DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6152 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian
| Message 9 of 35 21 May 2012 at 12:24pm | IP Logged |
I haven't made much head way in the Super Challenge during the week, but I have been buried in French study. I still haven't figured out the most optimal way to study French. I'm currently using the French FSI Basic course, along with Assimil, and some other all French resources. I can't decide whether it's better to master the FSI Basic course which will take a long time to complete, or to plough ahead using more native materials. If I use the FSI course, I'm guaranteed an ability to manipulate the spoken language, but using the native materials I'll cover more vocabulary and improve my listening comprehension. I'll experiment and decide what works best.
Study since 1st April.
Spanish 2 hours
French 30 hours
Russian 6 hours
As I've ceased Italian study, I won't add it to the list.
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Alanjazz Triglot Groupie United States Joined 4816 days ago 65 posts - 129 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese
| Message 10 of 35 22 May 2012 at 6:08am | IP Logged |
We study the exact same languages. I will follow your log with interest!
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DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6152 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian
| Message 11 of 35 30 May 2012 at 1:53pm | IP Logged |
I still haven't made much headway in the Super challenge, but I am reading a lot of French materials. I think it's because I'm skipping between a number of books that I've yet to complete one. In order to satisfy myself that I'm properly reaching A2\B1 at this point, I've started using DELF based materials. My current selection are the CLE International publications, Grammaire en Dialogues - Debutant and Vocabulaire in Dialogues - Debutant. The grammaire is revising material I've previously learnt, while the vocabulaire is ironing out gaps in my basic knowledge. E.g. cooking utensils (chaudière, marmites), real estate terms (jumelée), etc.
Spanish 3 hours
French 56 hours
Russian 6 hours
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DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6152 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian
| Message 12 of 35 06 June 2012 at 9:48am | IP Logged |
While I still haven't progressed much in the official Super challenge, I'm still cramming French with the various CLE International materials mentioned in the previous post. I've also discovered a brilliant new resource for my French study, Barron's Mastering French vocabulary 2012 edition. I'm specifically mentioning the 2012 edition as it comes with an MP3 disk. The previous editions were just the book. I can't get over how much French is recorded on the disk. When I copied the MP3's to my laptop it came to 13 hours of audio. I've listened to the first couple of units and it seems to be most of the book. This means the audio material consists of almost 13,000 terms. You would imagine such a resource would be very expensive, but it was only €8 (~$10\£6)
Spanish 3 hours
French 73 hours
Russian 6 hours
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DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6152 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian
| Message 13 of 35 14 June 2012 at 10:48am | IP Logged |
In my long journey to the 1,000 hours challenge, I allowed myself a prize at every 100 hours achieved. Since I've passed that mark, I've finally decided to cash in my wanderlust voucher and study a small bit of Czech. My first impressions are that its very similar to Polish, and I'm likely to get them mixed up at some point. I'll need to pay special attention to this.
My French study is proceeding better than expected. I've thrown a few more resources into the mix, and I'm also using the 1971 Max Bellancourt French Linguaphone course. The quality, and thought, put into this course is amazing. It contains a lot more idiomatic expressions and usages than most modern courses. However, the majority of my material is entirely French based from either Hachette or CLE International. I've started using the latter's Grammaire Progressive du Francais - Niveau Intermediaire. This seemed a bit basic at first but it's also very thorough. In a chapter that seemed trivial concerning the use of en and au with countries, it also drilled the countries that use neither. E.g. Cuba, Israël, Chypre
Study since 1st April.
Spanish 3 hours
French 101 hours
Russian 6 hours
Czech 1 hour
Edited by DaraghM on 14 June 2012 at 11:16am
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tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 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 14 of 35 14 June 2012 at 11:18am | IP Logged |
Hachette????? So you are using Alter Ego then???? What do you think of it? I am using
Alter Ego 2 materials (towards the end of the book - we're on dossier 6 I think????)
which is actually an A2 book but versus B1 already (they teach subjonctif which is not an
A2 subject I think)
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DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6152 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian
| Message 15 of 35 14 June 2012 at 12:58pm | IP Logged |
tarvos wrote:
Hachette????? So you are using Alter Ego then???? |
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I'm not using Alter Ego yet. I'm actually using their Grammaire Pratique du Francais. A good stand alone B1 book I've got is Bien et Vite 2 by CLE International. It's self contained and doesn't need an answer book, teachers book or additional CD's.
Edited by DaraghM on 14 June 2012 at 12:59pm
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DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6152 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian
| Message 16 of 35 21 June 2012 at 10:30am | IP Logged |
In the end I didn't spend too long with my Czech wanderlust, but I will return at some point. In the past my travel plans have dictated which languages I study, and this hasn't really changed yet. I'm heading to Paris in August so that has incentivized my French study. However, a week after I return from France, I'm heading off to Peru. This means I'll probably invest some time in upgrading my Spanish and concentrating on the Peruvian and surrounding dialects.
Spanish 4 hours
French 123 hours
Russian 6 hours
Czech 3 hours
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