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Getting over a "brick wall"/"plateau"? | ||
Tags: Loss of confidence | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Melya68 Diglot Senior Member France Joined 4296 days ago 109 posts - 126 votes  Speaks: French*, English | Message 1 of 12 25 February 2013 at 1:04am | IP Logged |
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I've been studying English "actively" for over 7 years now, yet I still can't read an easy novel with full comprehension.
I can't watch a movie without English subtitles and there are only a few shows that I can watch without subtitles of any kind, such as Friends (which is really easy to understand anyway). I absolutely need to improve my vocabulary if I want to pass a selective "concours" (it's a type of exam) which requires me to translate two short texts (which are either part of a novel or an article) from French to English and from English to French. So far, all my recent attempts at dealing with the problem have failed. I tried watching some stand-up comedy shows but stopped after two hours. I don't mind distasteful jokes, but I draw the line at making fun of disabled people. I started listening to some audiobooks of Stephen King. What a bad idea that was. I'm not into horror at all and discovered the hard way that all of his books are gory and disturbing. This is coming from someone who watches a lot of grisly shows such as CSI and NCIS to name a few. In hindsight, I should have known his books weren't a good fit for my personality. I tried reading Cell about a year ago and had to stop after a few pages. It's too bad because his books are about i+1 for me. That's why I really wanted to read something like The Dark Tower. I then watched Fairy Tail dubbed in English. It's a pretty good show, but it's also quite hard to understand at times. Moreover, since I know the beginning of the storyline/plot by heart from having read the first few manga tomes in French, the episodes I'm currently watching seem a bit boring. Since I don't give up easily, I decided to read Vocable for a while. I tolerated the French translations on the left/right side of each article for some time and tried to get interested in the insipid articles that were picked by the editor. I thought it'd all be okay since I've read at least a dozen Vocable magazines before but I was wrong. Most of the articles were very depressing, and the last one was about the extinction of polar bears. Reading this particular Vocable ended up ruining what was left of my evening--bad move. I used to make a lot of paper flashcards but I stopped for some reason. I've always loved making them so I'd like to start doing that again, but it's hard for me to find good sentences to input into my "manual" SRS. I do have two Kindles (the basic ones that aren't back-lit.) I bought the first one on a whim after returning a touchscreen Sony that I'd ordered for Christmas but hated with a passion. I fell in love with the first Kindle but the poor thing broke within a month. I returned the Kindle, got a new one and the world was right again. I bought a second Kindle because Amazon lowered its price for one day only. I really wanted a second Kindle anyway and had planned on buying a second one as soon as possible. My initial plan was to download books in both French and English and to make "parallel" texts for myself using the two Kindles. I ended up putting random non-fiction books in English on both devices instead. I'm looking for good books that I could read easily. I have quite the ebook collection on my computer. Do you have any advice regarding vocabulary learning methods, SRSing, book choice...? Please don't give me advice taken from AJATT/ Jlevel up/ FI3M/ Spanish-only/ L2mastery (etc). I've read every website under the sun, plus Barry Farber, Kato Lomb, Stephen Krashen and of course Benny Lewis' book. I'm sure there are some serious polyglots out there who have excellent methods for vocabulary learning through books or translations that I haven't come across yet. Thank you for reading my message. Edited by Melya68 on 25 February 2013 at 3:05pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| agantik Triglot Senior Member France Joined 4640 days ago 217 posts - 335 votes Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: German, Norwegian | Message 2 of 12 25 February 2013 at 8:08am | IP Logged |
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Si tu dois passer une épreuve de traduction (thème et version si j'ai bien compris) il faut que tu t'entraines
spécifiquement à cette épreuve à partir d'annales, d'exercices de traduction et surtout apprendre systématiquement du vocabulaire, ce n'est pas la même chose que vouloir améliorer son anglais en général. Quel concours dois-tu passer? Étant professeur d'anglais en lycée je peux te recommander des bouquins précis qui pourraient t'etre utiles, tu peux me répondre en PM si tu veux :) Edited by agantik on 25 February 2013 at 8:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Melya68 Diglot Senior Member France Joined 4296 days ago 109 posts - 126 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 3 of 12 25 February 2013 at 8:09pm | IP Logged |
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Merci beaucoup pour ta réponse, je t'ai envoyé un message privé. :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| agantik Triglot Senior Member France Joined 4640 days ago 217 posts - 335 votes Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: German, Norwegian | Message 4 of 12 26 February 2013 at 7:45am | IP Logged |
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I haven't received your PM yet, I don't know whether it's normal, so I wrote a post about it in the technical
room. Be patient! ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Melya68 Diglot Senior Member France Joined 4296 days ago 109 posts - 126 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 5 of 12 26 February 2013 at 11:37am | IP Logged |
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Okay! :)
I did send you the PM but maybe you didn't get it because I just registered. I don't mind explaining the situation here. I want to take both the CAPES and the agrégation, so I'd be more than happy if you could suggest good books and effective vocabulary learning methods for these exams. Thank you for wanting to help me! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6602 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 6 of 12 26 February 2013 at 12:17pm | IP Logged |
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Yeah for newly registered users it takes like two weeks:/
as it's a forum for language learning, i think it's perfectly okay to just discuss these topics right here. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5887 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 7 of 12 26 February 2013 at 1:41pm | IP Logged |
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I'd suggest that you use the software "Learning with Text".
It's free, simplifies a lot the creation of SRS cards and helps in many ways the process of reading. It accumulates the vocabulary that you already know and, after using the program for a while, can even give you a good idea about how difficult a new text will be, from the point of view of number of unknown words. On the other hand, if your main goal at this moment is to succeed in this exams, I'd also suggest that you find books that deal specifically with them, like this one. I don't know this book, but it received many good comments and even those who don't enjoy it that much say good things about it. It's hard to suggest you books, because it depends not only on how much you really already know and what kind of books you enjoy reading, but also on your mood!! Disclaimer: I'm neither the creator of LwT, nor an author of the Capes book, not even an Amazon.com shareholder :-)) Edited by Flarioca on 26 February 2013 at 1:42pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| agantik Triglot Senior Member France Joined 4640 days ago 217 posts - 335 votes Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: German, Norwegian | Message 8 of 12 26 February 2013 at 2:23pm | IP Logged |
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What a coincidence! I passed those two selective "concours" a (hum!) (too) long time ago!
So here are my suggestions (I personally used all the books I mention in the course of my past studies): VOCABULARY Le mot et l'idée 2 (éditions Ophrys) – perfect to start with Le Robert et Collins – Vocabulaire anglais et américain- Atkins, Byrd, Duval Le vocabulaire de l'anglais – Hachette supérieur – Annie Sussel, Corinne Denis, Agathe Majou Version La version anglaise aux concours – Armand Colin – Khalifa, Fryd, Paillard Thème Guide du thème anglais pour la préparation au CAPES et à l'Agrégation- Presses Universitaires de Rennes – Frances William Anglais thèmes suivis – Vuibert supérieur – John Holstead, Jean-Max Thomson Both thème and version Réussir l'épreuve de traduction écrite – Ellipses – Sally Jacquelin, René Zimmer Some of these books may no longer be in print since I bought them over ten (well... twelve :( years ago) but I'm sure you can find them second-hand on the internet. They're the ones which helped me the most, but you should check Ellipses, Ophrys and Armand Colin for anything CAPES or Agregation related. If you have any other questions about the concours, please ask, I don't mind at all! Best of luck Edited by agantik on 26 February 2013 at 2:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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