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My French Log [TAC 2015] | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| liam.pike1 Groupie Australia Joined 3756 days ago 84 posts - 122 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto, French | Message 1 of 60 02 November 2014 at 1:40pm | IP Logged |
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[Click on the following link to go to where 2015 starts: TAC 2015]
Well, my '3 month challenge' is starting now. I technically started learning French on Friday, although in saying that, I have read a little about the language before, and some phrases I already knew. But really, it's all new to me! It's really exciting to start learning a new language :) Here is the post I made asking for people to recommend what resources I should go about using for learning French (I won't bother saying here as to 'why' I decided to learn French, because you can read that by clicking this link): French in 3 months? I didn't mind spending a little bit of money on some programs and whatnot. It became clear that the obvious choice of program for me (and anyone) to learn French with is Assimil. It'll arrive on my doorstep in less than two weeks, along with Essential French Grammer (Dover). I have been using the Foreign Services Institute (FSI) course so far in my studies of French, the FAST course. Now that I've done the first two lessons, I'm tempted to just use this and not bother with the Assimil course haha, it's actually really good! So, I plan to make a post here every few days to a week. It'll be very interesting for you all (I hope) to see whether it is possible to be able to communicate at a basic level in French in only 3 months... Till soon, Liam Edited by liam.pike1 on 04 January 2015 at 7:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| clmns01 Diglot Newbie Austria Joined 3691 days ago 22 posts - 23 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Portuguese, Italian | Message 2 of 60 02 November 2014 at 1:56pm | IP Logged |
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Bon chance avec toi projet!
How will you do with your other languages? Will you keep working or them or are you planning to neglect them during these 3 months? Edited by clmns01 on 02 November 2014 at 1:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 4009 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 3 of 60 02 November 2014 at 2:21pm | IP Logged |
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Best of luck in your new adventure! You will see great progress if you are consistent in your studies! Look
forward to reading your log! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| liam.pike1 Groupie Australia Joined 3756 days ago 84 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto, French | Message 4 of 60 02 November 2014 at 2:31pm | IP Logged |
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Merci beaucoup!
Good question. I have changed the status of both Spanish and Esperanto on my language profile to 'studying on and off'. I may do a little on these languages to break up French, but being realistic, I probably won't even touch these languages for at least these 3 months or so (I doubt I'll get bored with French in this short amount of time!). After this time, the 'urgency' to learn French will no longer be, and I can probably adopt a more 'casual' approach to working on all these languages, whilst still focusing on my French (I want to ensure that I get to a level where I am fairly confident with the language, and where I won't simply forget everything after a couple of months haha). Ideally I should just stick at Spanish (and Esperanto, the language I was last working on most), but my friend visiting from France presents such an amazing opportunity (and an excuse) to start learning this beautiful language! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4911 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 5 of 60 02 November 2014 at 6:30pm | IP Logged |
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Good luck on your studies. Keep updating and I'll keep following!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| liam.pike1 Groupie Australia Joined 3756 days ago 84 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto, French | Message 6 of 60 05 November 2014 at 1:55pm | IP Logged |
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Firstly, thank you everyone so far for the support! Means a lot :)
Secondly, watch out: this is going to be a lengthy post! There's a lot that I need to say here, some of which should probably have been said earlier. Nevermind, it'll all be said now! :P Ok, well I have been a little slack in posting... I had all these grand plans of making massive opening posts about this little 'project' of mine, but I then decided to just get on with it and start learning French! That's one thing I've learnt; instead of just reading about people learning languages, just start learning the thing! But witty observations aside, I think that this forum is very useful for gaining insight into going about learning one's target language. HTLAL sure has helped and inspired me! Ok, so where I am currently at: I have completed the first 4 lessons of the FSI Metropolitan French FAST course. It is brilliant; I probably didn't need to spend the money on Assimil! :P What I have been doing (well, I've only just begun though) is reviewing the FSI lessons every 2 lessons. By this I mean that I am creating an effective 'study guide' which is based on the important content of the lessons I have done, along with a summary of important grammar information which I have gained through reading various sources. (At the end, if there is enough interest, I may refine and type up my ‘study guide/review’ and then make it available for all of you to see). Here are the sources: - This is a good, overall grammar guide, aimed at the complete beginner. It’s my main French reference (so far, at least). I downloaded it as a PDF file to my laptop, and I often have it up alongside the PDF file which is the FSI FAST course book. For those like myself who enjoy the comfort of the familiar format of a book, this will be a great reference: Collins French grammar guide - Another reference which I first looked at for an 'overall' look at the language is this website. Many of you studying French would have come across it. Simply search 'French grammar' and you'll see it. There are also language guides to many other languages (just click ‘home’ in the top left-hand corner). It's a really good reference, complete with lots of audio. Mind you, I would have found some of it a little difficult to understand if I hadn't learnt Spanish before (same would go for any other language) due to the use of some 'technical' explanations which aren't always so clear for the beginner: French guide - My final resource to mention here is probably the most fun and humorous grammar guide: Tex's French Grammar. A nice reference (I assume many of you would know it, but here is the link to the home page anyway): Tex's French Grammar Ok, so some of you may be asking, 'why so many grammar guides?' Well firstly, the only one I'm really looking at at the moment is the Collins guide; and secondly, they only play a very minor role in my study. 90% of what I'm doing right now with French (it's the end of day 6) is rigorously going through the FSI course. I only look up French grammar when I need some clarification or otherwise I'm just interested to know about certain aspects of the language. Also, I know some people say that FSI courses are boring, but I find this one (I have never done any others before to compare, but I plan on doing the Spanish ones later on because Duolingo cannot take me any further I think haha) kinda fun; regardless, I'm here to learn a language quickly. If I just wanna have fun then I'd be doing something else! My process of 'reviewing' what I've learnt takes the form of a fairly continuous stream of notes on loose sheet paper. In fact, I’m deliberately doing everything on loose sheet paper so that I can easily play around with the order of my notes, as well as take out notes that I want to carry around to look at during the day. This way, previous lessons of the FSI courses are being reviewed all the time. Also, the very act of going back to previous lessons and summarising all the important information learnt there, along with copying out the vocabulary lists, further inscribes the information in my brain. I already feel as though I am now ‘properly acquainted’ with the French language, after only a few days… in other words, the language itself no longer feels ‘unknown’ to me, unlike when I started, it was as though the French language was almost some mysterious, untameable beast! Well, that’s over-exaggerating a bit. Speaking of which, thank you to the user in my previous post ‘French in 3 months?’ (see the original post for the link) who told me that French is all about ‘feeling the language’; so far this advice seems to really be helping me! I am not someone who easily trusts my feelings, so who knows, maybe learning French will have certain psychological benefits for me as well… I should mention here that I do have far more time than what probably any of you have to spend on learning a language. I have literally just finished high school, so I have potentially hours to spend on learning French, this most beautiful of all languages. Today, for example, I must have spent close to 4 hours (maybe 3 and a half) on French. I am certainly taking advantage of all this free time! More specifics on my language learning process so far will come in a later post. I think I’ve said more than enough for now! :P Feel free anyone to ask questions, or even post links or give suggestions to anything you’d think will help me… One other thing. If you’re in Australia, head down to your nearest ALDI store; as of today (05/11/2014), they’re selling the Pimsleur Conversational courses in French, German, Spanish, and Italian for only $25! Hurry, they’ll sell out soon! My dad bought the French and German one, and to my surprise he also bought the Italian one! I wouldn’t have bothered buying them (well, actually it was my mum who originally saw the ad in the magazine, and my dad bought them… so I did nothing! I’m so spoilt haha), but since they’re only $25, myself and my parents figured, ‘why not?’ I’m going to have to get my mum to hide the German and Italian courses though! 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| liam.pike1 Groupie Australia Joined 3756 days ago 84 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto, French | Message 7 of 60 12 November 2014 at 2:15pm | IP Logged |
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Hey,
Sorry, I've been really slack in updating this log. I have also been really slack in my French. Tonight and yesterday night I did a good amount of French (although not as much as I really need to be doing) but the three nights prior I didn't do any French study. It's already almost been 2 weeks since I finished my last exam and subsequently started learning French. By this stage I originally wanted to have completed lesson 8 of the FSI Metropolitan FAST French course; tonight I only finished summarising (or reviewing) lessons 3 and 4. (So far I have been summarising the lessons in pairs once I have completed them, seems to be working well so far, although it does mean that I'm going through the course fairly slowly). So things are sounding not the best, but this is not really the case; all I need to do is adjust my expectations and adapt my study schedule and I'll be fine! Basically, I am far busier now than what I was during the final high school exams! I was originally expecting that this time would be one of endless hours to study French amongst doing other activities. I was wrong. So I will need to do one thing to cater for the fact that I have nearly no time to spare at the moment: wake up earlier. Instead of getting up at 9:30 (which is great!) from tomorrow morning I am going to be getting up at 8:30 (I'm getting my dad to make sure of this!). So I'll have an hour of French study in the morning, and an hour and a half to two hours or so of French at night... sounds great! For the last few days I have literally been spending the whole day doing work in my neighbours garden (some nice cash from this!), so that's why I haven't had a lot of time to spare. By the time I can start my French studies it's around 10 at night... also, I should mention that there is a French girl staying with my neighbours who is working as a nanny (I assume before returning to France to start university). I saw her while gardening, but I was too shy to use my French! I could have easily said everything which I did say in French (instead of 'hello', 'bonjour' ext.) but I dunno, I'm too shy I guess haha, and she seems quite shy as well. Language is a confidence thing! And this little saying came to mind, that a language is the only thing worth being bad at... Ok, so I'll go into more specifics (rather than general stuff about my psychological state of mind) hopefully tomorrow... but till then I'll say a few more things... Firstly, my Assimil and Essential French Grammar (Dover) book arrived yesterday. But I have decided that it'll be my Christmas present: that's right, until then I'll just be using FSI. It'll be really interesting to see how effectively one can learn a language completely for free, so the challenge is on! Also, my neighbours (different ones) are going to France in July next year, and they plan to learn a bit of French... wow, I am surrounded by French! :D Secondly, I now feel as though I am 'acquainted' with French. It's a really nice feeling, and took hardly any time at all; then again, French is such a seductive language so how could one not fall in love with it?! Finally, I don't know why people say French is so difficult to pronounce and whatnot. From just hearing how some words sound (as well as very briefly reading about some pronunciation rules) I can already guess pretty well at how other words will sound, even if I have never heard these words pronounced before. It seems to me as though French pronunciation is just different, not necessarily difficult. Maybe it's just me being naive, though! Anyhow, thanks for reading this waffle haha 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jimjam Newbie Australia Joined 3988 days ago 19 posts - 22 votes Studies: Japanese, German | Message 8 of 60 12 November 2014 at 3:10pm | IP Logged |
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Hey, it's great to see another young australian language learner on here! (I finished my hsc back in 2012 so
we are pretty much the same age) I wish I had seen the pimsleur courses at ALDI. I would love to try pimsleur but it's so expensive! I'm not too experienced in French, but I would definitely recommend starting assimil as soon as possible. It helps immensely with building vocabulary, and improving your accent, especially with words that have different pronunciation, or that are just tricky. I'm using it for German and it is amazing how fast I am picking up the language. Especially since you only have 3 months, if you start now you could almost finish the course. I think assimil covers around 2000 words, so depending on your retention, it will give you a very strong base vocabulary. I'll definitely keep up with your log. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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