|
 |
TAC 2011 - Team Ohana – Le Cinéma Rex | ||
Tags: Dabbling | France | 6 Weeks Challenge (6WC) | Immersion | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | English | German | French | Spanish | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Kisfroccs Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5409 days ago 388 posts - 549 votes  Speaks: French*, German*, EnglishC1, Swiss-German, Hungarian Studies: Italian, Serbo-Croatian | Message 153 of 198 19 July 2011 at 9:06am | IP Logged |
|
Hello ReneeMona !
Glad you liked Genève, I was there last month for my job. Being from Switzerland, I assure that Genève is really expensive, even for Swiss. But then, the salary or Genevois are equally higher :). Kisfröccs 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 154 of 198 22 July 2011 at 10:07pm | IP Logged |
|
Annecy, Day 19 : July 22nd
It seems I was too hasty in saying I would have my grade the following day because it took an entire week. I was originally going to pretend the whole thing never happened because my score is so awful but then I remembered that I had written about it here so it would be unfair not to share the results. I got 12 out of 20, which I guess would be a six out of ten or a sixty percent. I don’t even know what to say about it except that it’s just meh. When I fail, I like to fail big so it will at least be a funny experience to think back on once I’ve succeeded but this is just … meh. On the bright side, I have it on good authority that because some of the people in our class were in a C1 class the last time they were here, our class is now a C1+ class, supposed to take us to a C2 level. The test we took was described as C1 test, verging on C2, so I suppose I should be pleased I passed at all, since I currently consider myself a B1 in all four skills. Judging from the teaching, I actually think our class is more of a B2+ class and since that is the level I’m trying to reach, I prefer to focus on the fact that I got a “très bien” on a written assignment and a 9,5/10 on a listening comprehension test this week. Menthon Last Monday after school, we went to the castle of Menthon, which can only be reached by a road filled with hairpin corners that had me fearing for my life, as we were in a rather long and broad bus that did not at all look like it belonged there. Thankfully, the driver looked like she’d done this before and we arrived safely in front of the caste that was actually smaller than I had expected. We were led around in a group that was way too big so my friend and I quickly figured out it was best to stay as close to our guide as possible to be able to hear what she was saying and to follow her into the next room before being pressed into the walls by the rest of the group. The special thing about the castle of Menthon is that it has been inhabited by the same family for the last 1,000 years. I believe the current count is called Olivier de Menthon. More interesting trivia: in a recent post I said that the castle looked like something out of a Disney film so I was rather amused when our guide told us that Walt Disney visited the castle while making Sleeping Beauty and based the castle in the film on it. Isn’t that neat? We were led around a couple of rooms such as the kitchen, library, sitting room and the countess’ bedroom (which had a removable tapestry that she took with her when she travelled so she could always sleep with her walls covered in the exact same tapestry. This seemed a bit bizarre to me as I thought the tapestry was rather ugly.) We also visited the little room from where one of the Menthon ancestors, one Bernard, allegedly jumped out of a window on the eve of his arranged marriage to join the church. Apparently, an angel caught him and put him down on the ground safely and he later became a saint. What I take issue with in this story was that the window he supposedly jumped out of was about as broad as my arm and it therefore seemed extremely unlikely to me that a grown man managed to wriggle through it. After the castle, we drove to the Col de la Forclaz from where we had an amazing view over the lake and the towns around it. I just found out that this mountain pass is actually situated in Switzerland, which would explain why all the cows wore those awesome bells around their necks. Even more awesome was that as we were walking to the little café and souvenir shops, the cowherd (I can’t believe that’s an actual word) led them onto the road to move them to some other place, so for about ten minutes the entire road was filled with cows, causing a huge traffic jam and more than one pile of cow dung lying triumphantly in the middle of the road. I have photos but am unfortunately not in a position to share them. Tomorrow I will go to Lyon for the day and because the gods of travel hate me, I can’t take the train back because of construction work and will have to take a bus. However, having conquered the Belgian railway system and the Parisian subway, I am confident in my ability to take on the French railway system and bus system as well, especially since both seem to be direct connections. ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- @ Kissfrocs: Thanks, that’s very good to hear because Switzerland is one of the countries that I would consider living in if I ever get the opportunity to live abroad, due to it being multilingual and really beautiful. 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 155 of 198 25 July 2011 at 9:08pm | IP Logged |
|
Week 29 / Annecy, Week 3 : July 18th - 24th
This week has been slightly better than last week but still not great. I’ve been informed that the sound of my computer not working is caused by a deeper lying problem which can’t be fixed from afar which means I won’t be able to have it fixed until I’m back home. Thankfully, it finally occurred to me that I can put the Harry Potter audio books on my MP3 and since I was in a Potter-mood (more about that later), I was able to add some much needed study time that way. I have also decided that in this last week, I am not allowed to buy a single book, since I will probably need to buy another suitcase or leave half of my clothes behind to be able to take the twenty-two I’ve purchased so far home with me (then again, I can’t stand the number 22 so I will probably need to buy another just for the sake of having twenty-three). French Week 29 (46): 45 h. 20 min. 2011: 555 h. 30 min. (555,5 hours, ain’t that neat?) Lyon I spent my entire Saturday in Lyon and it was awesome! I love Lyon! This may be because I found two of the most awesome bookstores ever or because I saw the last Harry Potter movie there, or simply because it’s an amazing city. I left at seven (!) in the morning to catch my train and arrived in Lyon around ten, knowing absolutely nothing about the city apart from where to find the tourist office. I got lost on my way there (naturally) but I did find a really beautiful cathedral and a book store where I bought the first three books of the day: the Marius-Fanny-César trilogy by Marcel Pagnol. I think I have now bought just about every book of him that I’ve seen in stores here (nine in total). I eventually found the tourist office but it happened to be in the middle of the old city center so after leafing through some of the brochures for museums and film festivals taking place in October (“Why are these even here?”), I decided to go it alone, as I had already spotted several old-looking buildings that looked like interesting places to visit. On my way to the first, I decided to have a look in a bookstore (when will I learn that I can’t leave a bookstore without buying something?) where I found a little corner of foreign books and language learning materials. They were all second-hand which meant that I could have bought Assimil Russian (with CD’s!) for just thirteen euro! Unfortunately, I had a limited amount of space available in my bag pack which is also why I decided not to buy a Hebrew-French dictionary or a Swedish phrasebook. What I did buy was Le norvégien sans peine and a book called Language Myths, in which a bunch of linguists discuss myths about language such as “English spelling is Kattastroffik”, “Some Languages are Harder than Others”, “Some Languages have No Grammar”, “Italian is Beautiful, German is Ugly” and “Everyone Has an Accent Except Me”. Considering my participation in the upcoming 6WC, I also allowed myself to buy 1001 phrases pour bien parler allemand and two little books about German grammar and verb conjugation. After adding all this weight to my poor bag pack, I resolved to not enter another bookstore for the rest of the day, a resolution I promptly broke upon seeing a store named “Les langues du monde”. Now, if any of you are ever in Lyon, make sure you visit the Place Bellecour, stand with your back turned to the statue of Louis the umpteenth, cross the street and walk straight into the basement of this store, where you will find a collection of language learning materials that will make you think you’ve died and gone to language heaven. I spent at least an hour there looking at every book or CD they owned (and taking photos of them) but eventually managed to restrict myself to buying nothing but Der Kleine Prinz, which I was able to justify to myself with the 6WC. What else did I do? I saw at least four or five churches over the course of the day (but that’s okay because I love churches), watched a performance by a street artist, took about ten minutes climbing some really long and really steep stairs because I thought the view from the top would be awesome, only to find it obscured by a couple of unfortunately planted trees, and basically just strolled around enjoying the sights. A couple of hours before I was supposed to leave it started raining and since I didn’t feel like walking around in drenched clothes for the rest of the day, I decided to go see a film. My mom would say this was a waste of time because “you can watch films anywhere” and under normal circumstances I would have agreed with her were it not for the fact that they showed the last Harry Potter film in the original language. I have been looking for the original version in Annecy but couldn’t find it (and I refuse to see such an important film in French) and since I also happened to know that it was Daniel Radcliffe’s birthday that day, I considered it the perfect way to end my HP journey. Okay, so I’ll admit it. I cried. Or that’s the wrong word: I sobbed. Okay fine. I bawled my eyes out. I was trying to cry silently but apparently I failed because the girl next to me very subtly shoved her elbow into my ribs, making me want to scream at her; “Stop freaking shoving me! Can’t you see my childhood is ending here!?” and I would have only I didn’t know the word for “to shove”. This was definitely the last time I cried in a movie theater. I’d never done it before so I never realized how embarrassing it is to have to walk out of there with tear-stained cheeks and puffy eyes. Anyway, I tried to keep an eye on the subtitles to make sure I still got some practice and got quite mad at some points because the translators missed an important bit or mistranslated an idiom or expression. I see that happening quite a lot here, especially on TV. A while ago I saw a character’s outcry of “and I’m not bellyaching!” get translated to “et j’ai pas mal au ventre!” Right. Harry Potter Since seeing the movie (it’s been two days now), I’ve been down with a serious case of Potter-nostalgia and I’ve been making use of that by listening to the third audio book. I’m now six chapters into it and I’ve started listening to it without reading along, which is a little more challenging but less boring since I can do something else while listening. It’s again the same narrator and I though I’d resigned myself to him but he’s already managed to piss me off by giving Lupin a weird Arabic-sounding accent. Where on earth did that idiot get the idea that Lupin was supposed to have a foreign accent? Moron. Another one of my favorite characters I can add to my list of “Awesome Characters given Awful Voices by Stupid Narrator Guy.” I shudder to think what he will make Sirius Black sound like... Anyway, seeing as I just found out that there are apparently no audio versions of books 5 through 7, I think I’ll just finish the third and fourth book in French and then move on to another language. I also desperately need to reread the sixth and seventh books because it’s been way too long so perhaps I’ll do that in French as well. Last Week I am leaving next Saturday so I have less than a week left here. I will take my second test this Wednesday and on Friday there will be a little ceremony where everyone will receive their diploma. Almost our entire group is leaving so I’m quite glad I decided to stay for the entire month of July and not, as I originally planned, to start in the second week of July and stay for another week in August. At the start of a new month everything is reorganized so I would have ended up in a new group with new people and new teachers for just one week. 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 156 of 198 29 July 2011 at 5:47pm | IP Logged |
|
Annecy, Day 26 : July 29th
My stay here in Annecy is nearing its conclusion and I have a couple of results to share. Firstly, last Wednesday we took our second test and to everyone’s great relief, it was somewhat easier than the first one. I think it has to do with the fact that we were asked to create our own sentences for the grammar section instead of conjugating verbs and for the reading comprehension we got a literary text instead of a news article. I also tried to write more elaborate answers to the questions because that’s something I was too lazy to do last time and I think it cost me quite a lot of points. We got the grade back the next day (which made me wonder why it took an entire week last time) and I scored 18,5 out of 20 (so a 9,2 or 92,5%), which is quite a drastic improvement on the last test. Most people in the class had grades that were just a little higher than their first test so I’m not sure what to make of the fact that I raised my grade by more than a third. Anyway, you won’t hear me complain. I got 3,8/4 for the grammar section, 7,75/8 for written expression and 7/8 for reading comprehension. Today was our last day and since it’s the end of the month and a lot of people are leaving, there was a big “graduation ceremony” where we all got our certificate and our diploma with our levels. According to my teachers, this is my current level: Production de l’oral: C1 Prononciation: C1 (I didn’t even know you could get a level for that as well) Production de l’écrit: C2 Structures de la langue: C2 (I don’t know what they mean by this. Grammar ?) Compréhension de l’oral : C1 Comprehension de l’écrit is suspiciously absent and I don’t know why. Overall I’ve been given a C1 supérieur level (I don’t know what the supérieur is doing there but I like the look of it) and I also got a très bien (the highest) for présence (I didn’t miss a single class!), participation au cours and travail personnel. I don’t really know what to say about this except that I think I’ve been hugely overrated. However, it was still a nice confidence boost to have been in the top group and hear adjectives like excellent being applied to me. I now know exactly what areas of the language I need to work on and I’m already making up study schedules for when I get back. In terms of progress, I actually think I’ve made the most progress in terms of confidence. I’m a lot less self-conscious when I speak and I don’t even think twice about speaking French with perfect strangers anymore. Apart from that I think it’s mostly my listening and speaking skills that have improved and I have a notebook full of new vocab that I will start entering into Anki as soon as I’m back home. Tomorrow I will undertake the hazardous journey back to Amsterdam, where I will start preparing for the 6WC. I have assembled a more than sufficient collection of materials and I have a list of things I want to accomplish in the first week. I may have to adjust my goals a little bit though, because my computer seems to be once again disintegrating before my eyes and will need to be send to a friend of my father’s to be fixed. Oh, and I almost forgot. You may have noticed I have changed the name of my log because I am now a member of Team Ohana, along with Élan, Ellasevia, joanthemaid, nogoodnik and Solfrid Cristin! Due credit for this needs to go to Solfrid Cristin, for suggesting it and coming up with the name, and to Ellasevia for organizing it. Thanks guys, I’m super excited about this team! Edited by ReneeMona on 30 July 2011 at 9:50pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6142 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 157 of 198 29 July 2011 at 6:16pm | IP Logged |
|
Félicitations! Overrated or not, this is still an amazing achievement and you should certainly be proud of yourself for it. You’re that much closer to “speaking” French (even though you already speak quite well, I’m sure)! I hope your return to Amsterdam is much more uneventful than your trip coming. :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Élan Senior Member United States Joined 5444 days ago 165 posts - 211 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian | Message 158 of 198 29 July 2011 at 6:19pm | IP Logged |
|
Congratulations on your results! It's fantastic that you have improved so much and that you've learned where you still need improvement. You should be proud of yourself.
I'm really happy about our new team, too. Go Team Ohana! 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 159 of 198 02 August 2011 at 12:49pm | IP Logged |
|
Week 30 / Annecy, Week 4 : July 25th - 31st
Well, after three exhausting days of travelling, cleaning and unpacking, I am finally sort of settled in my home in Amsterdam again. I don't understand why people keep asking if my vacation was very relaxing. Why is the goal of travelling to get relaxed? Even if I was very relaxed, twenty minutes in the Paris subway was enough to undo any relaxing effect the four previous weeks had had on me. French Week 30 (47): 44 h. 30 min. 2011: 600 h. Of course, I timed all my activities with extra care this week because I wanted to reach exactly 600 hours and voilà! I've decided that my goal for this year will be to reach 1,000 hours. With the hours I clocked in for Spanish and some dabble languages included, this gives me a total of 645.5 hours, meaning the average weekly study time per week for the next 22 weeks will have to be around 16 hours which I know I can achieve since my average from before July was around 17 hours. This last week was much of the same and since I already talked about my grades and diploma in my last post, I'll move on to my plans for how I'm going to proceed. I've decided I need a little break from French so for the next six weeks, it will be taking a back seat to German. I mentioned that I know exactly what areas I need improving in and these are (for now) writing, vocabulary and listening to native materials. I find it very strange that I can understand people speaking yet I still get lost when watching films so I will watch at least one native French film and at least two episodes of the current affairs program C Dans L'air, which we watched in class sometimes and I like it because the subjects are interesting and they speak nice and fast. For writing, I plan to use Lang-8 and I have some potential penpals lined up. Lastly, for vocab I'll simply keep underlining unknown words as I read and enter them into anki. --------------------------------------------------------- 6 Week Challenge German: introduction I realize I am cheating a little in participating in the 6WC with German, as I am most certainly not starting from scratch, but my active skills are such a train wreck that I might as well be. I was originally planning on starting German in June but I put it off because I was going to France. I would feel bad putting it off for another six weeks and because German is so closely related to Dutch yet more complicated, it will be interesting to see how much progress I can make in six weeks. My relationship with German is a little complicated. I used to claim to hate it and made a point of refusing to work for it in school but I've since realized that it's the teachers I hated and not the language (I had one teacher who was particularly nasty but let's not get into that). Since dropping the class, I've had a couple of years to re-evaluate my opinions on German and to come around to it and now I absolutely adore it! Because it's so close to Dutch, it feels very natural and logical yet it has something extra to make it more exciting. It feels a little bit like eating something you know and love but with something extra to make it even more awesome, like pizza with extra cheese or chocolate chip ice cream with extra big chunks. I especially love speaking it, because it's so cool and bumpy and it feels a bit like eating chocolate with those little crunchy bits in it. Okay, enough food analogies. Since I'm a false beginner and a Dutch speaker, going over the basics is invariably going to be a bit boring so I'm going to try to do it as fast as possible. I plan to quickly listen to Michel Thomas and then get started on Assimil. I also have all the Harry Potter books and the audio for several of them and I'm going to use the phrase book and grammar books I bought in Lyon last week. Apart from that I want to start watching native films right away, since I'm pretty sure building up listening skills will be much easier in German than in French so I don't think I'll need to start with dubbed films first (well, apart from the occasional Disney film, of course. :P). This is a very short introduction but since I had to work yesterday, it's already day 2 of the challenge and I haven't done any studying yet whatsoever so I'm just going to leave it at this and get started on the real work. Good luck to all the other 6WC-ers! --------------------------------------------------------- @ellasevia: Thank you. I actually think I'm still very far removed from "speaking" French but definitely a whole lot closer than I was last year around this time. My return to Amsterdam was not entirely uneventful but neither I nor my luggage were afflicted this time so I consider it a success. @Élan: Thank you. I'm really happy about our team too but I have to admit that every time I read "team Ohana", it takes me a second to realize it doesn't say Obama. I therefore think our team motto should be "Yes, we can!" :) Edited by ReneeMona on 15 August 2011 at 2:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Just a Dreamer Groupie Egypt Joined 5011 days ago 59 posts - 62 votes Studies: English, French | Message 160 of 198 02 August 2011 at 10:06pm | IP Logged |
|
Congratulations to you! I'm very happy for you and what you've done at French, I wish you all good :)
About Deutsch! What a coincidence, I'm also will start it in the next day with Michel Thomas, I've got some advices from Advice section, so put my resources together to achieve something in German at next three months! Good luck to you:) Edited by Just a Dreamer on 02 August 2011 at 11:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
