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6 Week Challenge in August!

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ReneeMona
Diglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 5335 days ago

864 posts - 1274 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2
Studies: French

 
 Message 49 of 202
09 July 2011 at 12:02am | IP Logged 
I wasn't planning on participating with German because we're supposed to be starting from
scratch and I'm already (passively) intermediate, but seeing as it will be the official
target language, I think I'll cheat a little. I was planning on picking up German in
August anyway so it will be good to make some fast progress before school starts back up
again and my languages will have to take a backseat to uni again.


Edited by ReneeMona on 09 July 2011 at 12:03am

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Rikyu-san
Diglot
Senior Member
Denmark
Joined 5528 days ago

213 posts - 413 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, English
Studies: German, French

 
 Message 50 of 202
09 July 2011 at 11:36am | IP Logged 
@Sprachprofi,

Thanks for setting up this challenge for all us. It is much appreciated.

About the groups and the hard choices
So, we will get a German and a French group. I think that is a good idea as both languages were very popular in the poll.

Like others in this thread, I had to choose between German and French and decided to focus on German. However, I also decided that if another 6-week challenge was arranged (beginning 1 October or 1 November) I would choose French for that 6-week challenge. Some of you may wish to do the same - doing either German now and French later, French now and German later or any other combination of languages.

FSI German Basic course edited audio
It is said that "the early bird catcheth the worm" and it is thus a good way to come to the challenge well-prepared. One of the things I am planning to use is a series of edited audio files from the FSI German Basic Course. I got them some time ago from a user on this site and what he had done was to take all the audio files and only keep the dialogue-for-listening dialogues. This gives you 23 files, one for each unit, a little less than 49 minutes total. I have listened to these files from start to finish twice and they make fantastic listening material.

I will find a way to make these edited audio files available for those of you who would like to use them, either as part of the challenge or later on.

Why is the edited audio useful? For several reasons:

* You get good and suitably graded audio materials, something that can be hard to get - especially for free.
* The audio files are within the B2 range and thus perfectly suited for this challenge
* You can listen to any number of units at a time, combining them any way you want. You can, for instance, do all 23 units in a row, do 4, 6, 8 or 12 units each day, loop one unit or a set of units several times, create unique playlists with the dialogues you find challenging, or anything else you can think of.
* All units are transcribed in the accompanying course manual (in pdf.-format).
* You avoid the "drill to kill" part of the course if you are not so inclined.
* You can always go back to the rest of the course and do the drills later on.

I think these audio files make excellent companions to other materials like Deutsche Welle Nachricten im Originaltempo and the Assimil lessons. Because they speak fast on the FSI audio files, they also make excellent companions on the way to understand something as superfast as Schlaflos in München.

(This, by the way, is not an inviation to discuss language learning issues, and you may even cordially disagree with the things I have described here. I suggest we reserve such discussions for another day (or another thread) in order to respect the subject of this thread which is to organize the 6-week challenge).

FSI French Basic Course edited audio
Do you know if someone has made a similar set of edited audio files for any of the other FSI courses? Such a set might be highly relevant for those of you who studies, or would like to study, French.

If you - or someone you know - have similar edited audio files for French, I hope you will consider making them available for the French-challenge learners.

If none of you have them, or you don't know anyone who does, I suggest we get started right away and make them ourselves. The user who made the edited audio files for the German units has agreed to lend a hand with the French units. Please let me know if you would like to helps us with this task.

We should aim to have this task completed ASAP so the French learners can listen to them, decide if they would like to use them, and plan accordingly if they want to, before the challenge begins 1 August.

A note on Swedish and other FSI languages
As a long-term project, I would like to create - or get - similar sets of edited audio for other FSI courses, primarily Swedish (the dialogue for listening in the Swedish course are absolutely briliant). I suggest we take on French first and tackle the other languages afterwards.

Edited by Rikyu-san on 09 July 2011 at 11:44am

2 persons have voted this message useful



Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4909 days ago

2151 posts - 3960 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

 
 Message 51 of 202
09 July 2011 at 7:12pm | IP Logged 
@Rikyu-san

The edited audio sounds like a good idea!

I am planning on taking the vocabulary files from the book I'm using, and adding text so I have an audio/visual review. Sometimes the professional courses need a bit of tweaking!
1 person has voted this message useful



booze007
Groupie
GermanyRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5092 days ago

41 posts - 45 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: German

 
 Message 52 of 202
09 July 2011 at 10:09pm | IP Logged 
could you please share the fsi materials for German?
and also i heard there are few edited verisions of assimil .any clue?
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jeff_lindqvist
Diglot
Moderator
SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6909 days ago

4250 posts - 5711 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 53 of 202
10 July 2011 at 11:01am | IP Logged 
FSI German
3 persons have 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 54 of 202
10 July 2011 at 2:07pm | IP Logged 
Will there be an "Other languages group"? I would like to join with either Russian or Turkish, but French
and German are outside my field of interest, as I am already past the intermediate level.

Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 10 July 2011 at 2:08pm

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Sprachprofi
Nonaglot
Senior Member
Germany
learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6470 days ago

2608 posts - 4866 votes 
Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese

 
 Message 55 of 202
10 July 2011 at 3:07pm | IP Logged 
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
Will there be an "Other languages group"? I would like to join
with either Russian or Turkish, but French
and German are outside my field of interest, as I am already past the intermediate level.

Everyone can join with whatever languages they want. I would recommend Russian for you;
lots of people chose Russian as an option, so there should be a group (albeit smaller
than for German) doing Russian.
1 person has voted this message useful



Rikyu-san
Diglot
Senior Member
Denmark
Joined 5528 days ago

213 posts - 413 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, English
Studies: German, French

 
 Message 56 of 202
10 July 2011 at 3:11pm | IP Logged 
jeff_lindqvist wrote:
FSI German


Just to clarify:
The audio on the page here are of course the FULL digital versions of the original tapes. The EDITED audio that I am talking about are taken from these tapes but, as I wrote, only consists of all the dialogues for listening. There are 23 of such edited tapes, one for each of the 23 units, and they are on average 2-3 minutes in length.

One can do without the EDITED audio but not without having to search for the dialogues for listening and do a lot of Fast Forwarding and Revinding on one's computer, iPhone or whatever. So that's the brilliance of it all. If you want to only listen to the dialogues for listening, you can do this easily. It will give you 48 minutes of pure B2 bliss.

The best solution would be if the above-mentioned site would host both the FULL version and the EDITED versions. It is best because then we would only need to go to one site for both versions, and it would be a long-term solution. It would not only be easier in the short term but also in the long term if other groups of language enthusiasts made EDITED versions of all the other courses. Either way, I will provide a link to the edited versions once they are back online.

Edited by Rikyu-san on 10 July 2011 at 3:13pm



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