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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Sulis Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6449 days ago 60 posts - 66 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 4 01 January 2013 at 9:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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After several abandoned attempts to learn French over the past few years, I feel ready to commit myself to finally getting to grips with this lovely language. Indeed, I have an important reason as my partner of eight years is French. While he speaks excellent English, my French is non-existant. As most of his relatives have no English either, family holidays in France are somewhat difficult, to say the least. I really have no more excuse to procrastinate and learning French would certainly make my life easier. I would classify myself as almost a complete beginner. I had the typical UK school education of a couple of years of French between the ages of 12 and 14 or so, but that probably only left me with the ability to say a few words at best. Over the last few years I have passively picked up some words and I guess I can recognize somewhere in the region of 200 words, but my speaking and listening ability is about zero. To all intents and purposes, I am a blank slate. As I am fairly new to serious language learning, I suppose I will initially be learning as much about how to learn, as actual French itself. After a few abortive attempts to start learning, I guess I have also picked up some negative associations about language learning and in my mind, French has turned into a monster of seemingly insurmountable difficulty. I realise I need to let go of these beliefs and I think once I see a bit of progress I will overcome these limiting thoughts. My goals for the year are: Beginner - B1-B2 level. 6-8,000 word passive vocabulary Competent conversational ability I also hope to develop a consistent routine and to try several methods and strategies to determine what works best for me. I intend to work fairly intensively over the course of the year, but as I have an illness which includes Chronic Fatigue, it sometimes makes life rather difficult. My energy, stamina and ability to concentrate varies considerably from week to week, month to month, so I cannot make a definite statement about how many hours of study I can put in each day. I will just have to play it by ear and do whatever I can manage. I am determined to do something every day, however! I have come up with a tentative plan outlining my activities for the next twelve months. I am sure once I get into studying, much of this will change or be refined as I get to know what works for me. At the moment I will be basing my studies on this plan of action: 1-6 Months FSI French Phonology Pimsleur French 1-3 Michel Thomas French Foundation, Advanced, Vocabulary & Language Builder Courses Assimil New French With Ease Living Language French Beginner-Intermediate French In Action (after 3 months of study) FSI French (after 3 months of study) 6-12 Months Assimil Using French Living Language French Advanced French In Action FSI French Native Materials Supplemented By: Podcasts French Films Graded Readers Vocab/Grammar Books Anki Speaking practice with a native (the boyfriend!) Wish me luck! Advice/comments on my plan of action are most welcome! Edited by Sulis on 01 January 2013 at 9:41pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Laurae Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 5036 days ago 51 posts - 67 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Dutch | Message 2 of 4 05 March 2013 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Best of luck with your mission. I have also had several failed attempts at reigniting my secondary school French, so will be interesting to see how your chosen materials suit your needs. I'm hoping to start again myself some time this year!
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 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 4 05 March 2013 at 9:16pm | IP Logged | ||
What a great project! My wife is also a French speaker, and I started learning French from scratch about 5 years ago now (sometime after I turned 30). I passed my DELF B2 exam almost a year ago, which was a ton of fun, and I'm planning to sit a C1 exam this coming December. I chat with my in-laws on Skype all the time, and they send me really cool bandes dessinées (graphical novels) for Christmas. My big ambition for the year is to find some opportunities to use my French professionally (and work out the remaining kinks!). Overall, I'd say that it took me 6 months of Assimil at 20–45 min/day to reach a wobbly A2, after which things trailed off a bit. But then I rebooted my French project, and made it from A2 to B2 in 4 months of full-time work. You can find the story in my log. I also recommend that you check out tastyonion's log. He's been combining Assimil with lots of native media (including YouTube videos) from the very beginning. And when he was about 50 lessons into the active wave, he started going to lots of French-speaking meetups. The results have been pretty impressive, and he's way ahead of where I was at the same point in Assimil. Looking over your courses, I'm quite impressed by the quality. But I notice you have a lot of beginner courses. This works great for some people, but other people wind up dividing their efforts between too many courses, and cover the same basic material over and over. So here's my suggestion: Try out as many courses as you'd like. If one or two courses just "click", use those as the backbone of your studies, and use the rest as supplements. But if you're really happy using lots of courses, that's great, too. Ultimately the only thing that matters is to keep going. As long as you're doing something with French and you're having fun, pretty much any study method will work out in the end. Anyway, one of the great joys of learning French is that I've really gotten to know my in-laws much better. Even though most of them speak English to varying degrees, I see so much more of them when we're speaking French. I love the fact that we can take out a bottle of wine, heat up a raclette, and have a nice evening's conversation in French. And my in-laws don't need to struggle with their second or third language. As noted above, learning a language is all about persistence. But it's definitely doable, and you'll be able to enjoy using it for the rest of your life. Good luck with your plans! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| fezmond Groupie Korea, South Joined 4924 days ago 72 posts - 78 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, French | Message 4 of 4 07 March 2013 at 4:35am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Sulis
I was pretty much in the same boat (sans partner) when it came to French - 2/3 years in UK secondary school and then nothing at all for 14/15 years. I'm also using a lot of the same materials as you - Assimil, FIA, FSI, Michel Thomas. I've been at this since November, so 4 months in, it'll be interesting to see how you progress. I'm sure you'll be far more productive than me and I hope you're well ahead of me a few months down the road. As EMK said, doing a little every day works wonders. Something I should take heed of myself. Tastyonions has a really good log going, check it out. Good luck with the studying 1 person has voted this message useful |
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