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Beginning French - 2013 TAC - Team PaX

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64 messages over 8 pages: 1 2 3 4 57 8 Next >>
Quique
Diglot
Senior Member
Spain
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Joined 4684 days ago

183 posts - 313 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*, English
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 41 of 64
15 January 2013 at 4:33pm | IP Logged 
fezmond wrote:
Assimil NFWE: lessons 29 - 38
Assimil FWT: lessons 1 - 7
I write all the lessons out by hand, seems to stick in my head more, could be a bad
idea.

I type them on my laptop. Handwriting is probably better for memorizing, but digital is handy: I can then use diff to check my dictations.
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fezmond
Groupie
Korea, South
Joined 4928 days ago

72 posts - 78 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Korean, French

 
 Message 42 of 64
21 January 2013 at 6:46am | IP Logged 
Week 3 done and I've been pretty lazy this week.

Assimil - just about to start lesson 43, which means I'll be hitting the active wave next week. I still need to pay more attention to the grammatical make up of sentences but things aren't too bad.

French Without Toil - lesson 9. All going pretty well here, just interesting to see the way in which people talk has changed over time.

Grammaire Progressive Niveau Debutant - Have only finished the first 2 lessons but things are going well. Apart from a few dumb mistakes on my part, it's pretty simple stuff.

I also tried reading the first 10 pages of Le Petit Prince but I came away hardly understanding a thing. Way too many unfamiliar conjugations and vocabulary.
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songlines
Pro Member
Canada
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Joined 5211 days ago

729 posts - 1056 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French
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 Message 43 of 64
21 January 2013 at 7:03am | IP Logged 
fezmond wrote:


I also tried reading the first 10 pages of Le Petit Prince but I came away hardly understanding a thing. Way too
many unfamiliar conjugations and vocabulary.


As I've previously mentioned on my log, I wasn't able, for the longest time, to actually finish Le Petit Prince. The
version on Ilya Frank's site, http://english.franklang.ru/, was what
finally helped me to do it. (Click on "French" on the left column.) It has interlaced English translations, both in
grammatically sound English, as well as a literal translation where appropriate.   Check it out..?






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fezmond
Groupie
Korea, South
Joined 4928 days ago

72 posts - 78 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Korean, French

 
 Message 44 of 64
21 January 2013 at 4:15pm | IP Logged 
songlines wrote:
fezmond wrote:


I also tried reading the first 10 pages of Le Petit Prince but I came away hardly
understanding a thing. Way too
many unfamiliar conjugations and vocabulary.


As I've previously mentioned on my log, I wasn't able, for the longest time, to
actually finish Le Petit Prince. The
version on Ilya Frank's site,
http://english.franklang.ru/, was what
finally helped me to do it. (Click on "French" on the left column.) It has
interlaced English translations, both in
grammatically sound English, as well as a literal translation where appropriate.   
Check it out..?







Thanks for the link. I'm sure most of it is a case of my French simply not being good
enough right now. I had a look at Tintin and there were still too many words and
conjugations I didn't know.

I feel that I haven't progressed as well as I've wanted over the past two months but
still, every little helps.
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emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5534 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
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 Message 45 of 64
21 January 2013 at 7:33pm | IP Logged 
fezmond wrote:
I also tried reading the first 10 pages of Le Petit Prince but I came away hardly understanding a thing. Way too many unfamiliar conjugations and vocabulary.


Don't worry about! Like songlines said, Le Petit Prince is not actually all that easy to read. It uses verb tenses like the imparfait du subjonctif which rarely appear in French books, and it uses a larger vocabulary than you might think. LingQ actually has a copy with an audiobook and a popup dictionary that you might try. They list it under the section "Advanced 1".

The first time I actually read Le Petit Prince comfortably, quickly and without a dictionary was several months after my B2 exam. So if you still find it hard work, that's perfectly normal!
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geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4690 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 46 of 64
21 January 2013 at 7:38pm | IP Logged 
I guess there's also an element of what level of perfection you're willing and able to accept. I found it quite easy to
get a good sense of what's going on in something I was reading without being able to identify the tenses at all. I'm
only now beginning to finally crystallize them in my mind, but usually when you're reading it's not too important to
be able to get this information explicitly from the word forms themselves, and you know that if you just ignore the
ending of the word you get the stem that you can get further information from.

Actually, it was primarily by reading things where I did not know the tense markers that I eventually managed to
learn them in the first place! When you see the same endings over and over, they become familiar, and you just
need to consult a grammar chart to tell you what this familiar-looking form represents.
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fezmond
Groupie
Korea, South
Joined 4928 days ago

72 posts - 78 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Korean, French

 
 Message 47 of 64
25 January 2013 at 4:02pm | IP Logged 
If anyone reads this log: any French bands you recommend? I like N&SK, The Pink Martini
(not French but some bits) and that's about all I know. Will listen to anything
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fezmond
Groupie
Korea, South
Joined 4928 days ago

72 posts - 78 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Korean, French

 
 Message 48 of 64
11 February 2013 at 2:18pm | IP Logged 
Been quite a while since I've updated this log...sometimes life just gets in the way.

It's been a very slow two weeks on my part, especially active study.

New French with Ease - Finished lesson 56 today but the past week's lessons have been
mostly scanned through rather than sitting down and really looking at the sentences and
new words.

The first active week seems to have gone quite well, despite some dumb mistakes and
confusion with prepositions.

Grammaire Progressive - up to unit 6, all going well but again lack of focus results in
dumb mistakes.

I've realised that I don't think I can actually write much or say much in French at
all. Reading comprehension seems to be OK and listening is always improving but I have
a complete lack of experience with creating my own sentences and trying to express
myself.

Guess it's onto lang8 and trying to skype with someone for practice.


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