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Gary’s TAC 2012 - The Romantics | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Adrean TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member France adrean83.wordpress.c Joined 6169 days ago 348 posts - 411 votes  Speaks: FrenchC1 | Message 49 of 167 06 March 2012 at 12:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It is possible to say "can we speak in French I'd really love to get some practice in'
to these people. It may seem harsh but I'm sure they'll respect you and respond to you well for saying what you feel. A problem I encounter at my meet up is the condescending person who must think I'm at a beginner level. The same person also, even though I have said something 100% clear and correct, seems to think I've spoken bad French..albeit it's shown subtly. A recommendation for your trip is to go to a polyglot meet-up in Paris. It would be a great way to go out, have a drink and meet some new people to show you around (one can dream). The Paris meet-up http://lnk.nu/polyglot-learn-language.com/1ykw Edited by Adrean on 06 March 2012 at 12:20pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 50 of 167 07 March 2012 at 12:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yeah I agree, it's good to be assertive like that, especially when everyone else is being selfish.
Yes, I'm very familiar with this. I find that avoiding the L-word at all costs can help prevent it - any mention that you're "learning" or a "learner" tends to make people immediately assume that you're a beginner, and it can be hard to "prove yourself" afterwards. Hell, even saying that I "speak the language but am wanting to improve" can be enough to trigger it. But yes, even if you try to avoid it, it's still going to happen sometimes.
Thanks for the link. I've heard about that, I definitely plan to check it out! It sounds great, at least in theory. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 51 of 167 12 March 2012 at 12:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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OK, I spoke way too soon about things calming down a bit. Last week was as busy as ever. This week should be a bit quieter though, I should have one or two free evenings plus some time at the weekend.
Français Either my fears about losing my French were justified, or the conversations I had last week were particularly tricky, but in any case the "Speaks: French" under my username seems to be becoming less and less justified and my goal of speaking fluently by June (or ever, for that matter) is looking less and less attainable. At the conversation group, we had the tutor who always talks about politics and economics, and it highlighted some of my particular difficulties and things I need to be working on. Aside from the obvious difficulties from not being an avid follower of French politics (next time I go to that group I'll be sure to read a newspaper beforehand for preparation!) I was finding it quite difficult to paraphrase stories and events and give my opinions on them, which is quite an important part of conversation. So I'm going to incorporate some of that into my self-talk exercises - reading an article or watching a video then explaining or giving my thoughts on it. The problem with my current self-talk seems to be that I stay on the same familiar subjects and so don't really leave my comfort zone, so this idea should force me to talk about a much wider variety of subjects and improve my active knowledge which is currently still tiny compared to my passive knowledge. So my focus for the next couple of weeks will be this. Also, meetup this week, hoping for the best. Italiano Assimil as usual; definitely past the halfway point now. Last night I watched the first 20 minutes or so of La Dolce Vita, and I understood most of it without subtitles. I definitely plan to watch it a second time with subtitles though, to pick up all the details that I've no doubt missed. And not much chance for conversing as always. Right now I'm quite happy with Assimil being the focus of my Italian work, but once I finish it it'll definitely be time to make conversations a priority. I also think that a review of MT Advanced will be in order soon to refresh my knowledge of all these verb forms. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 52 of 167 19 March 2012 at 11:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Slightly quieter week indeed. The weekend wasn't the most productive, due to me insisting on staying out late partying despite feeling tired and so not sleeping enough and feeling tired and unmotivated... Someday I'll learn, if I'm too tired to enjoy myself and standing at the bar yawning then it's probably best to just go home and sleep rather than accumulating a sleep debt and wasting the next day while not even having a good time. Anyway, back to the subject matter of languages...
Français I made an effort to get my French back on track and I'm feeling more positive now. The self-talk definitely seems to be helping as it does indeed force me to use a much wider variety of words and grammar than a typical small-talk conversation or summary of an evening. I've mostly been using news segments (the JT on the TF1 website is good for this, as it has the full news programme but lets you skip straight to the stories that interest you), but also some of the good old YouTube humour videos and of course Bref episodes, which are good as you can easily start talking about how they relate to your life and how a certain character reminds you of one of your friends and that sort of thing. In terms of actual conversation, the Meetup was good this time round. I think I mostly spoke well and I'd say my accent even seems to have improved a bit, despite not doing much active work on it for a few weeks. I actually think that studying Italian might be helping me with my ability to hear and imitate accents; I've also noticed that if I simply focus on "speaking clearly and articulately" as opposed to "sounding French" then the rest often seems to fall into place. I also had a Skype chat at the weekend which was again far better than last time. All these ups and downs are annoying, I'd like to be able to speak French well all the time as opposed to half the time, but such is the transition to an advanced level. Speaking aside, I still think my listening comprehension could do with some more work - some films and TV are still a bit tricky. I started watching an old film called Touchez pas au Grisbi and it's very challenging. ListenToFrench.org and its sister site SonsEnFrançais could be a good resource for this - plenty videos aimed towards advanced learners, with French subtitles available. In particular there's a lot of stand-up comedy on there. Italiano Still Assimiling. These days I often do the passive wave in the morning before work, then do the previous weeks' translations (Luca's method) in the evening. Not sure if this is more beneficial than doing it all at once, but it's good to get the first chunk out of the way when my head's nice and clear, and it makes my evening feel that bit less busy :). I've noticed that, while I can follow conversations quite well, it's much more difficult to understand when someone just says something out of the blue. Of course I remember having exactly the same problem in French and it just improved over time with lots of listening practice. Watched the rest of La Dolce Vita. It gets a bit harder to follow later on, especially since it's made up of various "episodes" that are slightly disjoint, and it's the sort of film that seems to be conveying a lot of deep meaning beneath the story. Overall though I'm surprised at just how much of it I did understand considering my level, especially in comparison to some French films like the one I mentioned. Even when factoring in the fact that Italian is my second foreign language and my French helped a lot with it, I still can't help but think that Italian is an easier language. Its grammar is a bit more complex and all the different regional accents add some fun, but in practical terms of being able to understand and be understood, the difference is huge. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 53 of 167 22 March 2012 at 12:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I went to the conversation group yesterday evening, and I'm starting to have my doubts about it. It's challenging and pushes us far beyond the average small-talk which is nice, but on the other hand it's a group conversation with one native speaker and 3-5 other learners each person doesn't get to talk a whole lot and hearing other learners speak with hesitation and mistakes can get tedious even though I'm no better. So overall it's not bad, but once I consider the time to get there and back it takes the best part of two hours out of my day, and my Wednesday at that which is already a busy day. And it costs money. So I just don't think it's very efficient - I'd be better spending an hour speaking one-on-one on Skype for example.
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| Quabazaa Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5610 days ago 414 posts - 543 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, French Studies: Japanese, Korean, Maori, Scottish Gaelic, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Written) | Message 54 of 167 22 March 2012 at 1:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The conversation group sounds interesting but as you say there are downsides. I had the
luck of making a really good French friend this last month, one on one conversations are definitely much better. It's not always easy to find someone you enjoy hanging out with that can take time for you more than once a week though, I'm really lucky on that count. So perhaps you could try to find an exchange partner IRL? Seems like Skype is working for you too though! Bon courage! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 55 of 167 26 March 2012 at 11:51am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Lucky indeed! In all my time learning French I'm yet to actually make friends with a native French speaker (well, I do know a Québécoise who also speaks perfect English, so little motivation there!). There's lots of them in my city, I hear French almost every time I'm outside, but apart from at meetups I rarely come across them socially. The ones I do meet are mostly friendly enough and we have a pleasant conversation but I haven't really met any with a similar age and interests and whom I've really "hit it off" with. Actually there was one Algerian guy who I got on well and had interesting conversations with, but he was just visiting for a few weeks and even when he was here I was just too busy to see him much. As for finding exchange partners, I had all but given up on that because of all the flaky people who'd seem keen at first then disappear off the face of the earth, but I should really start trying again. Skype is working well, especially now as we're getting to know each other better and having some good chats, but it's just not enough. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5208 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 56 of 167 26 March 2012 at 12:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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... And it's main weekly update time.
Français Speaking wise: the conversation group I mentioned, a Skype chat, a cinema evening, and some self-talk the other days. I'm definitely noticing an improvement in my ability to find the words, expressions, and structures which I'm sure self-talk has helped with so I'm definitely going to keep it up. Also, I was out in town for a friend's birthday on Saturday, and there were a few cute French girls there: a friend's girlfriend and her friends... I assure you that I'm not jealous of that friend at all ;). But sadly, despite my attempts, none of them seemed very keen to talk to me in any language, although they were more than keen to indulge most of my friends' attempts at "bonjour, ça va?". Still a lot of work to be done on the old social skills. Italiano The Assimil work continues. I've also listened to a bit of radio while working - Italian radio can be quite entertaining. British radio is generally awful with its inane chat combined with the rotation of around ten sponsored songs, and even French radio, while far more interesting, tends to stay quite orderly; the Italian programmes seem much more chaotic and random. It can be hard to follow, between the debates with several people constantly talking over each other and the arbitrary subjects, but quite fun. I tuned into one station (can't remember which one, I just went to http://www.listenlive.eu/italy.html and kept trying regional station streaming links until I found one that worked) and there was an American gangsta rap song (with no censorship, and this was at 2 in the afternoon) followed by a strange chat and then a guy playing an acoustic guitar and singing a song in Italian about seeing a girl's Facebook profile (along the lines of "Ho visto il tuo profilo, eri tanta bella, voglio scoparti", again no censorship). The next day they had an interview with a French-speaking singer, so there was someone interpreting the questions and answers between French and Italian - definitely interesting to me of course! Not much apart from that; French is priority number one with less than three months before my trip to France. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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