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Speaking after B2, not in country | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5537 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 40 17 December 2013 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm certainly better off than most people who live in a foreign country with an English-speaking job and mostly English-speaking friends. But when I spend 5 days with my in-laws, it still puts a very useful stress on my language skills. For maybe the first dinner, I'm the American who makes an adorable attempt to speak French. Then I'm expected to keep up with everyone else if I want to get a word in edgewise. Mind you, I really appreciate that they expect me to keep up. It's a very real compliment. And yeah, the "two-way spousal linguistic adaptation" thing is very real for me, and it kicked in with a vengeance after B2. How many parents of small children have time to just sit down and chat about the world for two hours a day? :-) I love the suggestion of a French WoW team, though sadly, I don't have the time for such a viciously addictive past-time!
I think if you keep reading the way you do, you'll reach your long-term goals quite quickly. At the end of the Super Challenge, I was often reading 40 pages/hour of actual adult novels with an unknown word every page or two. Going forward, my short term goal is to finish my statistics class, and then to make a serious effort to get my listening comprehension to a solid C1, and to improve my speaking to the point where my "almost C1" days become the new normal. Any reading and writing will probably be in service to those goals, or just for my personal amusement.
I actually find non-fiction to be quite a bit easier than fiction, in general. The formal, non-fiction registers of French and English are surprisingly close in many ways. The average argumentative essay challenges me considerably less than, say, La Horde du Contrevent, which is one of my goals for next year. Honestly, even the aggressive mix of slang and educated language used in the average humor article on Topito is a bigger challenge in many ways. But maybe I should go ahead and read more non-fiction anyways, even if it isn't hugely challenging? I certainly have more need to produce intelligent non-fiction than I do to write novels.
Yeah, if I spent a few months grinding out synthèses and practicing my oral presentations, I might be able to make a credible run at the DALF C1. But I can't just get excited about another certificate right now, for some reason. So I'm trying to create my own linguistic benchmarks. In the medium term, I'd like to be able to give an interesting technical presentation in French at a Meetup, do some work for a French client or two, and be able to reliably talk about works of fiction in some depth without killing my fluency. Everybody, you advice and questions are really helping. Even just explaining my goals is forcing me to think through what would help me get there. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5396 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 10 of 40 17 December 2013 at 6:44pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I'd also say that talking mainly with your wife, though good practice, won't push you
very far beyond your level. There's definitely a phenomenon where people who spend a lot of time together tend to fall into certain conversational patterns (hence why it can be so hard to go from speaking one language to the other even after improving one's proficiency at the other language). Meetup, too, can be kind of bad about this. Without any external prodding, people tend to have the same conversations over and over (When/where/why did you learn French? Have you been to France? What did you study? What do you do for work? etc, etc, etc). If your local French speaking community is vibrant enough, you may get away with organizing your own Meetups but with a purpose. A French book club, debate team, Toastmasters (or Toastmasters-style club), theatre or improv group, gaming group, etc. If that's not doable locally, you can try online. I definitely recommend reading more nonfiction and editorial articles in newspapers. While the reading level is lower than in literature, the structure of the text is what you're looking for if you want to discuss/debate, and it's exactly what examiners are looking for. You can even still read literature but also literature reviews (the type that get published, not just Amazon, though Amazon reviews might be helpful too). Also, listen to podcasts and watch TV programs where people just sit around and talk about news and events. It can be the highbrow (boring) stuff or just the variety/talk shows but both will help. If you watch with your wife, it may give you something else to talk about. Documentaries will probably help as well - though pretty easy to understand, it will give you topics of conversation and locutions that you would need as a more advanced speaker. As for non-highbrow entertainment, maybe try some French reality TV and comedy shows rather than scripted drama. Sure, you'll get a lot of "bad French" that way but scripted shows are just that - scripted. Reality TV doesn't have to be the truly mindless stuff (though it's entertaining at least to me to see that France has "trash culture" just like everyone else); they have all the cooking competitions, makeover shows, antique shows, etc that we have. It's good because it's language as it actually is used with all the hesitations, stops and starts, incorrect usage, etc (though, of course, some reality gets scripted). So you know you're not holding yourself to some impossible standard of someone who is scripted and gets to say their lines over and over again until they're right or someone who has grown up to be on television because they're so well-trained in speech and debate. To mix things up with your wife or other regular speaking partners, you can try conversational board games in French (or in English but just adapted to French), such as Taboo, 20 Questions, Cards Against Humanity (translated into French on their website), etc. Or you can see if there are classes near you, such as at the AF, that are topical of the "Let's read books/articles about a certain subject and talk about it" variety. Bonus points if you have to make a presentation and write essays. Or see if your local university will let you audit upper-division or master's classes. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| culebrilla Senior Member United States Joined 4002 days ago 246 posts - 436 votes Speaks: Spanish | Message 11 of 40 18 December 2013 at 2:13am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Well, I don't know French but I've heard that its gender rules are more complex than those of Spanish. Good luck with that. If you really speak French for a few hours (3?) a day, that isn't bad at all!Do you THINK in French? Most people don't actually speak/listen eight hours a day in any language, I would gander. But people do think about 16 or so hours a day in a language. More if they dream in the language, I guess. I have a Colombian friend that speaks English better than any foreigner I've met except for the people that have lived in the US for 10-40 years. He speaks VERY good, kind of like a not-famous Luca just speaking one language. Although since I've actually talked with this guy a lot, I would take his English over Luca's in terms of grammar, accent, idiomatic knowledge, everything. (Not hating on Luca, he knows several languages at a very high level and I haven't ever talked to him so I don't really know how good his English is) He has never gone abroad but he DOES have a lot of skype friends who are native English speakers. And he thinks in English. If you haven't done so, try doing everything you do in your head in French. You're busy with your job and family, but are you friends with the meetup people? Can you invite them over and just have French conversations? Having talks with different people is really important I think. I'm "used" to the voices of a few Skype friends I talk with but talking with people from other countries definitely challenges my listening skills. Or just with new people. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4627 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 12 of 40 19 December 2013 at 12:46am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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How good is your wife's English? Is she French or French-Canadian? If it's the former, then ask her how she
learned and try some of her strategies. I would say I'm a comfortable C1 in German without having lived in Germany. I have, however made many trips to rural Brandenburg where little English is spoken. In fact, come to think of it, I don't think anyone has ever spoken English to me there, I was just thrown in at the deep end and expected to understand a country dialect. It was tough, but eventually I started talking to my father-in-law about different topics. I also watched loads of TV over there and ploughed through a tabloid newspaper every day. Reading-wise I stuck mainly to crime stories, nothing too intellectual but still bloody challenging. Back in the UK, my wife speaks some German to me but it's mainly household and shopping language, we don't really debate anything in German. That's where the meetups come in. I try and attend at least one per month, and the sessions I take part in always have lots of native speakers. I watch interviews on YouTube with people from all walks of life, trying to get as broad an exposure as possible. I buy DVDs in Germany which have no English subtitles. German is such a phonetic language that if you hear an unfamiliar word, it is easy to find it in a dictionary (not sure if the same is true for French). I accept the fact that I will never sound remotely native unless I spend 10 years in a German-speaking country using the language 24/7. I would rather speak fluidly with tolerable mistakes than resorting to umming and ahh-ing. If I don't know a gender, I guess it and move swiftly on. I don't beat myself up for not being perfect, I used to, but then I realised that it was better to be positive about what I knew than negative about what I didn't. Instead of Montreal, why not head into deepest Quebec and do some sort of working holiday surrounded by "average Joes" who don't give a rats ass about using English. A bit of bullying ain't a bad thing when it comes to language learning. Edited by beano on 19 December 2013 at 12:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4374 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 13 of 40 20 December 2013 at 1:07am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I really hope Tanya_b and/or Serpent will chime in on this thread, because they're really the only two people I've known in person or online who have managed to achieve the objectives you have (I'm deliberately not counting English because I've heard too many people say that language is in a completely different category considering how much is available).
We're probably at the same point in our languages, where it's more or less functional, but there's still so much more to go. I actually think I might try and steal your idea of taking a class in my language to pick up on some vocabulary and go away from "language learning" mode--that's one of the hardest parts is to make the language truly a part of me, and not "only" something I study. It sounds like everything you're doing is "right" it just hasn't been done long enough. Maybe at this point, time perseverance and patience really are what you need (but how I wish there were a quick 6 month short-cut!) 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4627 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 14 of 40 20 December 2013 at 9:54am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
But the internet allows you to access massive amounts of material in any major language. Every non-native speaker of English starts from zero when learning the language, there's no reason why you can't make similar progress in another tongue. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5267 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 15 of 40 20 December 2013 at 1:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
That's very true, up to a point. I will grant that there's a lot of material out there freely available, but the ubiquitous nature of English around the world is an entirely different kettle of fish. US TV series and films are almost everywhere. I'm sure, if I were almost anywhere in the world right now and turned on the television or went to the cinema, I would see and hear something familiar. If I got in the car for a drive and turned on the radio, I'm sure I could hear English, if I wanted, quite easily. If I worked in any business selling or buying anything internationally, I'd be exposed to English. English is ubiquitous on the web, software, games. It would be a challenge to avoid the language. The difference for English-speakers in the US is that other than Spanish, there is very little daily, easy, exposure to other languages available to us as there is for almost anyone elsewhere who has much more ease in being exposed to English. You're not going to get in your car, tune your radio to your local station and hear a Russian song. You're not going to turn on your TV and have your choice of three different, high quality, entertaining German sitcoms to watch and go to the bar later and talk about one of them with all your friends. No one in my job is going to be quoting a Portuguese work-related aphorism to me today. I'm not going to be discussing the latest French film with any random person either. I'm unlikely to see a Russian phrase on several different people's tee shirts today either. The biggest difference with non-native English-speakers living outside of English-speaking countries and English-speakers living outside their TL countries is that extra massive exposure to daily English for everyone else that we just don't get as easily in our TL's. For us, it's a major effort, for them- it's everywhere. We can create an immersive environment to a large extent, yes, but we're not going to get that extra bit of daily, ubiquitous help from society at large that non-native speakers of English get so easily outside their studies. That's why I think English is listed as an exception. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4538 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 16 of 40 20 December 2013 at 1:13pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Though if you are lucky enough to be studying one of the other major languages there should be a wealth of dubbed English shows available. In the last week I have seen both the Hobbit and the latest Woody Allen film (Blue Jasmine) in German. I know it's not always easy to access these sorts of materials within the US/UK etc, but it is possible. The problem with English though is that it is the main lingua franca now in the World. It's not a coincidence that HTLAL is essentially an English forum. Edited by patrickwilken on 20 December 2013 at 1:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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