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Fortheo’s French Journal

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fortheo
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5034 days ago

187 posts - 222 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 1 of 42
15 January 2015 at 3:15am | IP Logged 
Hello, after browsing several other logs on here I decided to make my own. My main focus of this log will be to improve my french. I don't know where I'd currently rate my french, perhaps at a low intermediate level. I've studied it for about a year now, but the first six months were not very focused. I did the first 25 Lessons or so of Pimsleur and got bored of it. I did the Michel Thomas French course but I haven't done the advanced one yet—I'll most likely come back to it later. I also have a habit of repeating things a lot, for instance, I must have seen the first 17 episodes of French in action about 5-10 times now simply because around lesson 17 I get increasingly frustrated, so I go back to earlier episodes because they make me feel smarter haha. However, I'm trying to stop taking the easy way out and start pushing my studies to the next level.

Here is my current study plan

Assimil new french with ease (I'm on lesson 62)
French in action (I'm on lesson 18)
Easy French Reader by R. de Roussy de Sales (I'm on lesson 13)



For Assimil I do Luca's method (at least I think it's lucas method)


For French in Action I watch a new video each day for like a week or so, then I'll go back a few episodes and watch a video a day for another week or so. So it's like 7 steps forward, 5 steps back. I also listen to the audio lessons and read the text (not on the same day that I watch the corresponding video). So I may be watching lesson 17, but doing the audio exercises and reading the text for lesson 15 that night as a review. I do not do the workbook stuff though.

In regards to the easy Reader, I have audio recordings of the first 30 or so lessons and I've been using them to do pretty much the same thing I'm doing with Assimil. I like the easy reader a lot, there is only about 5 or so words in each lesson that I don't know, and the lessons give me more input than Assimil. It's probably my favourite part of my study schedule.

Goals

I plan to take a 6 week french course in Quebec this summer starting in July. I believe it's three different classes, each class focusing on a different aspect of the french language. So in these next 7-8 months I want to really get my passive knowledge up to a solid level so that when I go to Quebec I'll have plenty of passive knowledge to start activating.. I also plan to talk to some of my skype partners a little bit after I finish Assimil.

What I need help with

Since I'll be in Quebec I'd like to get used to the Quebec accent, or at least become acquainted with it before I go. So If anyone knows some Quebec podcast or something I'd really appreciate it. Also, I'm interested in any french podcast really, Comedy podcasts would be great. I'm also looking for some french music, I'm really into kind of acoustic singer songwriters so if anyone knows some good french music in that genre please share! Oh, and I love cartoons and graphic novels, if anyone knows some graphic novels or cartoons that aren't too daunting, please let me know.



Anyways, I'm just going to use this log to help me keep on track and hopefully get some suggestions from other members.

Thanks!

Edited by fortheo on 15 January 2015 at 4:30am

1 person has voted this message useful



redflag
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 3840 days ago

123 posts - 182 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Danish, Indonesian, French

 
 Message 2 of 42
15 January 2015 at 4:02am | IP Logged 
Bonjour fortheo - welcome to the team. I'm a big music fan, especially of
singer/songwriters too. Always on the lookout for more.

Where are you going, Quebec City, Montreal or elsewhere?

Here are a few of my favourites singer-songwriter types:
France:
Jean-Jacques Goldman, Francis Cabrel (did a whole album of Dylan covers in French) Baptiste Hamon is a young guy I recently discovered, I really like his stuff. He wrote
a song about Townes Van Zandt if that's the kind of acoustic singer/songwriter you
mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXzE6Q6twSg
Alma Forer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Veqqx_OY9E

Quebec: Paul Piche, Daran, Zachary Richard (Cajun, but lived/recorded in Quebec for a
long time), Avec Pas D'Casque, Fred Pellerin.

Also: Lisa LeBlanc from New Brunswick. Her first album was a hit in francophone
Canada and her second one out recently was in English.

Radio-Candada has a fair number of French podcasts, but the one I really enjoy is
C'est La Vie which is in English but about news and culture in French-speaking Canada.   
In December they actually had an episode of best Quebec music of the year although it
was mostly pop-type stuff (I bought basically all of the albums mentioned.)
3 persons have voted this message useful



Lakeseayesno
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Mexico
thepolyglotist.com
Joined 4332 days ago

280 posts - 488 votes 
Speaks: English, Spanish*, Japanese, Italian
Studies: Esperanto, French

 
 Message 3 of 42
15 January 2015 at 4:40am | IP Logged 
Bienvenue dans l'equipe Français, fortheo! I'm still a beginner myself so I'm not sure how much I could help you, but I'll hop in here every once in a while and check in on your progress.

I've heard a few things about Les Revenants, which you mentioned in the team thread. Would you recommend it?
1 person has voted this message useful



PeterMollenburg
Senior Member
AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5474 days ago

821 posts - 1273 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: FrenchB1

 
 Message 4 of 42
15 January 2015 at 6:45am | IP Logged 
Hi fortheo,

Welcome to Team français! Good luck with your studies this year!

I'm a little behind you in FIA. I'm on leçon 10. Like you I have hovered around the lower lessons too much. I'd
hazard a guess that i've prob done lessons 1-5 15 times. This year that will change! If it helps keep you
motivated i'll be watching your FIA & Assimil progress ;)

PM
1 person has voted this message useful



Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4907 days ago

2151 posts - 3960 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

 
 Message 5 of 42
15 January 2015 at 8:54am | IP Logged 
Hi fortheo. Just a quick hello so I'm following your log.
1 person has voted this message useful



Straya
Diglot
Groupie
Australia
Joined 3615 days ago

57 posts - 73 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchA2
Studies: Polish

 
 Message 6 of 42
16 January 2015 at 1:37am | IP Logged 
Hi!

If you're heading to Quebec i would recommend the quebecois in 10 lessons i believe its
called. I had heard if it in the past and then benny lewis made mention of it too!
1 person has voted this message useful



fortheo
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5034 days ago

187 posts - 222 votes 
Studies: French

 
 Message 7 of 42
22 January 2015 at 3:33am | IP Logged 
@Redflag
Thanks for all the suggestions! I haven't checked all of them out yet, but I've listened to some of Baptiste
Hamon, Daran, and Lisa LeBlanc and they all sound right up my alley! Finding lyrics for some of the lesser
known artists seems to be a bit of a challenge though.

Lakeseayesno wrote:
I've heard a few things about Les Revenants, which you mentioned in the team thread. Would you recommend it?


Thanks for visiting Lakesayesno! I wouldn't say Les Revenants helped my french because it's far too advanced for me—but it's an amazing show. If you're into suspense/mystery/supernatural stuff then definitely check it out. Give two or three episodes a try and if you're not hooked by then then it's probably not for you.

@PeterMollenburg
Thanks for stopping by, I've actually looked at your log a lot so it's nice to hear from you!

@Jeffers
You're another person whose log I've spent a lot of time reading. Thanks for stopping by!

@Straya
I like your name. Thanks for the Quebecois in 10 lessons suggestion, it looks like it may be usefull!



update

Assimil new french with ease - lesson 67
French in action - Lesson 20
Easy French Reader by R. de Roussy de Sales (I'm on lesson 17)


I'm also on lesson 5 in the active phase of Assimil because I started that a bit late. My daily french routine is like this: watch an episode of FIA, Listen to assimil (with Lucas method I'm always looking at three lessons a day—the current lesson, and reviewing the two previous) I then listen to the audio for the easy french reader (also doing Luca's assimil method on that), Then later in the day I'll read my assimil lessons and the Easy french Reader lessons, then Listen and read. I also try to read the text book for the FIA lessons but lately that's been fading. Oh, and I also have an Assimil anki deck that I spend about 10 minutes a day on.

My typical study time per day is about 90-120 minutes

Easy French Reader

I'm almost finished with the first section in my Easy french Reader. For some reason they didn't record audio for the rest of the book, which sucks because those lessons look far more interesting. The easy reader was my favorite form of comprehensible input; but without audio in the upcoming sections, I may try something else. I might switch to some other easy audiobooks that I have, or I may use the extra time to focus more on the text and audio lessons of FIA, I'm not sure yet.


FIA
Speaking of FIA, my god, the occupations episodes were torture for me. I don't know why. I just kept day dreaming during those episodes (I watched them numerous times) and it wasn't even daydreams that included Mireille—I welcome those day dreams; it was just day dreams of something boring like fixing my door. That's how bored I was with the occupation episodes (16-18). I got through them, but they definitely weren't my strongest French moments.

Assimil
Assimil is Assimil. Luca's method works well with me because I'm a slow learner and each lesson is being looked at for like 6 days (2 days on the current lesson, then 4 days as it is phased out while new lessons come in) At the same time though I just want to be done with it. I've contemplated doing one lesson a day from now on but I'm not sure.

Have you guys done Assimil with the one lesson a day approach? or did you do Lucas method of one lesson every two days while reviewing the previous two lessons.

Other
I'm not sure if I mentioned but I'm a university student and I'm in a French 102 class at the moment. I'm not sure how that will affect my studies just yet.

I'm also still hoping someone can suggest some cartoons :)


Edited by fortheo on 22 January 2015 at 6:39am

2 persons have voted this message useful



luke
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 7203 days ago

3133 posts - 4351 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Esperanto, French

 
 Message 8 of 42
22 January 2015 at 10:32am | IP Logged 
It sounds like your on the right track.


2 persons have voted this message useful



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