forgive me 'coz I think I'm the worst teammate ever this year ,Good luck to you with your study
Robert ;
Edited by Just a Dreamer on 11 April 2011 at 12:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5335 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 76 of 198 10 April 2011 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Warning n. 1 : This post is a rant and may cause signs of depressions in readers. If you choose to read it anyway, you do so at your own risk.
Warning n. 2 : Because my computer was out of order I started yet another logbook, this time a paper-and-ink one that I carry with me all the time and in which I record every linguistic thought I have. As a result this log is now a the product of my cutting-and-pasting around with the contents of four different logs so I apologize if it seems a bit disorganized sometimes. I am in the unfortunate position of being an unordered person with a need for order so my own administration drives me a little nutty sometimes. Week 14: April 4 / April 10 This week was a complete and utter failure on my part, though technical difficulties also had a hand in it. My computer started slowly disintegrating on Saturday and has by now completely broken down. My MP-3 decided to join in the fun a couple of days ago and I also temporarily lost my external hard disk which contains most of my materials so that coupled with a heavy workload means I got nearly nothing done in the first half of the week and had the time but not the tools to do more in the second half. I’ve also finally come to face the fact that I severely overestimated myself by signing up for so many electives this semester (I knew it before but was in denial about it) but I refuse to drop any of them because I’m already halfway through the semester so it would be a waste of all the time and effort I’ve put into them. So, let’s just take a deep breath and keep on trucking. It’s only five more weeks and in terms of grades I’m actually doing very well so it’s not that I can’t handle all the work. It’s just that the constant feeling of being an inch away from a nervous breakdown gets very uncomfortable after a while. French Week 14 (31): 14 h. 15 min. 2011: 232 h. 45 min. Assimil I’ve decided to make a small change in my Assimil routine because it’s obviously not going very well so far. I used to go over every lesson after I’d finished it and put new words, idioms and expressions into Anki and this worked very well as a memorization tool but it really slowed down my progress. I forced myself to enter everything into Anki before I moved onto the next lesson but it’s a really boring task so I always ended up doing no Assimil at all because I didn’t want the gap between where I was and where Anki was to get even bigger. So from now on I just write down new information in my notebook when I go through the lesson and review the previous few lessons every couple of days. Assimil does a really great job of presenting information in a context that makes it easy to remember so I hope this will be enough to help me memorize everything without using Anki. With these changes, my Assimil routine now looks like this; Step 1: Listen to the dialogue. Step 2: Read the dialogue and copy new information into my notebook. Step 3: Listen to the dialogue again. Step 4: Listen to the exercises and write down all the sentences. (I don’t actually translate them because I don’t see the use of that) Step 5: Correct the sentences. This is very helpful because I still make a lot of silly mistakes in my writing, especially in verb spelling. Step 6: Do the missing words exercise, which I’m not very fond of and usually don’t do too well on. Each lesson usually takes between 20-25 minutes to complete. I just finished lesson 35 so that means I have now officially reached the halfway point! Joepie, applausje voor mij! :) Other I’m not yet advanced enough to rant in French and since I have so few positive things to report on, this week’s French paragraph is going to have to be a short one. Il semble que mes plaintes sur le manque d’occasions pour pratiquer mon français parlant sont entendues parce que pendant la dernière semaine j’ai eu un email de ma correspondante française et mon groupe de MeetUp a prévu deux réunions dans le temps prochain. Elles sont des réunions qui incluent aller au cinéma pour regarder un film français, ce qui est mon idée d’une soirée idéale donc j’ai très hâte d’y aller. And to still end this long rant on a high note; a couple of days ago I took a little placement test made by the CEFR people which put me at a shocking B2 level. It’s not a very reliable test because all it really tests is grammar and some vocabulary but I did get 38 out of 40 questions correct so I guess that means I’m improving in the grammar department. I’ve also started reading online news articles in French which I can usually understand very well and I’m noticing my listening skills improving in leaps and bounds so I think I’m getting closer to that passive B2 level that I didn’t plan on reaching for another 6 months. Exciting! Closing thought: I just proofread all of this and I guess it wasn’t actually such a bad week as I made it out to be. :) I just get very cranky whenever one of my technical appliances breaks down because it makes me realize what a sad technology-dependant individual I really am. EDIT: It doesn't matter how many times I proofread, does it? I'm still going to find mistakes after posting. Edited by ReneeMona on 06 July 2011 at 3:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 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 78 of 198 17 April 2011 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Happy forum birthday ReneeMona! You are one day ahead of me, so I got to congratulate you first. I wish you many happy years of language learning and of posting on this forum!
Big hug from Cristina 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5335 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 79 of 198 17 April 2011 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Week 15: April 11 / April 17
Today is my first birthday on this forum! Whoopeeee, Ranja and rijstevlaai for everyone! And while you’re all stuffing your faces with digital cake and washing it down with virtual lemonade, allow me to thank all of you on this forum for being so inspiring, interesting and all-around awesome! Sometime not long after I became a member, I remember someone saying that the addiction would soon wear off and life would go back to normal. I don’t remember who it was but whoever you are, YOU DIRTY LIAR! It’s been a year and I still check the active topics and search the archives multiple times each day and to be honest, I’m not particularly eager for that to change. Becoming a pro member yesterday (it was meant to be a birthday present for myself but I couldn’t wait) has only made it worse. So many interesting statistics to go through! So while you’re all still munching on your rijstevlaai, let’s get down to business. My second (and not yet last) week without my beloved computer has been quite a struggle. Not being able to access the internet whenever I want and still finishing homework and writing essays takes a kind of foresight that I do not possess and without my MP-3’s ear buds permanently glued to my ears, I feel strangely incomplete. I keep lifting my hands up to my head to pull them out whenever someone talks to me, only to realize they’re not there and be presented with the choice of dropping my arms again and looking like an idiot or coming off as someone with very itchy ears. Apart from these trifles, my language studies are not suffering much at all, except for my Anki reviews which I haven’t done for over a week. I think I could just download Anki onto my parents’ PC but I’m a little afraid of the stacks of cards waiting for me. They must number well into the thousands by now… French Week 15 (23): 14 h. 35 min. 2011: 247 h. 20 min. Reading I’m progressing steadily through Le Petit Nicolas and Harry Potter and I just finished Elle s’appelait Sarah today. I’m particularly satisfied with my progress with the second. Annoying narrator notwithstanding, I’m noticing big improvements in my listening comprehension and reading speed at the same time. When I started with the first chapter, I remember wondering if the narrator could possibly talk any faster without biting off his tongue and now, seven chapters later, I find myself occasionally impatient for him to move a little faster because he’s boring me. Listening I watched two and half films this week, one of which in Quebec French (not that I would have noticed the difference if it hadn’t been for them using a couple of words I remembered were Quebecois). Speaking Since I’m spending the weekend with my parents, I’ve temporarily adopted the approach of speaking to my relatives in French, whether they understand me or not, and providing a running commentary on everything I, and they, do. Only my mom ever responds (and usually in Dutch too) but it helps me to find the areas where my vocabulary is lacking. (“OMG I don’t know the word for eggcup!”) I also spoke briefly with a French couple when I was at work last week and was quite pleased when they asked me if I was French. Granted, I’d only said one sentence at that point but I decided to take it as a compliment on my accent anyway. Writing Quand j’étais en train de parler avec ce couple français, l’homme m’a dit qu’il est rare de rencontrer des étudiants du français (apparemment il ne connaît pas ce forum) et il croit que ce soit parce que le français est dur, en particulier les conjugaisons des verbes. Là, je ne suis pas entièrement d’accord. Je n’ai jamais pensé que la grammaire du français est particulièrement difficile. Il faut bien faire attention au genre des mots et le subjonctif mais les conjugaisons ne m’ont jamais vraiment posé problème. Le seul aspect de la grammaire française que je trouve vraiment dur, c’est l’accord, spécialement entre le passé composé avec avoir et son complément d’object indirect mais meme ça commence à venir. Assimil I’m not sure what category Assimil should belong to so it gets to have its own subheading. It was brought to my attention this week that the Dutch in my Frans in de praktijk is actually Flemish. I used to think it was just old fashioned and I kind of liked that because I was actually learning new words in Dutch as well as in French but I showed it to my mother and she had one look at it and declared it was Flemish. So now I’m wondering if maybe le néerlandais sans peine and la pratique du néerlandais secretly teach Flemish as well… Anyway, I’m still progressing through the lessons at a slug’s pace. I usually just don’t feel like doing more than one or two lessons per day because the people on the audio get on my nerves after a while, one man in particular because he omits half of his words and mumbles the rest. DDDD For all my thinking and talking about dabbling, I’ve actually been able to stay focused very well. I slipped up a little this weekend because I was in bed with a fever and allowed myself to dabble in Italian. Just hearing or reading that language always makes me feel better so one thing led to another... Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed your rijstevlaai and please deposit your empty cups and plates in the trashcan on the way out because I’d like to keep my log nice and clean. Thank you! EDIT: Just found a mistake in my French that made me gasp out in horror. Edited by ReneeMona on 30 May 2011 at 4:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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