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Komma’s Log: Fr (TAC 15), En (TAC 15 | ||
Tags: Activating a Language | Advanced Level | Anki | Self-Study | College/University | Assimil | English | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Komma Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4061 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish | Message 9 of 21 15 March 2015 at 8:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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French
Today was a mixed day. I finished animals and adjectives on Duolingo which was rather funny than helpful. Really... the animals eat strange things there and I am now a whale, a lion, a rabbit, a butterfly and many other animals... Who makes up these sentences?? Nonetheless I laughed a lot and learned a few animals... Or at least I heard of them now. I didn't remember all of them, but I'm not sure I need to know them all at the moment... I also tried French without toil on the train on Friday. As I only had my ebook reader and was on the train I could not do much. I listened to the audio and read the dialogues. I completly understood them as I thought. I think I'll continue and take the early lessons for pronunciation and see where I start to get something new. I also flipped through the Teach Yourself book (or rather the lextra version of it) and I think I won't bother. The course has a horrible structure in my opinion. Boring dialogues, boring exercises, too much German on the audio cds and way below my level. Ok I knew that it was below my level, but with a better structure and so I thought it'd be nice to review and listen/repeat the dialogues. It is not. But I didn't spend much time with it to find out. I also find the topics rather irrelevant to me. plans for next week - Finding a way how to use french without toil and do that -> maybe I make anki cards from sentences with grammar structure and articles etc. I'm still struggling with the articles. I don't know why as we have them in German and they are not always different... maybe it was only because of English-French translation on Duolingo - continue duolingo - start watching French in Action (I'm not sure whether to get the workbooks/textbooks as I'm not sure where (except for 'free' online links)) - listen to podcasts: learn Spanish by podcast (maybe test others I found) - grammar exercises (grammaire progressive du Francais - intermediaire) - read "en Bretagne" if it's good :D I might buy some exercise books where I can write into instead of writing everything from the book. It maybe good to write everything (1. in order to be able to do it again and 2. to learn the whole sentences) but for practicing it's also good to own the book to be able to use it whenever I like and don't have to give it back to the library... I'm curious how much I know from the intermediate grammar. English plans - get a grammar exercise book to review grammar. I want to test me as I haven't studied grammar in years. I read a lot and watch tv, but I'm curious whether I know the correct answer in these books. Maybe I'll do a test sometime :) Thinking about going abroad and therefore i might need to pass a certain level - start reading the papers for my bachelor thesis. - get some book on academic writing. It can't hurt to read about it. It was one of the things I want to focus on even though I haven't made up my mind whether to write the thesis in English or German. But it'll be a whil until I start writing, so I have a bit time to think and prepare. - get a novel to read. It's been a while since I read my last English novel. Edited by Komma on 15 March 2015 at 9:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Komma Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4061 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish | Message 10 of 21 15 March 2015 at 10:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I just read the first few pages of "en bretagne". It was very interesting. i think this will be
good to read through. Informative and quite at my level of passive knowledge. The only thing that's a pity is that only the dialogues are on the CD and some listening exersices. But they are quite well done. And there are no solutions to the exercises, but that's not a big problem for me. I also just found this youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/imagiers/videos I searched for a video on liaison and found it very well made. Edited by Komma on 16 March 2015 at 9:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Komma Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4061 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish | Message 11 of 21 16 March 2015 at 10:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Today I did a little bit of french and way to much of searching and reading threads of the forum on how to learn this and how to use this method/ course and which course to use and why and when. I know i'm wasting my time as I don't DO what I find out but searching for more. However, it's all so very interesting and the forum is huge. I finished three skills on Duolingo: Plurals, être/avoir, clothing. I didn't know everything even though this are still basic skills at Duolingo, but the reason for that is that I either forgot because it wasn't important to me or I haven't learned it because it wasn't important at school. Anyway, as Duolingo is just to get into the language and translate a bit I don't put those words into anki. Also I still find them all important. I also worked with French without toil. I kind of shadowed (or tried to/started to shadow) the first two lessons. Not like Prof.Arguelles is doing this, but sitting in my room. I also read the sentence while talking and listening. I'm not sure whether that is intended, but I can't remember the dialogue right away and reading it while speaking is easier. I'm not sure whether it's worth to memorize the dialogues. I don't think I'll use the sentences like they are in these lessons.. I also listened to and read lesson 3 and noticed that the audio is slightly different from the text (got both from the internet... so that is no real surprise). As I understand the lessons very well I think I'll do more at a time, but also keep shadowing the previous ones. I don't think that I could translate from English to French or know all the words/sentences of these lessons actively, but I understand them and that's what the passive wave is about, isn't it? (If the old assimil had this passive wave.. I have not found a description of the method in the text..) At least it seems I've found some way to use French without toil :) I'm just starting to really enjoy my learning adventure. There is so much I can do. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Komma Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4061 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish | Message 12 of 21 18 March 2015 at 9:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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What I did: - Duolingo: Colors, possessives, demonstratives 1, present 1 - Assimil: Französisch ohne Mühe (French with ease), lesson 1 -> I listened to the lesson a few times, then read through and then shadowed. I'm not sure whether I do the shadowing correctly and I'm probably don't do it enough, but I think it helps to just talk while the CD is running. What I learned - that the possessives match the thing being owned and the number of people who own something. I quite forgot that one and I should do some grammar exercises on it maybe. Other stuff I also found out that the function "printable version" at the bottom of each site shows the whole thread and not only the page that is being viewed. Concerning the forum troubles this is very handy for saving interesting content from a whole thread (like my log for example) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 13 of 21 20 March 2015 at 5:14am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hi, Komma, I would have sworn I had already posted on your log, obviously not.
Welcome to the French team, that's the first and foremost thing I wanted to tell you :-) About a few things you mentioned and asked about: A good advanced English grammar book: English Grammar in Use by Murphy and Advanced Grammar in Use by Hewings are really good, a bit similar in style to Grammaire Progressive. But there are many more options these days for sure. The blue one/EGiU/the second tome of the series, had been sufficient for CAE. The green/AGiU/the last tome is probably covering everything an advanced learner could feel intrigued to know. It would be actually good for me to return to these as well but there are only 24 hours in a day. Grammaire Progressive. It is one of the absolutely best language learning series I've found so far across my languages. It is much more than just further practice, if you consider buying just one thing as a reference+practice+awesome resource, get a Grammaire Progressive-the level now appropriate for you ;-) Really, I am that excited about this series, which is pretty rare. There is as well Vocabulaire series and others, Communication looks good as well, cannot speak about the rest. Assimil. There are more versions, the without Toil is probably an older one. The German one you're trying might be better or you might like another combination of older/newer version + German/English base. Duolingo. It is an awesome practice tool. However, be careful when using it as your main resource, perhaps someone else will tell you more about the French version. However, the German one appears to be awesome, the content more or less corresponds to my other sources, while the Spanish one is weird in several ways, in my opinion. You might like this site, if you haven't found it already: http://www.rfi.fr/lffr/statiques/accueil_apprendre.asp And this is a good tool, it might even work for you better than the TY course that you mentioned you didn't like, even though some of their marketing practices are not nice (kings of spam). frenchpod101.com 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Komma Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4061 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish | Message 14 of 21 20 March 2015 at 4:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thank you Cavesa for welcoming me and for your detailed response.
You have posted on my Spanish Log last year I think ;) I made a new one for French.
I read about that one, but thanks for also referring to it. I always waited for the advanced one to be free in the library (it's always borrowed). But I think I should rather buy it. That way it's always here and I can write into it :)
:D I smiled while reading as your excitment is quite obvious here.. I got the intermediaire and advanced from the library. I found it by chance, but same as for the English grammar I should buy it. But before I test the different versions and make up my mind, which is better for me at the moment and whether they cover different aspects or just the same with different depth..
I'm not exactly sure what you mean with "you might like another combination of..." My aim was to do both the old and the new one. As they are very different I think it's quite interesting to go through both. With different I mean different stories. Maybe the old one has old-fashioned french. Was that the reason you said the German one is better? Or because my native language is German? As for this English language base: It is sometimes a bit strange. I also realize in Duolingo. Instead of translating to English I translate to German sometimes... However, I think that English as base for learning is not bad and as there are sometimes more resources in English I'll do a mix of English and German base. As for Duolingo: I really like it because it mostly doesn't feel like learning. But I'm not using that as my only resource. My log might display that but that's more my lazyness... RFI: I don't know whether it's the site or my browser, but it always crashes when I tried. (Ok it crashes when i tried to listen to the radio thing... maybe your site is better.. I'll try with another browser later) Thanks again for your post Cavesa. I'll stop at your log soon. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 15 of 21 20 March 2015 at 5:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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That explains my confusion, this is a new log :-)
Well about my weird excitement about the Grammaire Progressive: as I had to get through some classes and formal teaching in past as well, I've seen so much crap material and pieces from this series were always the most useful papers of all those copies we were getting. And much later I got my own books, even though some of them perhaps a bit late :-D About the various versions of Assimil: If you plan to do both (which I hadn't understood from your log before), than the choice is much simpler, otherwise there tend to be people who enjoy the newer version of any Assimil more ("up to date language") and some who stick to the old ones ("the new one does have less content"). But you chose the third way, to do both. About the various language versions: I find using a Spanish based Assimil German to be a different experience from my previous attempts with the French based one. It's not just about the fact each was a different version. The different base languages don't include just another translation. THere are pieces of grammar that are clearly meant to specificaly help the native speaker of the base language, the pronunciation notes are different and so on. So, I start to think that the choice of a base language is just a matter of personal preference, that's why I mentioned it might be worth it to have a look at both. But as you are a German native speaker, your choice might already be totally clear. It's funny I sometimes forget other people have a useful native language so some of my usual "dilemmas" may appear totally strange to them :-) Stop by whenever you want, teammate :-) But don't let it keep you from your studies, my posts tend to be too lengthy :-D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5478 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 16 of 21 25 March 2015 at 12:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hi Komma,
I've been meaning to drop by and say: 'hi and welcome to the French team' I hope this year is a great one for you! (language learning and otherwise) PM 1 person has voted this message useful |
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