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tastyonions Team PAX [French / Spanish]

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tastyonions
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4665 days ago

1044 posts - 1823 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 121 of 329
21 January 2013 at 5:32pm | IP Logged 
1. Assimil 102 and 53 this morning. Hard to believe there are only eleven lessons left in the passive phase, but I guess it has been quite a while (150 days including today).

I don't think I'll move on to Using French directly after finishing the passive phase. Rather, while I finish the active phase I'll focus on making sure I both comprehend *everything* in NFWE and can use all the forms and idioms actively.

2. I had another tutoring session today and it went great! I was much more "with it" this time. Also there was basically no English used, even at the beginning, and it seemed like my tutor was speaking noticeably faster than before, I guess because she judged I could handle it. Next session Thursday. :-)

Edited by tastyonions on 21 January 2013 at 5:33pm

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tastyonions
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4665 days ago

1044 posts - 1823 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 122 of 329
23 January 2013 at 2:21pm | IP Logged 
1. Still on track with Assimil. Lessons 104 and 55 this morning. Only nine passive lessons remaining! A few new words in 104:

une angoisse
un manteau
décrocher

Hard to believe I hadn't seen the first two by now. Probably had and just didn't catch on.

2. I've got French conversation group tonight for a couple hours and a tutoring session tomorrow morning. Lots of active stuff going on!

3. Yesterday was the start of Week 4 (Jan 22 - 28) of TAC, so I should give a summary of what I did in Week 3 (Jan 15 - 21):

14 Assimil lessons (comme d'habitude)
one 2-hour class / conversation group
two 1-hour tutoring sessions via Skype
two French movies without subtitles
lots of France Inter / France Info radio

Edited by tastyonions on 23 January 2013 at 2:33pm

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tastyonions
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4665 days ago

1044 posts - 1823 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 123 of 329
27 January 2013 at 3:28am | IP Logged 
1. Conversation group on Wednesday was pretty fun. I was a bit disappointed at first, because after the first hour, the sub-group I had been sitting with started talking entirely in English. After maybe half an hour of that, though, some guy came over and started talking to us all in French. We talked a bit about French movies and I asked him about his six-month stay in southern France. It was a good conversation, I think the best I've had there so far. I noticed a group sitting behind me that seemed more advanced (one woman actually sounded native or at least *really* proficient) and also more intent on keeping things to French. I think I'll try sitting with them next time.

Also, a new guy (well, new to me) showed up and seemed like someone who could fit right in at HTLAL: he has studied French, Arabic, German, and one other language I can't remember right now (think it may have been Russian). French was his first non-native language, which he learned at an immersion school as a kid.

2. Tutoring session on Thursday also went well. We worked a bit on times and scheduling, as I had requested before, and I was able to stay in French when scheduling our upcoming sessions despite the fact that they were some hitches with the iTalki system in doing so. :-)

3. Assimil 107 and 58 this morning. Still going pretty smoothly, although there was a long sentence in 107 that I couldn't make head or tail of until I read the text. It looks like the book is pretty much done with major grammar points (the last stretch of lessons covered the conditional and subjunctive) and is focusing more on new vocabulary and idioms. That's fine with me; if I can, over the next few months, master all the grammar I've seen up to this point and push all the words into my active vocabulary through conversations, writing, and Anki, I'm pretty sure I will have a *lot* of power to express myself.

Edited by tastyonions on 27 January 2013 at 3:32am

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renaissancemedi
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Greece
Joined 4358 days ago

941 posts - 1309 votes 
Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2
Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew

 
 Message 124 of 329
27 January 2013 at 1:28pm | IP Logged 
Good work tastyonions.
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songlines
Pro Member
Canada
flickr.com/photos/cp
Joined 5209 days ago

729 posts - 1056 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 125 of 329
27 January 2013 at 5:37pm | IP Logged 
Great work, Tastyonions.   Reading your posts and Garyb's, I'm quite tempted to try a language meetup.
(The problem's the noise level in most bars/pubs, as my hearing impairment makes that a doubly challenging
situation for me.)

I've again fallen behind in my Assimil, but am enjoying having a "preview" of what awaits me in the lessons ahead.
Your steady dedication's both impressive and inspiring.



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tastyonions
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4665 days ago

1044 posts - 1823 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 126 of 329
27 January 2013 at 5:50pm | IP Logged 
Thanks for the comments, songlines and renaissancemedi.

I'm terrible even in English at figuring out what people are saying in loud environments, so I'm lucky in that my group meets in a back room of a quiet restaurant. Noise has never been an issue.

I noticed today that it's been more or less exactly one year since I started learning French. I've come a long way since buying that first pack of Pimsleur lessons, and I'm pretty darn happy with my progress. I'm still quite far from what I would call "fluency," but now it feels like something that really will be achievable if I put in the effort, rather than just a vague dream.

Edited by tastyonions on 27 January 2013 at 5:56pm

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tastyonions
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4665 days ago

1044 posts - 1823 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 127 of 329
28 January 2013 at 2:28am | IP Logged 
1. Assimil 108 and 59 today. Only five lessons left in the passive phase!

2. I'm still scouring the lowbrow parts of French YouTube. Today I started watching clips from "Cauet Sur NRJ", a pretty raucus radio call-in show. This has to be as close to real "street French" as I can get without actually being in a Francophone country. I remember trying to watch some of these months ago and getting basically nothing. Today I found I could actually follow some of the clips decently.

Also I've got a tutoring session tomorrow morning, which should be fun.

3. Oh, and I signed up for the Six Week Challenge with Norwegian, which I've never studied before and for which I'll be using Assimil's Le Norvégien. I figure learning any genuinely new subject from a French book will still be challenging enough for me at this point that it can count as good French practice, too! :-)
1 person has voted this message useful



tastyonions
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4665 days ago

1044 posts - 1823 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 128 of 329
29 January 2013 at 4:12pm | IP Logged 
1. Today is the start of TAC Week Five (29 January - 4 February)! Summary of what I did for Week Four (22 January - 28):

two 1-hour tutoring sessions
one 2-hour conversation group
Assimil lessons 103 - 109 (passive) and 54 - 60 (active)
lots of random French videos / movie clips on YouTube
some comments in French written on YouTube
maybe an hour total of Anki reviews

2. Waiting anxiously for my copy of Le Norvégien. :-)


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