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My Adventures in French (TAC15) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 4005 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 163 15 December 2013 at 11:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome to my log! I intend to capture my detailed activities in learning French! I have found others' logs so
inspirational in providing the "inch stones" of how they learned the language -- showing me that I can still do this! I am hopeful that this log will keep me accountable, as well as motivated, and maybe others will provide their assistance, experiences or thoughts on how I can further improve. About me... I am approaching 50 and live in the US. Growing up on the Mexico-US border, I studied Spanish in elementary school for six years. When I went to high school and to college, I studied French. I loved the language so much, I toyed with the idea of becoming a French major, but really wasn't sure about how to make a living other than teaching. I particularly enjoyed my French literature classes. Sadly after graduation, I did not use my French. When we went to Quebec for a week's vacation this past summer, it gave me an opportunity to re-start my French in May 2013. Goals I want to be able to watch French film and TV without subtitles, and to read French literature. I also want to be able to have meaningful conversations in French. Using an assessment tool that emk posted a few months ago, I believe I am a solid A2 right now, with stronger listening/comprehension skills. At the end of 2014, I'd like to have solid B1 skills in all areas, with a stretch goal of B2 in all skills. I hope my goals are reasonable! Edited by Mohave on 01 January 2015 at 2:29am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 4005 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 2 of 163 15 December 2013 at 11:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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What I have done to-date:
-Assimil French Without Toil. I love French Without Toil! I love the approach to language learning, I love the humor. FWT is so packed with idioms, vocabulary, etc, I may have to re-do this course again at a later date. I can definitely see improvement in my abilities. The focus in the last 10 lessons or so has been on verb tenses and conjugations. Current progress: Passive wave 76; Active Wave 20 -French in Action - completed lesson 19 Books -Essentials in French Grammar (Great resource; inexpensive, and synchronized well with the intensive focus on verbs recently in FWT) - Easy French Reader (R. de Roussy de Sales). I have only 2 short stories left to finish - Le Petit Nicholas (René Goscinny/Jean-Jacques Sempé ) - currently on Chapter 6: listening & reading. I laugh out loud when I listen and read this book! A fun way to learn French! French Films/TV Series Égrenages* (Spirals). season 1,2, &3). (Netflix Streaming with English subtitles) Awesome! Prête-Moi Ta Main*. (Netflix Streaming with English subtitles) Les émotif Anonyme*. (Netflix Streaming with English subtitles) Intouchables* (Netflix Streaming with English subtitles) Monsieur Lazhar*. (Netflix Streaming with English subtitles) Tell No One* (Netflix Streaming with English subtitles) Extr@ French (learning series) Language Exchange Speaking. I Skyped for an hour a day (1/2 in English 1/2 in French) for 5 days a week for approx 6 weeks. This was fantastic and really helped me improve my speaking ability, although it is still my weakest skill. My language exchange partner is now in the US for the winter immersed in English, so I expect our Skype sessions to be scaled back to one or two times a month. I need to find one or two new partners to establish a routine after the holidays. Writing. I have three or four regular language exchange partners that I routinely exchange emails with. I can now write an email in half of the time it used to take me -- and with less errors. :) Podcasts/Radio via TuneInRadio App Extensive use of both learning and native Podcasts and radio. More to come in upcoming blogs. *edited to add completed films/TV series on 1 Jan 2013 Edited by Mohave on 01 January 2014 at 4:07pm 3 persons have 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 3 of 163 15 December 2013 at 11:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome to HTLAL at to the TAC! I absolutely believe that your goals are within reach, and it looks like you've already found some great courses and native materials.
Since you expressed an interest in watching TV, here's HTLAL wiki page with French series with accurate subtitles, just in case you haven't seen it already. If your listening and reading are already in the general neighborhood of B1, it won't be long before you can start watching a fun, easy series. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4663 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 4 of 163 16 December 2013 at 12:34am | IP Logged | ||
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By the way, in case you are not aware, if you watch Netflix on your computer you can turn off the English subtitles in most cases. While I doubt that you would want to do that at this point, it will be useful for you later, and I did not know until quite recently that it was possible.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 4005 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 5 of 163 24 December 2013 at 7:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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emk and tasty onions, Thank you both so very much for you welcome and comments on my log! I have
followed both of your logs very closely, and have found many useful tips, and also a source of inspiration! emk--thanks for the link! I am looking forward to watching some easy, fun series, and knowing that subtitles are accurate is a big plus! tastyonions thanks for the hint of turning off the English subtitles! I just played with it and while I'm not ready for that yet, hopefully down the road I will be! Now if I could just get French subtitles on Netflix Streaming!!! I may have to break down and also get a regular (snail mail) Netflix account to get DVDs with French subtitles. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 4005 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 6 of 163 24 December 2013 at 7:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Merry Christmas to me -- FWT lesson 84 today is the subjunctive explanation.
It's a busy time a year, including traveling, but I have managed to study my French everyday since the last post including one language exchange by Skype, and exchanging several emails with language exchange partners. I have listened to some French news and podcasts, but not quite as many as I normally do.... I had one other Skype language exchange set-up, but sadly, the individual didn't show -grrrrrr. I've found FWT lessons 60-80 combined with the active wave to be a lot of work! The focus was on new verb tenses, verb conjugations and increasingly difficult narratives/grammar. I started writing out each lesson by hand to help me focus and hopefully remember better. Thankfully lessons 81-83 were straight forward -- almost easy! On the active wave, it has actually been straightforward, missing a few accents, maybe a misspelling etc, - until lesson 26. I forgot several words such as: teint coloré, chauve, and calvitie, (I don't recall seeing these words since this lesson) and some grammatical issues. I plan to redo this lesson again in a few days. Thankfully, lesson 27 Active was not perfect, but much better. Is forgetting words and having some minor grammatical issues normal in the active wave? Should I be concerned? I have not started using Anki, mainly because I primarily use an iPad and didn't want to spend $25 on an app, but maybe it's time for me to consider this option. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to all! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4663 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 7 of 163 24 December 2013 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Quand j'utilisais Assimil il y avait pas mal de mots dont je ne me rappelais pas, la plupart d'entre eux ayant fait leur apparition une ou deux fois dans le texte. T'en fais pas ; d'après mon expérience, tu apprendras ces mots au fil du temps.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 4005 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 8 of 163 27 December 2013 at 10:59am | IP Logged | ||
Merci pour votre réponse! C'est très bien! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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