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Word choice? | ||
Tags: Meaning of words | Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Tyrion101 Senior Member United States Joined 3914 days ago 153 posts - 174 votes  Speaks: French | Message 1 of 8 23 May 2015 at 1:03am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm horrible at it in French, if there's 3 words (or expressions) for say, about I always manage to choose the wrong one, mostly I've found that the problem areas are where there are different words for things that aren't exactly in English, like choosing from passe compose, or imparfait. Will this simply just take time? I know, or can figure out most of the words now (if not I've got a trusty dictionary or two) and was wondering what other people here have done to help them with word choice?
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 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 2 of 8 23 May 2015 at 5:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Write a lot and get feedback.
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| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5263 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 3 of 8 23 May 2015 at 2:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ditto- and speak more with natives. Lang8 for writing, as has been suggested before. With a site like lang8, you can't just pop in randomly as a drive-by poster. You have to make it a regular part of your routine, There's a cost involved too. You have to correct French-speakers' English and go beyond the minimum of "just crossing out words" to give good explanations of your corrections in order to get the same in return.
It takes time. Try to make a goal of writing three paragraphs a week for at least two months about varied topics for correction on lang8. Also, try to find two or three people to correct on a regular basis as well. To me learning a language is about building critical mass. If you want to speak and get better at it, speak a lot with native speakers. If you want to improve your reading skills and learn more vocabulary at the same time, read a lot. For whatever skill you wish to improve do it a lot. Learning a language is a commitment. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 4 of 8 23 May 2015 at 3:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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From my experience, devouring lots of input can help you tremendously. By reading and listening a lot, you can develop a similar feel for "what is the correct options" to the one you've got in your native language.
It will take time, lots of input and some practice. I know some people on htlal are firm believers in practice and being corrected over and over. I think that is not the most efficient way forward in every situation. I've had mistakes corrected over and over while just fossilizing them at the same time, getting used to the correct patterns was much more important than the feedback alone. Of course, there are tools that can help alongside native material. My list of recommendations: -books, preferably modern. While some older classics (like Dumas) are surprisingly modern, some polars, fantasy and thrillers can serve this purpose better. -tv series. Good quality dubbings or original ones. Movies, talk shows, podcasts, all that is, in my opinion, harder than tv series but awesome and valuable. -vocabulary sources with examples, such as Vocabulaire Progressif (but there are many more as well). A monolingual dictionary and a dictionary of synonymes can be surprisingly handy tools as well. The monolingual dictionary I chose and keep using: Le Robert micro. There are 35000 words with their families, tons of examples, there are often synonymes mentioned as well. And it is still quite a small book, considering the amount of information included. But there are many more you can use, the most sold ones are Le Robert and Larousse these days. -google examples for new words or rather the words you are unsure to use. I'm not speaking of google translate! Just put the word in the google search and you'll get a ton of webpages where the word is used in a sentence. If you learn to use the advanced googling techniques (such as using "-" to get rid of some of the meanings and common connections), you can refine the found examples more to your needs. -work on your grammar. explicit studying, such as using La Grammaire Progressive series, that can remove many of the doubts you might be having. Edited by Cavesa on 23 May 2015 at 3:27pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 8 23 May 2015 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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I definitely agree with Cavesa. Anyone who writes is told to read more, even if it's about L1 writing skills.
Also, input needs to be more or less i+1, but corrected output also needs to be i+1, otherwise it'll be overwhelming. If you get too many corrections, read more and try to write simple stuff. Read the kind of texts that you're trying to write. Try not to think of it in terms of translating and finding the correct equivalent to a L1 word. Learn to think in L2, to understand the logic of this or that word or expression. Words generally develop from the simple concrete meanings to more abstract metaphoric ones. Of course those meanings often date back centuries, and in French they often descend from Latin. For example I used the word "expression" here, which comes from the Latin word for squeezing/pressing out, literally ex-pressing. Italian espresso comes from the same source, btw. Etymology definitely makes Romance languages easier. Basically, if you do resort to equivalents, think of them as the functions of the word, not the meaning(s) of it. The English verb "to play" can have at least four translations in Finnish, depending on whether it's about kids having unstructured fun, an actor performing, someone playing some sort of game/sport or finally a musical instrument. Play has several equivalents, but in English it does have a common meaning encompassing them all. Doing something with no pragmatic purpose, often using special objects and relying on the imagination to give this activity a meaning. So don't limit the scope of a French word based on the English equivalent. Many words from the dictionary are too general or too specific. In many cases you need to find the main word for a concept, instead of pegging French words into the English logic of your phrase. Make your logic French. In fact, right now it might be more useful to correct French speakers learning English than to get corrections yourself. You'll see them writing all sort of things like "I thought in that" (okay, that's from Spanish&Portuguese and idk if it's the same in French). You'll see how deeply ingrained this logic is, you'll see what you sound like, and you'll remember many French expressions from the hilarious mistakes. Edited by Serpent on 23 May 2015 at 8:49pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 6 of 8 24 May 2015 at 8:05am | IP Logged | ||
Anyway, it's not so much about (hah) choosing the right word for "about", but simplifying what you say. If you already find yourself stuck with an English word that has several translations, take one more step back and think of other ways to say the same thing in English. Then choose the easiest, even if it feels less precise. Word-by-word translation is likely to be imprecise anyway. You may want to ponder whether the English word sounds completely different if you remove the context. If it does, you're probably dealing with an advanced meaning. Simplify it. When it comes to individual words, focus more on the English than French ones. But as I said, the key is preventing these situations in the first place, by learning to think in French. Edited by Serpent on 24 May 2015 at 8:26am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chaotic_thought Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 3543 days ago 129 posts - 274 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, French | Message 7 of 8 24 May 2015 at 11:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Distinguish between WORDS and MESSAGES. This is sometimes called "don't translate in your head." Personally, I call it don't translate, period. You'll just end up confusing yourself anyway, so it's futile.
Consider the first sentence that you learn in the very first day of French class: comment t'appelles tu [1] Translation fanatics might recognize the usage of a reflexive verb 's'appeler', which ostensibly means 'call' in English. Therefore the translation becomes what do you call yourself [2] However, one needs only to read this sentence aloud to become aware of the violence it does to the English-trained ear. The situation in which you say [2] while speaking English is not at all the situation in which you say [1] while speaking French. The one has nothing to do with the other. Instead of thinking in terms of 'translations', think of the situation where you actually say s'appeler.
-> comment t'appelles tu 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 8 of 8 24 May 2015 at 1:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Actually, he says: Comment tu t'appelles usually, that is the correct word order.
However, I think this is one of the examples why the order chosen by course creators, based on frequent conversational situations,is not always the best learning order since the very first sentence someone learns is a reflexive verb in question formed with "comment". That is quite a lot of grammar to swallow with your very first sentence (or the second one, right after Je m'appelle ...). So, instead of teaching the grammar, the teachers present it as something to be memorised, which is even more terrifying thought ("oh, there is so much grammar" vs "oh, there is no grammar and we'll have to memorise so many sentences"). I've seen far too many people scared by their very first French class or the very first page in their course. However, I agree with chaotic_thought that translation is horrible in most cases. How to get rid of translating in your head, that is basically what I already wrote. Lots of input (especially the one that doesn't let you slow down too much, such as tv series). Some practice and so on. There is, however, one exception where the translation exercises come very useful, from my experience. If you can get your hands on a book of translation exercises with a key, it is exactly a great opportunity to practice being precise in meaning (of course, there are some limits to the exercise, such as there being more ways to translate the sentence), creating many more examples with the correct grammar, choosing good vocabulary. Sure, there are some liits to these exercises, one of them I already mentioned. But it can serve, as long as it is not the only thing you do and some kind of immersion prevails. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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