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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 185 of 198 28 September 2011 at 12:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Week 38 : September 19th – September 25th
This week has been one of those "the Tortoise and the Hare" weeks where I didn't feel like I was doing all that well until the week was over and it turned out to be one of the best of the year so far (I decided not to take my four weeks in France into account when saying stuff like that because I'd never be able to top them during a normal school week and that would be demotivating). Most of it was due to classes and homework and I also had a vocabulary test that I spent several hours studying for. French Week 38 (55): 24 h. 30 min. 2011: 692 h. 40 min. School As mentioned above, I had a vocabulary test this week, which was kind of easy because I had actually studied and discovered to my shock (and those of my friends) that I knew all but one of the words asked without a moment of hesitation. I even hold hope for that one I didn’t know because the guy overseeing the test told us we would be awarded points for an answer that was correct French, even if it wasn’t in the book (which I think is an outstanding policy) and when I got home and looked up what I had improvised, it turned out to be correct French (according to Google, that is). Still, I am known for making really strange spelling mistakes (like that time I suddenly couldn’t for the life of me remember how to spell the word “daughter”) so I will carefully keep my hopes down until I get my grade back. Apart from that I missed a couple of my classes due to a mild flue but was present for my weekly admonishment for having done the wrong dictée (but I ask you, if half the class did the wrong dictée, does that say something about the students’ intelligence or the confusing lay-out of the homework-site?). Even though she’s kind of strict (or in her own words: keihard and onaangenaam), I really like this particular professor because she seems to share my view of things when it comes to languages. During our first week she said that all Europeans should ideally learn two foreign language (et l'anglais ne compte pas) and this week she spent a good ten minutes raving about how good watching films is for your French and how valuable and enriching learning a new language is, with me nodding vigorously in the back of the class. She is also possibly the first professor/teacher in history who has gotten me to participate actively in class because normally I'm that girl in the back of the class whom no one remembers at the end of the semester because she never says anything. Harry Potter At some point during this week, I started listening to Harry Potter et la Coupe de Feu and have already progressed through thirteen chapters, which can be explained by the fact that I listened to them while trying to get my insomniac-brain to go to sleep, which can take quite a while. It also meant that I’ve been experimenting with osmosis, since I woke up a couple of times to last night’s last chapter still playing on repeat. So far I’ve noticed no results but when I’m awake, I’m always incredibly pleased to notice how easy it is to catch every word of a fast-spoken sentence, even if I’m not always familiar with every word in it. EDIT: I always forget to change those stupid numbers. --------------------------------------------------------- @Solfrid Cristin: I am having an excellent time at university and I’m really jealous that you got to spend a full decade being a student. Due to the recession and recent government cuts, students here are being pressured to finish their degree as fast as possible and things get really expensive if you spend more than four years on your bachelor. It’s a great shame because I know many people who would love to go abroad, take up a second major and develop themselves in other ways but they’re unable to do it because they don’t have the money. Even so, many of my professors tell us to enjoy this time and try to make the most of it because after that it’s time to work until we’re 67 (and the age of retirement will probably have been raised again by the time I reach that age) so that’s what I plan to do. Edited by ReneeMona on 29 September 2011 at 9:50pm 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 186 of 198 02 October 2011 at 8:16pm | IP Logged | ||
Welcome to my life. Often I have to write quirky words even in Norwegian, because I can't remember how to spell the word I would normally use. If I have to write the Norwegian word for "I'm sorry", I would usually write "om forlatelse", which went out of use when I was a little kid, but I am unable to spell the one that I would normally say. Congratulations for having a great week by the way! Do make the most of your time as a student. When you are at the Uni you feel stressed, and worried if you will pass your exams, but trust me, this is the best and most relaxed period of your life. Once you start working the stress level goes up considerably - plus you often get a partner and kids. And don't get me wrong, I love my family, but the possibility of getting home when you are dead tired, and being able to put your feet up, and not having to cater to anyone, or stop fights all the time, is a luxury you do not appreciate until you do not have it anymore. 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 187 of 198 03 October 2011 at 12:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Week 39 : September 26th – October 2nd
Three quarters of the challenge down, one left to go. This week hasn't been as good as last week but that's mostly because I've been very busy with being tired and lazy. I had another test this morning, this time about grammar, that I didn't really study for because if I ever have to memorize a list of French verb conjugations again after six years of doing that in high school, I will become a health hazard to those around me. I also have an exciting announcement to make, namely that *drum roll please* I'm going to Paris! The French student union is organizing a class trip and I'll be there from 27 until 30 October. There'll be some kind of itinerary but we're free to participate or go our own way whenever we want so I've already decided that I want to visit Le Cinéma Rex. I will also buy a metro card and take the metro every day, just because practice makes perfect and to show myself and that stupid subway that I will keep defying it until I can walk through it without so much as breaking a sweat. After all, the national motto of the Netherlands is Je maintiendrai which I like to interpret as maintaining a stance of petulant persistence and where better to be patriotic than in the Parisian subway? To sign up for the trip I had to join the French student union (that is, not to sign up but to get a discount) which I normally don't bother with but this time I think it might be useful. I've also been meaning to visit the Maison Descartes, “the French Institute of Cultural Matters” here in Amsterdam but I keep forgetting. Its aim is to "promote Dutch-French exchanges" and they apparently organize lectures and have a huge collection of books and films so it would probably be worth it to become a member. French Week 39 (56): 14 h. 40 min. 2011: 707 h. 20 min. Harry Potter The narrator is starting to annoy me again. I think I've ranted about his poor voice-acting before but this time it's even worse because he's apparently run out of voices so he has started recycling them. As a result, Mad-Eye and Hagrid sound confusingly alike and Karkaroff has the exact same voice and accent as Lupin, which is just wrong. Madame Maxime also has a really weird accent that I can't make sense of. I'm almost halfway through the book so I plan to finish it within the next two weeks. Grey's Anatomy I've finished watching the second season and am now seven episodes into the third. My DVD boxes of the fourth and fifth seasons don't have French audio so I'm going to try to find them online because I kind of like the idea of having seen the entire series (sans sucky seasons) in French. I am so used to the French voices by now that I can recognize who's talking even without watching the screen and some of the voices are beginning to sound more and more like the original English ones. Since I'm not used to watching dubbed TV, one thing that surprised me was that the actors are dubbed even when they're crying, screaming or making other non-speaking sounds because that seems kind of redundant to me. During a recent episode, I couldn't help but try to imagine a voice actress standing in a studio dubbing the part of a woman in labor and the mental image kind of took some of the drama away from the traumatic stillbirth scene that was taking place on screen. -------------------------------------------------------- @Solfrid Cristin: At least you have the excuse of your dyslexia. I, however, am just a terrible speller and if I didn't have my syneasthesia to tell me when the colors of a word look off (and spell check of course), my writing wouldn't even be legible. I am very well aware that I am still completely unattached and able to do whatever and go wherever I want so I plan to make good use of that over the next couple of years. That's why it kind of annoys me when people ask me what kind of work I want to do after I get my degree because I'm not even thinking about that right now. I just want to enjoy being irresponsible and immature for a couple more years and then I'll see about work. :) Edited by ReneeMona on 19 October 2011 at 2:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| joanthemaid Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5470 days ago 483 posts - 559 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 188 of 198 03 October 2011 at 2:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Tortoises rule! If you're a tortoise though, what does that make me? A snail? Possibly an amoeba...
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| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5335 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 189 of 198 10 October 2011 at 2:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Week 40 : October 3rd – October 9th
Despite the high score, this has been a quite unremarkable week. I still don't have my grades back (how long does it take to correct 40 words and a couple of grammar exercises?) and I still haven't been to the Maison Descartes. Still, with midterms only two weeks away, the next couple of weeks are probably going to be extremely busy and exhausting so a score of 25 hours is very welcome no matter how unremarkably the time was spent. French Week 40 (57): 25 h. 2011: 732 h. 20 min. Harry Potter I've progressed from chapter 17 to chapter 24, which consitutes almost five hours of listening. There are exactley ten chapters left, which seems a little much to listen to in one week, especially since it's going to be an extremely busy one, so I'll give myself another two weeks to finish the book. After that I'll have to find some other audio book to listen to because there are apparently no audio books of the last three HP books (I wonder why) but that's okay because I think I'm ready to handle a more difficult book. Perhaps one I've never read before. It all dependson what I am able to find. Film I watched Être et Avoir this week, which I was supposed to watch in class two weeks ago but I couldn't stay because I had an appointment. As it happens, I much prefer watching a film at home by myself so I can rewind things I didn't understand. My class also apparently watched it with Dutch subtitles so that's another reason why I'm glad I didn't go. I put on the subtitles for the first five minutes because I am notoriously bad at understanding documentaries (people mumble!) but soon realized they were completely useless because they only translated the main gist of what was said and never the more difficult mumbling in between sentences that I needed help with, so I switched them off. I think I understood somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of everything said, which is a very satisfying percentage when you consider that I turned off the same film about half way through several months ago because I was fed up with not knowing what was going on. I also finished watching the third season of Grey's Anatomy this week. Over the last four or five weeks, the first three seasons have been good for over forty hours of listening and I feel like I learned a lot from them so I hope I can find the next two seasons online, since my DVD's of season four and five only have Spanish and Italian audio options (I will probably be thankful for this later but right now I wish they'd just gone for good old English-German-French). -------------------------------------------------------- @Joanthemaid: I'll leave for you to decide what kind of animal you are but just for the record, I don't think being an amoeba would be half bad. Apparently they can change shape, which is a skill this tortoise can only dream of. :P Edited by ReneeMona on 26 October 2011 at 9:26pm 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 190 of 198 16 October 2011 at 10:06am | IP Logged | ||
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You are really putting in a lot of time and effort, I am quite jealous of you :-) You must be getting very good at speaking French now!
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| 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 191 of 198 18 October 2011 at 7:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Joyeux anniversaire, Renee! J’espère que tu passes une journée magnifique avec ta famille et tes amis et que tous tes souhaits se réalisent. Que ta nouvelle année t’apporte beaucoup de bonheur et de succès, à l’école même qu’aux langues étrangères! :) (Et n’oublies pas de dormir de temps en temps!) Edited by ellasevia on 18 October 2011 at 7:46am 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 192 of 198 18 October 2011 at 8:07am | IP Logged | ||
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Gratulerer med dagen, Renee! May you have a wonderful day, and get all your wishes fulfilled!
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