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My French Log [TAC 2015] | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 4009 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 49 of 60 22 January 2015 at 2:15pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Liam, you are making great progress, and I agree with PM that your enthusiasm is infectious! Can't wait
to hear the results of your challenge! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| s.mann Groupie United States lang-8.com/973514/jo Joined 3640 days ago 55 posts - 76 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 50 of 60 22 January 2015 at 5:53pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Liam, thanks for sharing your experiences with FSI Metropolitan French FAST. I
haven't run into much on the 'net referencing it's workload and benefits. I'm considering using it as a fast course during the 6 week challenge in February to help push myself out of the beginner's nest. It says it's a 10 week course in the introduction, but it sounds like it's a 10 week part-time course from what I'm gathering from your experiences, so 6 weeks might be doable with my prior study, n'est-ce pas? The audio seems really short compared to FSI Basic - does it need a lot of repetitions, and therefore that's why you're not currently using them? I love the detail you put into your log by the way. I may not comment as often as I should, but I'm always keeping up with the team's progress to keep myself motivated and get new ideas. Keep up the great work! Edited by s.mann on 27 January 2015 at 2:38am 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 51 of 60 24 January 2015 at 5:23pm | IP Logged |
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Hey,
Thank you so much everyone! I almost feel like a celebrity polyglot or something :P You have also reminded me that I should be checking out all of your logs more often, so I will do this in the coming days... Oh, by the way, I got in to my no.1 choice of university :) I plan to major in Philosophy and French, and I'll have room for a bit of Spanish on the side. It's all happening! As much as possible, though, I plan for my 'real' French study to be what I'm currently doing, and my uni French stuff will just act like supplementary material. I say this because I am aware that learning a language through uni probably isn't the most effective way to learn a language, at least not now with the internet and so many resources at one's fingertips. Nevertheless, if I'm going to study French (and Spanish) anyway, I may as well get a qualification from doing so. At the moment I am honestly considering that a language-teaching profession may be for me; my mum is a teacher and she said that I'd make a good teacher, and many of my teachers have said similar. Well, I'll just have to see how much I enjoy France when I go their next year on an exchange! My mate was telling me of his awesome experience in France (and Italy and a bit of Belgium). It just makes me want to go even more! However he said that the French women aren't that great, but I told him that he must be blind or something. Yesterday I ended up going to la plage (the beach) with the mate I mentioned above whom I haven't seen in a while. So I didn't get a whole lot of study done that day. However, I have finally 'finished' the FSI French FAST course! Just then, really... I have really rushed through it, so there's tonnes of stuff to come back to, but I feel as though I've got the bulk of information which the course has to offer. I left blank spaces in some parts (sometimes even a blank page or so), reminding me to come back to a certain part of the unit which I may have skipped over because it wasn't essential at the time (or at the end I glossed over the 2nd lot of 'let's...' third person imperative stuff, because I won't really need to use it much, and saying 'nous devrions' will suffice). I'll have to go back to these parts, and moreso, I'll go through all the audio and dialogues. Most of the dialogues I haven't even looked at yet. Listening practise and comprehension will do me a lot of good. I am glad that my documentation of my experience using the FSI French FAST course has been of good use to you, s.mann :) I will write more on this subject later on, but to answer your questions: 10 weeks is enough to do the course thoroughly if one puts a lot of time into it, and if one has prior experience with French, 6 weeks is probably a good amount of time. Although, that would still be a lot of work. Alternatively, one could spend 10 weeks doing the course in a more casual (as you say, 'part-time') manner and get all the basics down (kind of what I did after lesson 9 onwards. Although with hindsight, I should have done this from lesson 4 onwards...). So I think that the FAST course is very versatile. And yes, the audio is typically between 3 and 8 minutes long. On average, around 4 minutes or so I found. I does require one listening to it many times, although one doesn't have to listen to the whole thing over and over again. The dialogue is the main part which needs repetition. I decided not to go through the dialogues because I simply wanted the grammatical basics at first. Now I have almost everything I need to communicate at a basic level in French; now what I need is practise, and the audio will now help me with my listening skills and various other skills. I found it also helps to consolidate vocabulary. Most importantly, though, is the 'conversational' aspect of the dialogues. There are lots of useful expressions taught. Tomorrow (well, technically this morning now) I'm leaving (yet again) for my cousin's holiday house down south. So I'll do some Assimil in the car. Life can't get too much better, n'est pas? Also, I noticed a little while back that I am now a 'groupie'. I joined HTLAL 162 days ago, and have already made 69 (hey!) posts (most of them on this log). And I've already got 29 votes :P P.S - Ok thanks Jeffers for letting me know. Well, if anyone wants to give me a private message then maybe I can send you a link to some French resources... or is this illegal as well? If it is then I won't do this. Otherwise, I think it'll be nice to help out my fellow French learners... Merci 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 52 of 60 02 February 2015 at 2:37pm | IP Logged |
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Ok, my own '3 month challenge' is over. And it ended on the worst level of French. By this I mean that I've had next to no French practise in the last few days. So I thought tomorrow (well, it's after midnight now so technically today) I will 'sum up' what I've got. In other words, I'm going to attempt to work out just how much I've learnt, to see how 'effective' my French is. By 'effective' I mean 'how well can I make myself understood'.
So, I plan to write out all that I know (or should know); a few pages filled with important verbs (e.g.'donner' and 'parler') , expressions (e.g. 'je ne sais pas' and 'bonjour'), adjectives and adverbs (e.g. 'heureux', 'heureusement', 'bon' and 'maintenant'), and also review some nouns (I haven't gone over my massive pile of flashcards in a month or more). I don't want to go too much into grammar. Of course, grammar dictates most things, but I don't want to just write out grammar rules and tables of conjugations ext. This is what I mean by not much grammar. For example, instead of writing 'à + le = au' or 'mon, ma, mes', I'll write out a sentence incorporating these grammar points. Like 'ma sœur est au restaurant'. And of course, I read everything out. I like to read the sentence out till it becomes an almost automatic action; that is, I can understand the meaning of what I'm saying in French without really having to think about it. In saying that, there are quite a few grammar points which I need to learn and, more importantly, implement. The imperfect tense (for example, I was running, he was looking out the window, we used to go there every summer) I need to implement more. The conjugating of the imperfect tense is really easy though. All verbs (except être) conjugate into the imperfect sense the same. No worrying about loads of irregular verbs, or the three different categories of verb conjugations. Simple. I just need to use it more, although this tense isn't used as much as the passé composé in spoken French. So I'll want to see how much I can say. Present tense, good. What I can say is limited, though. Expressing future action? Simple. Use 'aller' + infinitive verb. Past tense? FSI had lots of drills for the passé composé, so I'm fairly confident at using it. What I need to work on now is the imperfect. Then I'll do the pluperfect, since it's nearly the same as the perfect. But what I really need is more verbs. Soon I'll reflect on my 3 month challenge, and give advice to anyone wishing to undertake such a challenge (although I am probably not qualified to give advice, but it's for anyone who'll take it). Today I was in Chatswood for a job interview, and I also went to the library. Wow. It is an incredible library. It puts the ones in my (neighbouring) area to shame. So much language material. It's as if my whole life has been a lie. Like someone from poor, rural Africa who's never left their home village arriving in the wealthiest arrondissent in Paris for the first time. haha, anyhow, it was great fun looking through there. I'll never bother buying a TY or Colloquial book... (not that I have ever bought one, although I have a 90's TY Complete Japanese book which I 'borrowed' from my old school library... hmm, I must return that one day... my parents also have a TY Beginners German from ages ago when they went to Germany for my dad's work). Keep on going everyone with the TAC challenge! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| redflag Senior Member Australia Joined 3844 days ago 123 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish, Indonesian, French | Message 53 of 60 02 February 2015 at 11:40pm | IP Logged |
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Hey Liam, just a heads up if you don't know about it the French Film Festival is in
Sydney in the first few weeks of March if that interests you. I think the full programme is due to come out today or tomorrow. 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 54 of 60 16 February 2015 at 12:30pm | IP Logged |
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Ok, since my last post I've been incredibly slack. I've done next to nothing. But I am now ready to jump back on the French train. I have decided that I am simply not going to go to sleep each night until I have done a lesson of Assimil. Small goal, I know, but hopefully I'll then get carried away and do far more than this. Assimil really is great, so I have no excuse to go through it. I know my summary on how my self-imposed French 3 month challenge went is long overdue, but hey, it's my log so I can do whatever I want :P
Merci beaucoup redflag for the heads up. I did see it advertised at the Alliance Français, but I looked up the details... it runs from the 3rd of March to the 22nd of March (wow, that's a long time). So many movies! I'm actually really excited now haha (here's the link: French Film Festival Schedule (Australia) ) One last thing. I've found chatting with my mate (who is worse at French than me) in French has been very helpful. I think I'm on to something... Ok, a proper update soon. Liam 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 55 of 60 02 April 2015 at 2:13pm | IP Logged |
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Ok, I haven't posted in a bloody long time, but funnily enough, since the last post I've had by far the most amazing experiences, both French-related and non-French-related, of my whole life.
I'm just posting this to be able to stay in the TAC. I'll do a proper post later on. Au revoir! 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 56 of 60 02 April 2015 at 2:43pm | IP Logged |
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Good to hear from you. I'm no stranger to silent periods; my most recent time of silence on HTLAL was a very productive time for my study. I'm looking forward to reading about your experiences!
1 person has voted this message useful |
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