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TAC 2009 - DaraghM

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ExtraLean
Triglot
Senior Member
France
languagelearners.myf
Joined 5996 days ago

897 posts - 880 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: German

 
 Message 137 of 177
17 July 2009 at 11:38am | IP Logged 
DaraghM wrote:
French Problems

I was going to post this in the self study forum, but I wanted to mention a number of different issues. I've a couple of problems with French, and I'm not sure how to over come them. The root of my problems stem from the fact I studied French at school almost twenty years ago, but subsequently forgot most of the language. I can list the problems as follows,

#1 - Pronunciation. When I speak French, I seem to have some very serious fossilized pronunciation problems. Unlike my school days, I've doing massive amounts of listening over writing, and this has cleared some problems. The biggest problem is the extremely common words pour, de, deux, etc. If I encounter a completely new word, I'll pronounce it correctly, but I can't seem to unlearn the bad pronunciation of the common words.

#2 - Writing over speaking. I find it difficult to construct valid French sentences in my head when speaking, but writing seems a lot easier. On a recent grammar exercise in the Living Language course, I could do it almost on autopilot, but I'd have a hard time using the same grammar concepts in a spoken sentence. This has led me to believe the writing and speaking\listening parts of my brain are quite divorced in French.

#3. Understanding my level. I've no idea my level in French. I would rate myself as early beginner as I struggle speaking the language, but I have very few difficulties reading the language. It seems my passive vocabulary is multiples greater than my active. I don't have this large discrepancy in my other languages, though the passive is always greater than the active.

Any thoughts or ideas on addressing these issues ?


*quoted because I went over to a new page...*

My two centimes:

N° 1. Ingrained errors are always a problem, I think that the best thing is that you do recognise them, and the only way to get it out is just to continually try to improve. I struggle to think of a wrong pronounciation of 'de' but the three words you listed are easy enough, just make the concious attempt that you are. It will come with time.

N° 2. This happens, again I can't think of any other way of improving other than using your speaking part of the brain. Speak speak and speak...not very helpful I know but voilà.

N° 3. Free online placement exams. Get a score (A2/B1/B2) etc. subtract one level for dodgy speaking skills and assume you're around there.

Keep up the good work Daragh, sorry I can't be of more help.

Thom.
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DaraghM
Diglot
Senior Member
Ireland
Joined 6153 days ago

1947 posts - 2923 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian

 
 Message 138 of 177
24 July 2009 at 3:41pm | IP Logged 
Hungarian

I finally managed to learn the dialogue of Unit 6, and master the vocabulary. The vocabulary is useful and includes all the days of the week, and a few other items. The audio of the FSI Hungarian course is structured slightly differently to the other FSI courses. The Spanish and French courses introduce words relevant to each sentence, but don't necessarily pronounce them individually. The FSI Hungarian course does, and also introduces extra vocabulary that's not part of the dialogue.

When learning vocabulary, I'm not a fan of mnemonics, but I discovered it does have some uses. As I've been listening to the all Hungarian audio without necessarily looking at the text, I used a couple of mnemonics to ensure I matched each word with its meaning. The mnemonics I use are to distinguish the words, and not as a clue to pronunciation.

E.g. For the dates of the week, I did the following,

Hétfő - Monday (sounds a tiny bit like hateful, and everyone hates Mondays)
Kedd - Tuesday (doesn't really sound like cod, but I imagined a cod been served on a pancake on pancake Tuesday)
Szerda - Wednesday (I used a Viking in my head, speaking in a strong Dublin accent, and saying "Sear that" to his god Woden).
Csütörtök - Thursday (sounds a tiny bit like "tutor took" so I imagined the tutor took off Thursday)
Péntek- Friday (I linked this two ways, associating Pentecost with Good Friday, and also the Greek Pente (πέντε) linking five and the fifth day of the week.)

The mnemonics were handy triggers as soon as I heard the word. It also made learning the dialogue a lot easier.

Edited by DaraghM on 24 July 2009 at 3:51pm

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DaraghM
Diglot
Senior Member
Ireland
Joined 6153 days ago

1947 posts - 2923 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian

 
 Message 139 of 177
24 July 2009 at 4:16pm | IP Logged 
Russian

I've found myself lately using a lot of L-R in my studies, and Russian is no exception. However, it is a hell of a lot more difficult in Russian compared to the Romance languages. Thanks to Turaisiawase, I got a copy of a trilingual copy of Le Petit Prince, and decided to give the Russian a go. Even though I know the novel reasonably well, I found the L-R part very difficult. I could link the nouns such as барашка-sheep, рисунок-drawing, among others, and some imperatives such as draw me-нарисуй мне, but I found word order and other constructions quite tricky. I think I need to vastly improve my basic Russian, before returning to this method.

My copy of Modern Russian 1 finally arrived. I like the fact this book has no fluffy exercises, and concentrates mainly on spoken Russian. However, the introduction to the hand writing system in Unit 2 is quite thorough. The biggest drawback with the course is the date of the material, and the fact it was written at the height of the cold war.    
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SII
Senior Member
Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5794 days ago

184 posts - 194 votes 
Speaks: Russian*
Studies: English

 
 Message 140 of 177
24 July 2009 at 4:44pm | IP Logged 
DaraghM wrote:
Russian
барашка-sheep


This isn't fully correct. The noun "sheep" may be translatd to Russian as "овца" (she-sheep) and "баран" (he-sheep). "Барашек" is he-lamb (sheep's child), "барашка" is genetive singular, not nominative.
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DaraghM
Diglot
Senior Member
Ireland
Joined 6153 days ago

1947 posts - 2923 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian

 
 Message 141 of 177
24 July 2009 at 5:08pm | IP Logged 
Thanks again SSI. Your answer has further highlighted the challenges using L-R to learn Russian. The full line from Маленький принц is,

Пожалуйста... нарисуй мне барашка

If I had to guess from context, I would've thought that барашка was in the dative case, or the accusative, but that's because I don't know the case endings properly. Why is the genetive singular used in this instance ?

Edited by DaraghM on 24 July 2009 at 5:10pm

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SII
Senior Member
Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5794 days ago

184 posts - 194 votes 
Speaks: Russian*
Studies: English

 
 Message 142 of 177
24 July 2009 at 9:02pm | IP Logged 
DaraghM wrote:
Thanks again SSI. Your answer has further highlighted the challenges using L-R to learn Russian. The full line from Маленький принц is,

Пожалуйста... нарисуй мне барашка

If I had to guess from context, I would've thought that барашка was in the dative case, or the accusative, but that's because I don't know the case endings properly. Why is the genetive singular used in this instance ?


This is my inaccuracy. "Барашка" is genetive or accusative singular. In this sentence the word in accusative. Full table of declencion for this word is:

        Sing.      Plur.
Nom. барашек    барашки
Gen. барашка    барашков
Dat. барашку    барашкам
Acc. барашка    барашков
Inst. барашком   барашками
Prep. барашке    барашках
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Katie
Diglot
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 6720 days ago

495 posts - 599 votes 
Speaks: English*, Hungarian
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 144 of 177
25 July 2009 at 12:37am | IP Logged 
DaraghM wrote:
Hungarian

I finally managed to learn the dialogue of Unit 6, and master the vocabulary. The vocabulary is useful and includes all the days of the week, and a few other items. The audio of the FSI Hungarian course is structured slightly differently to the other FSI courses. The Spanish and French courses introduce words relevant to each sentence, but don't necessarily pronounce them individually. The FSI Hungarian course does, and also introduces extra vocabulary that's not part of the dialogue.

When learning vocabulary, I'm not a fan of mnemonics, but I discovered it does have some uses. As I've been listening to the all Hungarian audio without necessarily looking at the text, I used a couple of mnemonics to ensure I matched each word with its meaning. The mnemonics I use are to distinguish the words, and not as a clue to pronunciation.

E.g. For the dates of the week, I did the following,

Hétfő - Monday (sounds a tiny bit like hateful, and everyone hates Mondays)
Kedd - Tuesday (doesn't really sound like cod, but I imagined a cod been served on a pancake on pancake Tuesday)
Szerda - Wednesday (I used a Viking in my head, speaking in a strong Dublin accent, and saying "Sear that" to his god Woden).
Csütörtök - Thursday (sounds a tiny bit like "tutor took" so I imagined the tutor took off Thursday)
Péntek- Friday (I linked this two ways, associating Pentecost with Good Friday, and also the Greek Pente (πέντε) linking five and the fifth day of the week.)

The mnemonics were handy triggers as soon as I heard the word. It also made learning the dialogue a lot easier.


Hi DaraghM! If I had the guts to, I'd record the song that I learnt to learn the days of the week :P It's the song the children learn at low grade school. I never thought I'd find myself learning childrens songs and enjoying them, but they seriously work - even for adults! And I have the added bonus that when I learn them, I can sing them to my friends' little ones to help them learn too :)

But on another note, I've used a program called Unforgettable Languages that uses the same approach to learning vocab. In the early days, I did actually find this very helpful. It got me my basics and I still remember things like a canal full of spoons (kanál) and a villa made of forks (villa) and a case of knives (kés). These days, I think it's too much work and I'd rather just SRS and use the words as much as possible!


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