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TAC ’15 French Spanish Celtic Adv Study | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5389 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 105 of 336 21 November 2012 at 2:07am | IP Logged | |||||
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I had my second italki session last night with the same teacher. We went through some
topics that were definitely more on the intermediate scale (the economy, giving advice). It was difficult but I struggled through, managed to re-formulate some statements I got caught up on and the teacher helped me with mistakes and missing vocabulary. I have two more sessions this week and I still need to book more. As I'll be done with Pimsleur at the end of the month I need to decide where I want to go from there. I can either finish up Assimil or tackle FSI. From what I've read FSI will take me further but I'm a bit discouraged by how long it will take me to get through it. I could always do both, of course, though I don't want to commit myself to hours of lessons a day. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 106 of 336 21 November 2012 at 11:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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I recommend doing FSI, even if it's just to vary your approach; you can also use the
drills differently than intended, it's a free world :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5389 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 107 of 336 21 November 2012 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Good call. I think I may concentrate on FSI and follow Assimil not as intended just in
order to listen to the audio. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5389 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 108 of 336 24 November 2012 at 2:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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Had a couple more italki sessions. One told me I sounded Italian or that I had learned
Italian beforehand which surprised me. During some moments I felt things flowing pretty well but certain other topics would bring out a lot of hesitations. Finished Harry Potter. Now I'll have to decide what to do with my commutes from now on. I can work with HP audio, re-read from the beginning, start a new book, work on courses, etc. I think I want to focus on audio to make sure my listening comprehension continues to improve. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5389 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 109 of 336 27 November 2012 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Almost the end of the month and almost the end of my mini-challenge. I was lazy a
couple of days but I've managed to get back on track so I'll still be done with Pimsleur III on November 30th. I just hit the 50% mark on the 5000 word Memrise deck yesterday. I now feel like a slave to the repetitions now: if I don't keep up with them they'll be overwhelming. And it's frustrating that when I make a tiny typo, mistake an "a" for an "e" or mix up different versions of the same root word (have seen a lot of permutations of recent and critic for example) that I'll have that word clogging up the system again for the next few days. I have the remainder of my italki sessions scheduled. My work schedule this week doesn't allow me to schedule them in a logical way but oh well. I'm looking over FSI Spanish Basic as I think I'll go for it next. Now that I'm done with Harry Potter I'm listening to the audio book. I'm also copying in chapters to Learning With Texts and marking up anything that strikes my fancy as something I would like as a clozed Anki card (verb conjugations, indicative vs subjunctive, vocabulary, whole set phrases, etc). Once I study more of these I'll go back and listen to the chapter to see how much better my comprehension got. I ordered and received the book "Listen 'n Learn Spanish" by Scott and Gaby Thomas. It's a guide for watching movies with dubbed Spanish tracks. The movies are ordered according to difficulty (ex: Beginner: The Princess Bride, Adv Beg: Eragon, Intermediate: Holes, Advanced: The Incredibles) and the book starts off with a list of core vocabulary and then goes scene by scene in each movie listing other vocabulary. I had a similar book for French films for a French conversation/film class and there are similar guides for Spanish movies. But this one was cheap and a good place to start on my listening comprehension since dubs are generally easier. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5389 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 110 of 336 30 November 2012 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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So last day of my mini-challenge to upgrade my Spanish speaking skills. I actually
finished Pimsleur III yesterday though I'll want to go over a couple of the last lessons. I've done my iTalki sessions though I had to make arrangements to make up two of them due to weather. In the last one the teacher presented some images to suggest topics of conversation. This was pretty tough as it meant I had to talk about a variety of topics. This is definitely an intermediate exercise and in some ways I'm up to snuff and in others I still need more practice with the basics. The result of this month's efforts: I can definitely speak now. Before this month my knowledge was all locked up but now I can manage to think and speak in Spanish even though I come up against walls here and there. I even managed to help some guests in Spanish a bit at work (helped by pointing, miming, and some of their limited English but it's something). I'm thinking in Spanish more and now it's hard to switch over to French. I'll have to work on practicing switching. For the next month it seems my project will be listening comprehension. I've fallen into a "Harry Potter method" without even realizing it. I pasted chapters of Harry Potter into Learning With Texts so that I can use it to make Anki cards that will test me on vocabulary, grammar, etc. Well, I found this is an excellent primer for practicing listening comprehension with the audio book. So I'll spend a week or so on a chapter - create Anki cards and learn tricky grammar and vocab, listen to the chapter while reading it in English, listen while reading it in Spanish and listen with no text at all. I may try shadowing as well (I'm already mouthing the words as I listen on public transit). I figure this ought to improve my comprehension. I'll also be tracking down some of the movies in my new book to work on mastering dubbed Spanish. And let me just say how much I hate the new Memrise. A perfect example of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" if I ever saw one. I thought I'd be done with the deck in a couple months but this just really turns me off and I find navigating through all the "levels" makes learning new vocab and getting it to harvest stage really difficult. Though looks like I'm not alone in my dislike so hopefully some changes will be made. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5389 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 111 of 336 31 December 2012 at 7:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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So it's been a while. Got sidetracked at work with some projects - some nefarious and
some not so nefarious - plus I decided that I wanted to do some reading in English. I have quite a few posts in mind but I just wanted to give a quick update to kick off the TAC 2013 for now. I'm on team PAX and was invited to be on an Irish team though I'm waiting to hear back on that one. I made my way through some FSI though I'm working out a way of splitting up the units to really absorb them now that they're not super easy. I got some money to look into taking the DALF which looks like will take place some time in June. Which brings me to an idea I had: Study Groups So I have the book/CD Alter Ego 5 which is the only (or one of the only) French method that claims to work on level C1/C2. Many of the exercises are based on discussion and writing which is best done in a classroom or with a group. So I wanted to see if there is anyone who already has the same method or is interested in getting it who would be interested in forming a study group. I was also thinking that forming study groups could be a way to revitalize the French- only board and could offer a different spin to challenges or even the TAC. If there's any interest I'll try to formalize my proposal a bit. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 112 of 336 31 December 2012 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
You might check with garyb, who recently bought a copy. He and I also bought copies of Grammaire progessive du français - perfectionnement, which was recently recommended by DaraghM. This book supposedly targets levels B2–C2, and has a mix of review material and quite a bit of grammar which I hadn't seen before. You can see the TOC and a few pages here, or using the preview that garyb found. Overall, I like it, but it's probably not very challenging for strong C1 students who've already spent a lot of time on grammar.
I'm of somewhat mixed feelings about the French forums here, but I'm open to proposals. For me, the big challenge is finding the time to write in French, and finding people who can provide high-quality feedback. I can still get good corrections at Lang-8, but it's very much hit or miss these days. Right now, I'm spending most of my time on my passive skills, trying to get my reading (and eventually my listening) into the neighborhood of C1. But I might be up for something different. Good luck with TAC this year, and with your Spanish! 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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