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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| cacue23 Triglot Groupie Canada Joined 4304 days ago 89 posts - 122 votes  Speaks: Shanghainese, Mandarin*, English Studies: Cantonese | Message 1 of 26 22 February 2013 at 11:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hey, everyone, this is my first post here. It's just going to be a little bit of bragging along the way on what I did regarding languages (mostly English and French). No serious committments made, yet... Let's save them for after I get my undergrad degree.
This term I'm taking 2 French courses, one in phonetics and one in grammar (fairly advanced), and I hope to achieve 75% in both of them. My basis in French is pretty weak, so to achieve that goal I need some serious help from one of my friends in France (she's Chinese, and she needs help with English - fair exchange for me). My plan is that I'll read French aloud every day for 1hr while listening to audio files. Also I'll make notes for next Friday's grammar test (futur simeple et conditionnel). But since I have an economics test on the same day, it can't take too long. I do wish to listen to Pimsleur while I take my half-hour-each bus rides to and from school, but I develop nausea after paying close attention to something in those crowded buses (possibly because there's not enough oxygen circulating around), so I'll find some other time to do it. As with English, my courses are all taught in English (except the French ones of course), but my focus is obviously not here. My main problem in English is vocabulary. I feel that my efforts for building vocabulary are not very systematic. It takes a bit of time to organize what I already know, and then expand the horizones to what I don't know. My English grammar is fine, but it still needs some perfection. As with listening and speaking, my pronunciation is pretty good, and I get my points across when I talk to others. It's just that in formal situations my vocabulary prevents me from speaking eloquently, and in informal situations I speak too formally - in a nutshell, I don't talk the talk. Reading and writing are generally not problematic except that I still need a dictionary and a thesaurus frequently. Overall I would say my English is at a B2-bordering-C1 level. From now until I graduate, I'm mainly going to blog the new words that I come across, and note their meanings in both English and Chinese, and review them from time to time. Also, since I'm in choir this term and our choir instructor decides that we should learn three songs by the beginning of April, one in German, one in Latin, and one in Hebrew, I might blog on these three languages as well. I do have some experience in German, namely during choir last term (the song is 2-hr long with us sopranos constantly at the top of our voice - it killed me), and I hope to pick something up along the way. Later. Edited by cacue23 on 05 May 2013 at 2:51am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5852 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 26 23 February 2013 at 10:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Could you please edit this post to give your log a meaningful title? This title doesn't say anything about the contents and topic of your log. Have a look at other log titles as examples!
Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6708 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 26 25 February 2013 at 12:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I understood it - French and something more. Welcome to the forum.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cacue23 Triglot Groupie Canada Joined 4304 days ago 89 posts - 122 votes Speaks: Shanghainese, Mandarin*, English Studies: Cantonese | Message 4 of 26 26 February 2013 at 11:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Study notes Feb. 26, 2013:
Due to my misreading the course syllabus, the test that I origianlly thought was just going to be on futur simple and conditionnel present will include all future tenses (simple, proche, anterieur), and all conditional tenses (present and past). My focus is going to be on usage, but I need to brush up on the conjugations as well. P.S. Could anyone please tell me how I could get a French typing system? Futur proche: aller (conjugue en present ou imparfait) + verbe (infinitif) - "be going to do" - informal form of passe simple, used in place of "will do" Futur simple: Conjugation - For regular (in futur simple) verbs ending in -er and -ir, the roots in conjugation are identical to their infinitive forms; for regular verbs ending in -re, drop the final -e to obtain the roots. - Special regular verbs: jeter, appeler, rappeler, etc. - double t or l; lever, acheter, peler, ceder, mener, promener, etc. - e accent grave; payer, nettoyer, essuyer, ennuyer, employer, etc. - y changes to i. - Irregular verbs (roots): aller (ir), avoir (aur), courir (courr), cueillir (cueiller), devoir (devr), envoyer (enverr), etre (ser), savoir (saur), faire (fer), falloir (faudr) - 3rd person singular only, mourir (mourr), pleuvoir (pleuvr) - 3rd person singular only, pouvoir (pourr), recevoir (recevr), s'assoir (regular OR s'assierai - e accent aigu), tenir (tiendr), venir (viendr), valoir (vaudr), vouloir (voudr), voir (verr). - Endings: je -ai, tu -as, il/elle/on -a, nous -ons, vous -ez, ils/elles -ont. - A note on pronunciation: For verbs that end in -er, ignore the final "e" when pronouncing the conjugated forms; in "je -ai", the -ai is pronounced [e], whereas in conditionnel present, the -ais ending is pronounced like the "e" in "bed". Usage - Same as in English "will do". - In adverbial clauses of time, after "quand, lorsque, aussitot que, des que, pendant que, tandis que, tant que, a peine...que"; the main clause is in future tense or the imperative (English uses present tense here). - In place of the imperative, as in "You will give me a reasonable explanation." - In the main clause of the conditional (in the conditional clause, si + present). Edited by cacue23 on 27 February 2013 at 9:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cacue23 Triglot Groupie Canada Joined 4304 days ago 89 posts - 122 votes Speaks: Shanghainese, Mandarin*, English Studies: Cantonese | Message 5 of 26 26 February 2013 at 11:37pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cacue23 Triglot Groupie Canada Joined 4304 days ago 89 posts - 122 votes Speaks: Shanghainese, Mandarin*, English Studies: Cantonese | Message 6 of 26 06 March 2013 at 7:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm yet to complete the 2nd part of the grammar notes (futur, conditionnel), but since I have a quiz on phonetics tomorrow, I'll start with phonetics stuff first.
P.S. Could anyone please tell me how to install a French typing system? Thanks. - Quatre parametres a decrire les voyelles: anterieure ou posterieure; ecartee ou arrondie; tres fermee, fermee, ouverte ou tres ouverte; orale ou nasale. - La syllable accentuee en francais est toujour la derniere syllabe du groupe rythmique. - Les voyelles orales: 1ere serie , [e], [3] et [a] - anterieures et ecartees; 2eme serie [y], [o/] et [oe] - anterieures et arrondies; 3eme serie , [o] et [c] - posterieures et arrondie; e muet ([upside-down e]) - anterieure et arrondi, entre fermee et ouverte; [written script a] - posterieure, ecartee et tres ouverte (rare). : correspond aux lettres i, i accent circumflexe, i trema et y [e]: correspond aux lettres e accent aigu, ee, es, ai, ay, ei, ez, et aux terminaisons verbales -er, -ez, -ai, -ais, -ait, -aient A continuer. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LtM Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5865 days ago 130 posts - 223 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 7 of 26 06 March 2013 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, on the semi-remote chance that your computer is a Mac, you can just go into System Preferences, then click on Language & Text, then Input Sources, where you can select from among a long list of languages. If you click the box next to "Show input menu in menu bar" it will add a small flag icon in the top menu bar that you can click on to change your keyboard input language.
The easiest way that I've found to get used to typing with a foreign virtual keyboard is to type a document that maps out each keystroke: just tap each key in each row in a blank document systematically, first lowercase then uppercase letters and symbols, making a separate row for each row of your keyboard. Then, print out this page and keep it by your computer for reference. If you force yourself to type in your chosen foreign language(s), after a short while you'll be able to type as easily in them as you do in English. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cacue23 Triglot Groupie Canada Joined 4304 days ago 89 posts - 122 votes Speaks: Shanghainese, Mandarin*, English Studies: Cantonese | Message 8 of 26 13 April 2013 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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So, I haven't posted for about 2 months and I've neglected to make notes on a lot of stuff. But since my French courses are both done for this term, I'll stop blogging on them. The only thing I accomplished in French (apart from bits and pieces of grammar and pronunciation rules) was that I finished most of the Pimsleur I stuff. I'll try to finish it off by the end of April. And no, I didn't achieve the goal that I set for myself at the beginning of the term, and taking further French courses would be quite a burden on my working load. From now on (German: von nun an), officially, this post will turn into a post for English (a bit of absurdity here I know) with other languages popping up randomly from time to time. I will have to write an essay next year, I don't know how long it has to be but it will most likely be more than 20 pages, and it's better that I start building my vocabulary now.
Another note though, I once thought that I would never be able to make the tongue-rolling rrrrrrr sound, but it turned out that I just wasn't getting the hang of it. The other day when I was practicing the uvular "r" sound in French (still haven't completely nailed it, mind you), I rolled up my tongue for a change, and I had it! It took me an aweful lot of breath to roll just a little bit, and sometimes I'd lose it again, but I did get it out. I'll practice it whenever it pops up in my mind and try to nail it before I decide to take up Spanish in the rather distant future. I mean, it's a pretty cool sound to make, isn't it? Edited by cacue23 on 13 April 2013 at 9:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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