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TAC 2011- organizing myself for TAC’12 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6086 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 1 of 161 28 December 2010 at 1:32pm | IP Logged |
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Welcome everyone and thank you, ellasevia, fasulye and others for steering the ship. I'm assuming I've taken the right steps for climbing aboard.
We are in-TAC-t with French this coming year. I'm well into "beginner". Knowing English I can already recognize about 15,000 French words. (I got that here.) That plus basic grammar makes reading almost automatic. French grammar is quite daunting for me and that's why listening and speaking/shadowing will be my main focus. I don't expect to understand français familier, but French news and French spoken solely for communicative purposes - should be doable within a year. That means I'd better get crackin'. Japanese -- I've let Japanese slip out of my life and while it's extremely tempting to delve back into it, I've told myself to concentrate on one language at a time. Now is the time for French. Then again if a little Japanese creeps in that's okay too. I just have to keep it together しっかり、しっかり MATERIALS: 1. I started with Assimil Französisch ohne Mühe in 2010 and stopped because I got bogged down in French grammar. I've solved my grammar-understanding problem (see 2.) and I'm back into it -- AND -- I'm into the activation phase, which is really fun. TAC start: leçon 50, d'activation: leçon n°1-10. Let the activation begin! (more later) 2. Smart.fm I started smart.fm when it was IKnow ! and got through the Core 2000 in Japanese. Smart.fm has other languages but it's known for Japanese. I've discovered that the Core French, started by various contributors, doesn't quite give me the same degree of learning as the Japanese Core. The words chosen are too much like English - le service/ service (how redundant!), and I just don't need to see the words 100 times before I know them. So I'm dropping the French Core and I've already started my own Goals. Here they are as listed at smart.fm: Passé composé, Passé proche French, Y and En Basic French Verb Conjugations French Prépositionen Futur simple L'article (défini, indéfini, partitif) Futur proche, Futur simple French imparfait Every time I find something grammatically puzzling I make a sentence out of it. If I'm unsure of the sentence I google it or work it through a few translators. Once I'm sure of the accuracy it goes in as one of my items. WordReference.com is -not good- for checking translation accuracy. Too many learners. French online blogs/newspapers and Reverso.net work for me. I've got 100 items in Passé composé alone, and counting. violà. I'll get more into my method of creating goals in my log entries. 3. Yabla-French I can't learn French without L-R and I've had a subscription with Yabla-French for about a year. I don't go there that often. It's really time-consuming to study the videos when I don't know the language. The up-side is that I get real French. I have about 200 flashcards at Yabla. I watch a video, click on a word within the script and Yabla makes me a flashcard. I've discoverd Debout Sur Le Zinc and Amadou und Mariam. The videos are concise, varied and fun. 4. To supplement the videos I've downloaded from Yabla -- Yabla videos are only about 2-3 minutes each and I'm constantly wrestling with my ipod -- I've added some podcasts. My favourite is écoute. CoffeeBreak was fun, but I find myself listening to the English speaker more than the French. That's the problem I had with Japanesepod101, too. Finally, I'd like to say "hey" to my fellow team members Team Ÿ (French): Persona, cazgram, janalisa, marrubizko. Tiens bon ! Steady as she goes.. Edited by Sunja on 06 December 2011 at 12:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6086 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 2 of 161 28 December 2010 at 10:30pm | IP Logged |
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I won't be coming in until after the first so I'll just outline a plan for the next few days.
Smart.fm: I'm almost through all of my current goals. I'm now in the process of searching for more sentences to add so that I can keep them going. Two of the goals will definitely end before New Year's: Passé composé, Passé proche and Basic French Verb Conjugations. I already have over 100 items in each and I don't want to add any more. Time to move on. I'll start a "French Conjugations 2" goal some time in Jan. Assimil: I've worked on activating lessons 1-3. Lesson 1 is good. I can cover up the French side and translate perfectly the German-side into French. I still make a few mistakes on lessons 2 - 4. I'll keep practicing until I have it down. In a few weeks I'll go back to those first lessons and substitute other words in with the text. Working with the new lessons starting from 50, I'm shadowing about three lessons at a time at regular intervals (but sometimes just once a day). It's a tedious process. I can't shadow but half a sentence at a time. I pause and repeat until the very end. Current episode of CoffeeBreak French was lame. It's end-of-the-year promo time. Ecoute was a bit better, but I like this one reve-fm. It's so much cooler - broadcast by some business students at ESSEC, apparantly. Just found it. I'm gonna go check it out. Edited by Sunja on 28 December 2010 at 10:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Li Fei Pro Member United States Joined 5124 days ago 147 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 161 29 December 2010 at 3:47am | IP Logged |
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Good luck, Sunja! I look forward to reading about your methods with French and with Assimil . . . I am just starting
"Chinese with Ease" and figuring out how to make Assimil work best for me. Like you, I also want to start another language but have vowed to stick to my first target (in my case Mandarin) before permitting myself to start my second target, which is French. Hang in there and enjoy your studies! 1 person has 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 4 of 161 29 December 2010 at 4:28am | IP Logged |
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Sunja I got the same lame coffeebreak French podcast. I don't like too much the new
format for season 3 of coffeebreak French. If you are interested in a higher level podcast and of good quality I think that Learn French by Podcast is great. Best of luck. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| cazgram Senior Member United States Joined 5658 days ago 34 posts - 45 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 5 of 161 29 December 2010 at 8:13pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Sunja!
I created a new TAC log: TAC 2011 Team Ÿ - Cazgram - FR It's encouraging to see you making progress with Assimil. I'd like to use this more often, maybe while commuting. Do you recommend Yabla? I have trouble finding useful videos. Just yesterday I did find out that France 2 allows you to watch their shows from outside the country at http://telematin.france2.fr/ 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6086 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 6 of 161 30 December 2010 at 12:29pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the comments everyone! Li Fei, yes, I bought Assimil when I was tired of using half-a-dozen sources to learn Japanese (having picked a bad one to start off with, I was more or less forced to seek out other materials.) I was inspired by Alexander Arguelles. I like the "no English" approach, and the book is organized very nicely with the little pronunciation help at the bottom (invaluable) and idiomatic notes at the end of each chapter.
hello cazgram! First of all, Yabla is -very- time-consuming for me, and I'd only recommend it if you have time to sit and digest the videos. That means using the "pitch-correct slow play" feature, using their "integrated dictionary" and so forth. (Hope you don't mind I sent you a sample of the text.) This is probably too much info but while I'm on the subject, the Instant Demo with Verena was not the selling point for me. Even in "slow" she slurs. They have other demo videos. I think all 296 videos come with transcripts and you can download most of them. They rate their videos, 1 (easy?) up to 5 (French ears/difficult). To tell you the truth, I don't find the 1-star videos any easier than 2, but with the "slow" button, it doesn't matter. there's approx. 80 2-star videos. Useful: click on a word during the video (the integrated dict.) and they automatically make a flashcard for you. You can then review the flashcards (with audio) any time, as a separate feature. They even give you the sentence that the word came from, in case you're like me, and forget the word and what video it came from. I tried telematin videos and they're a bit too native-fast for me. (I really rely on that slow button at yabla.) ;) Edited by Sunja on 30 December 2010 at 6:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6086 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 7 of 161 01 January 2011 at 2:17am | IP Logged |
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Not much to report. My family has been visiting from America and it's been quite-- er, tumultuous.
I've been searching for material to keep my other goals going and I had to make a new goal: "French, helpful conversation". I've started cataloging just tidbits of French and translating them. Idioms, parts of speech like, "il n'y a rien de mieux que", "pas de quoi", and ever-so-important, "Qu'est-ce qui se passe?". It's the result of me listening to a lot of podcasts and doing a lot of research. Hopefully it's helping. It's fun. I've got about 15 new items. I can start reviewing them tomorrow. Things will eventually quiet down here and be back to normal (whatever that means). I plan to get back to Assimil as soon as I can. It's 2:10 Happy New Year.. :) Edit: I was reviewing (early) some of my new items at smart.fm and the audio really is wierd when you deviate from the basic stuff. Normal, real conversation, "ça me fait un peu flipper, quoi," sounds ridiculous with computer audio. (Why I feel the need to document the obvious, I don't know.) Maybe I'm happy that I can make the distinction. Maybe my ears are growing. Well, at any rate, any audio is better than nothing. I just have to remember that everything is off,- intonation and inflection.. I NEED audio with my sentences. It's such an aid; I can't do my own sentences without it. As long as I'm conscientious of the discrepencies and I can recognize (real) French rhythms it won't matter. That's the word: rhythm. Listening to conversational French on a computer is like listening to a song missing a beat. Edited by Sunja on 01 January 2011 at 2:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6086 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 8 of 161 01 January 2011 at 7:12pm | IP Logged |
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I've spent the last few hours in the internet, looking for more sentences for smart.fm. I've added about 5 new sentences to "French, useful conversation" and 10 to "French präpositionen". I have to bulk up my prepositions list. Theres only 41 "items". I'd like to make it up to 100 by the end of january - not a problem. I've calculated about 20 hours studied total, all lists. That's not including making the lists. I have no idea how many hours I've spent, but it's a lot. I spend extra time looking for a mnemonic aid (photo) that I can add with the sentence. I think a goofy picture helps me keep the items separate. On the other hand, this is kind of a "luxury" to my flashcard program and I could do without it. If I discover that I'm not making much progress, or if I choose to go faster (20 new sentences an hour instead of 7!) then I'll stop searching so much. As long as my mind is on the item I'm studying and not on the aid itself, I think it's okay.
Today I spent a lot of time browsing through French blogs and tutorials, looking for stuff I can understand and utilize. And since I've exhausted all of my grammar books I'm debating on lifting sentences out of French novels. I'm still beginner so don't think that will be good at this point. I don't want to spend too much time translating and breaking the speech down. Novels will be the next step, but now's not the time. I've listened to about 4 leccionen of Assimil, but haven't used the book today. I've promised myself to start with Assimil tomorrow. Edited by Sunja on 01 January 2011 at 7:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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