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A Personal Experiment: Learning French | ||
Tags: French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| materum Newbie United States markmaterum.wordpres Joined 4284 days ago 5 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 1 of 10 16 April 2013 at 6:26am | IP Logged | ||
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So, before anything else, I must say one thing: HOORAY!!! FIRST POST!!!
Okay, with that all out of the way, let me begin by saying that, for all my attempts, I have had altogether poor results in attempting to learn a foreign language. I have studied Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Mandarin Chinese, and Spanish all at different times, and all through school. While I did manage to get rather far in Latin and Ancient Greek, the super grammar-translation approach that has always been pushed upon me has given but poor results: my Latin and Ancient Greek are mere remnants of what they once were, my Hebrew has always sucked, and my Mandarin Chinese is pathetic on the best of days; as for Spanish, provided the grammatical topic is identical to Latin or covered in class, I can sorta, kinda speak it, with mostly correct grammar, though I have a super limited vocabulary. With this in mind, I wanted to try to learn a language in a way entirely different than what I have done before, apart from the heavy emphasis on grammar, translation, and classes. After giving it some thought, I decided to go with French, both because of the multiplicity of resources currently available to me for French and because of the oft- discussed quality of those resources. My plan is as follows: I will go through at least 1 lesson of Assimil New French with Ease per day, with a large emphasis on shadowing and overall comprehension; after completion I will continue on with Using French. After my current round of classes end (in about a month or so), I will supplement that with French in Action, for which I will have access to all the videos, audio, textbook, workbooks, study guides, and teacher's guides (Thank you local library!). My intention is to do all the exercises in both series. At the same time, I will be listening to RFI Le Journal en Francais Facile every day as part of my morning commute. At the end of all of this, I will go out to rent French movies and books while at the same time try to find a French pen pal to continue improvement. So how will this approach be different from what I have done before? Well, there will be one big, over-arching difference: in my study of French I will not make English notes or study aids of any kinds; no flashcards will be French-English, no grammar charts or what not will have any English on it. The only English I hope to see is the very beginning of FIA and the English in Assimil, though as for myself, no English will be employed in the learning of French. I was even going to not make any flash cards, hoping for a method of pure assimilation, but after going through some of the lessons of Assimil I think it might be good to make Cloze Deletion cards in Anki for helping to remember genders. My plan is to update this learning log at least once per week from now until one of two events: (1) My completion of both series, or (2) 12 months from now. At the end of this little experiment, I will be evaluating how far I have come in French in relation to other languages I have studied. If I find that the experiment was a resounding success, then I will have found a method certain to work for me and will attempt to use it in the acquisition of other languages. If the experiment turns out to be a failure (though I don't think that will be the case), then I will at least know that this method is not for me; perhaps, in reading these logs, you guys can even spot some errors in my methodology and learn from my mistakes. Well, I am at around lesson 10-11 of Assimil New French with Ease. Any input, suggestions, recommendation, words of encouragement, or otherwise engagement is accepted with heartfelt gratitude (provided, of course, that your not just being a troll). This experiment is about finding the best method for learning a language, so if you guys have any recommendations or suggestions, please, don't hesitate to share! Allons-y! Oh, by the way, I also have a blog where I will also be keeping track of my French learning if you want to follow, though the content will be pretty much identical in terms of overall message; I am hoping keeping a learning log here will help put me in touch with people far more experienced and knowledgeable in polyglottery than me. Edited by materum on 16 April 2013 at 6:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4846 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 2 of 10 16 April 2013 at 6:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Sounds very interesting. Looking forward to your updates and progress!
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 10 16 April 2013 at 10:15am | IP Logged | ||
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In my experience, making too detailed study plans leads to burnout inevitably. I do use
Anki and Assimil like everyone else here does but I just simply go for it and "learn stuff". I just build things up step by step. It looks like you're using an AJATT technique, which is quite good and strong - immersion helps. I prefer using translations as a crutch in the beginning but once you have the structure of a language in place these translations gradually become less relevant. Just immerse yourself in French, go for it, and don't let anything stop you. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 4 of 10 16 April 2013 at 12:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wish you good luck and a lot of success with this experiment.
But I agree with Tarvos (I learnt it the hard way). Just don't forget to enjoy the process, that is the most secure way to keep going. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Homogenik Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4823 days ago 314 posts - 407 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 5 of 10 16 April 2013 at 8:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree that learning grammar or focusing too much on it at the beginning of learning a language is not very helpful
and can lead to discouragement. When I started learning mandarin, I decided to use Pimsleur and since it's only about speaking and listening, it seemed to slip into my brain quite naturally. I think Assimil is similar in that it uses a lot of recordings and is conversation based. A big part of learning a language, I find, is emulating, not understanding. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5208 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 10 17 April 2013 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome to the forums, Materum. French in Action and Assimil should complement each other nicely. One
caution: despite the name, "Le Journal en français façile" is really not that easy: they speak very quickly - when I first listened to it, I was horrified at the breakneck speed of some of the reports (especially from "in the field", in which case there are no transcripts). And, of course, some of the vocab will be more advanced. So don't be discouraged if you have to wait quite a while before you're ready to use that source yet. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5955 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 7 of 10 18 April 2013 at 4:48am | IP Logged | ||
I was pretty sure in the past that the various announcers had some private contest between them to see who could speak at the fastest, most absurd speed. That, plus the apparent term in their employment contract that they had to entirely eliminate any shadow of a pause between sentences, makes those materials a challenging prospect indeed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7204 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 8 of 10 18 April 2013 at 8:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Bonne chance!
1 person has voted this message useful |
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