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TAC’14 2ième - J’aimerais être bilingue | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 LauraM Pro Member United States Joined 5343 days ago 77 posts - 97 votes  Studies: German Personal Language Map | Message 17 of 46 23 December 2010 at 6:54pm | IP Logged | ||
What a fantastic piece of advice!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wish your target language was German, LOL, but enjoyed this log anyway... ;o) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5462 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 18 of 46 10 February 2011 at 6:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Mid winter update...
First of all, thanks to LauraM for the kind comments. With about a month and a half left in my stay in Montreal I thought I would record some random thoughts starting with "Il fait frette tabarnak!!" Language partners Language partners form the core of my mission here. I have two payed partners and about 3 French-English exchange partners. The two payed ones are excellent and form a base that I can depend on - meaning same day same time each week plus unlike most of the others they are available during the day. One is a woman who was born and raised in France but has lived in Montreal for 25 years and thus is unparalleled at explaining differences between here and there. The other is a Québécois born in Montreal but raised in northern Quebec not far from my hometown in northern Ontario. He is a professional musician and a language enthusiast who studies several other languages. Of the free exchange partners I will mention only one - the chief planner of emergency services for the Agglomération of Longueuil. We meet once or twice a week either in Montreal or Brossard on the south shore. He has a passion for improving his English (which is already much better than my French) which I discovered is because he is a member and past president of a bilingual chapter of the public speaking club Toastmasters. He arrives each time, well prepared with a notebook of words and phrases to ask me about. I was invited to attend a meeting to hear him deliver a speech that I had helped with and to my surprise - J'ai dû prendre la parole deux fois - en anglais et en français. eek! Meetup.com I attend the bi-weekly meetings of meetup.com Français-Anglais exchange mainly to meet people like I described above and steal them from the meetup for private exchanges. On a sad note, one of the members of this group, a young female was found dead in a park on a very cold day here after failing to arrive at the meeting. Meetin.org This group works better than the above group because it is smaller and everyone speaks French for the first hour and English for the second rather than sit on opposite sides of the room. Last week at this meeting I made an interesting discovery. I found the Québécois (et une Québécoise) much easier to understand than the FSL students. This is the opposite of what I experienced even 3 months ago when other students were just more comprehensible because it was what I was used to. This I see as validation of my decision to stay far away from a classroom environment and makes me wonder how far ahead I'd be if I had avoided interactions with other students from the start. Le Théâtre d'Aujourd'hui One of the most challenging things I have done was to go to see a play by Québécois playwright Michel Marc Bouchard called "Tom à la ferme". This was tough because unlike language partners the actors don't adjust their manner of speaking conscientiously or otherwise to help me. I did however make a recording of the play and with Audacity I was able to eliminate all noises, music and silent periods and was then able to review the play with the help of the book. Tomorrow I am going to see it again with one of my free exchange partners so hopefully it will be more clear. Montréal I love Montreal - even in the winter. Many people have asked me why I didn't come in the summer when they claim it is better here. Maybe it is but I must return to Toronto to prepare my sailboat to be launched near the end of April. Perhaps I will return by boat and stay in the old port marina for a while. I know that the furnished apartment I have will become much more expensive starting in spring. The public transit (STM) is great here and in my opinion works better than the TTC in Toronto. I do wish we had TGV trains like in France however for my once or twice monthly visits to Toronto. Finally I have heard there are many anglophones here who dwell most of the time in the "West Island" in a virtual English bubble. I don't think I could ever do that... Edited by microsnout on 06 March 2011 at 10:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5372 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 19 of 46 21 March 2011 at 5:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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De nouveaux commentaires sur Yabla maintenant que ton inscription est terminée?
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| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5462 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 20 of 46 01 April 2011 at 5:05am | IP Logged | ||
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@Arekkusu - désolé d'avoir répondu si tard mais j'étais à Kapuskasing dans le nord de l'Ontario. Oui, l'abonnement
à Yabla s'est achevé. Je vais peut-être le renouveler un de ces quatre pourvu qu'il soit agrandi. Au présent, je pense me concentrer sur des matériels en provenance du Canada. Time to update this log now that my stay in Montreal is nearly over. Northern Ontario I have just returned from a one week break from my activities here. I visited my home town in Northern Ontario for the first time in 5 years and found it more francophone than ever but with a smaller population. The Franco- Ontarien flag is flown everywhere in town now. Although I stayed in the home of an old friend whose wife and son are francophone, I did not speak French very much because it would have excluded my host who speaks only English and Croatian. We did however watch three French movies "La Grande Séduction" and "Le Bonheure de Pierre" which I had brought with me and "Le Dîner de Cons" which they provided. The first movie was a huge hit with my hosts. New language partner Towards the end of February I found a language partner that I wish I had found back in November! His English is the weakest of anyone I have met so far which has made me realize how difficult teaching English can be. He makes up for this with great enthusiasm and desire to improve plus being self employed has the flexibility to meet during the day up to three times a week. One week I spent so much time with him - in cafés, pubs, restaurants and elsewhere that while on the phone, a friend from Toronto told me I was speaking English with a slight French Canadian accent! For me, his French is a bigger challenge than others I exchange with - he rarely makes any adjustment to accommodate me and almost every time he speaks there is something uniquely québécois that you will not find at the Alliance Française. He takes private English lessons at a school in Brossard,QC that cost $50 per hour which is normal I suppose but the materials they make you buy cost $700 and are of very doubtful quality - two spiral bound books and twenty DVDs with the most boring content you have ever seen for language training. He says he can't sit through one without falling asleep. Worse than that is that the teachers at the school are forbidden to tell students about the meetup.com group because it is free and competes with their conversation classes. Teaching English Ok this teaching English thing is getting more difficult now. Before I just had to explain some common idioms or confirm whether some word is in common usage in Canada today. Now there is no end to the things I am asked, most of which I have never thought of like why you "watch television" but "listen to the radio" or the many uses of the word 'matter' or the difference between the words 'beside' and 'besides'. Leaving Montreal Tomorrow I am returning to Toronto for the weekend and then will come back here for my last week here to pack up stuff, visit people one last time and give up the apartment - just when its getting spring like here too. I am a bit disappointed in my progress - even though others have said it is significant I had hoped for more. It is partly because of some unrelated personal problems which have distracted me a lot in the last month and a feeling of saturation requiring a longer break from study. I have in fact felt like I was regressing during the past two weeks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5462 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 21 of 46 23 June 2011 at 5:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Early summer update
Its been almost 3 months since I updated this log so there must be something to add. Language study used to be mainly an off-season (i.e. sailboat not in water) pass-time but with increasing language level comes more opportunities in summer. It has been over two months since I ended my winter immersion mission in Montreal and returned to Toronto and I must admit that speaking opportunities have been rare and I have done little more than listen to French radio while driving and watching the news on Radio-Canada. I did make one visit to Montreal (actually to Longueuil) to see several language partners that I met over the winter. My best partner, still keen to improve his English wants to visit the marina here in Toronto where I assured him he would find a great English immersion in a highly social environment. I still want to go back to Quebec in the summer or fall to explore the regions and towns far from Montreal where English is seldom heard. Franco-Fête de Toronto The organizers of this festival were foolish enough to accept me as a volunteer this weekend so I hope that goes well and I can interact with the public with acceptable fluency! If the weather is nice, I would like to move the boat to the festival as there is a marina right at harbourfront right in the middle of the festival. My one condition was that I would be free to attend the concert by Damien Robitaille, one of my favorite francophone singers (Franco-Ontarien in fact). Edited by microsnout on 23 June 2011 at 5:34am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5462 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 22 of 46 30 June 2011 at 2:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Franco-Fête de Toronto
I worked about 8 hours as a volunteer at this festival. I did not take the boat however. I was looking after a giant chess set until 3pm along with another volunteer who was a young francophone from Switzerland visiting Canada for 6 months. After that I handed out programs by the main stage while enjoying an assortment of musical artists from various parts of the francophonie. After my duty ended I attended the concert of Damien Robitaille and the humorist Boucar Diouf (originally from Sénégal, now Montreal). At one point, wondering when the Robitaille concert would begin, I realized with some amusement that I did not have a program - after spending all day handing them out to others! I realized during the performance of Boucar Diouf that stand up comedy is still mostly beyond my ability to understand. The rapid speech, cultural references, slang and double meanings make it very challenging to fully appreciate. I only laughed maybe one in 5 times as the audience in general. This is reason to continue to study!! This was a particularly interesting performance too as the theme was the cultural (and thermal) shock of a native of Sénégal arriving in Quebec. Edited by microsnout on 30 June 2011 at 2:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5462 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 23 of 46 26 July 2011 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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English Immersion
My best language partner (from my winter stay in Montreal) came to stay 4 days on my boat here in Toronto last week. There was unfortunately very little opportunity for me to speak French since I promised him as much English immersion time as possible. There were however several people at the marina who wanted to speak French with him a bit which was fine. I discovered that one friend who claimed to speak French (needed while cruising French islands in the Caribbean all winter) actually spoke very little - and I had wrongly assumed that he was more fluent than me. I did manage to provide nearly unlimited English practice for him, the first day there was a dinner party on the dock which then moved to my boat late in the evening and on the third day we rafted together with 2 other boats at anchor near Toronto island. On the other two boats was about a dozen people visiting from as far as South Carolina and Florida in town for a Jimmy Buffet concert. They provided some interesting accents for him to study. Revisiting an old exercise With little speaking opportunities I have been reviewing a large collection of audio clips that I studied previously. Several years ago, finding it next to impossible to find good Canadian origin audio sources with transcripts, I found online a collection of 600 short audio files featuring 20 different speakers all native Québécois with about 10 male and 10 female voices and with complete transcripts. I used to study this in an active manner, pausing, repeating, looking up words, making notes etc but now I have been reviewing in more passive way, using shuffle mode on an ipod so it hops from one speaker to another at random while I try to picture the exact words including accents and spelling while listening and only very rarely pausing to consult the transcript. Edited by microsnout on 26 July 2011 at 7:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5462 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 24 of 46 15 September 2011 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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A new language learning season begins..
In just 4 more days I will haul my sailboat out of the water for the winter - the earliest ever date. I could have waited until mid-Nov but I have plans to spend Oct in Quebec City. There is a language school with a new adult immersion program that is offering a 50% discount this fall only so I thought I would try it out for one month anyway. I don't really like classroom instruction very much but with the discount I will get accommodation with a francophone family, two meals a day, three hours class per evening and a immersion volunteer opportunity by day, all for less than I paid for a furnished apartment in Montreal last winter. If I like the program, I could extend it for Nov and Dec as well at the same rate. After that, I think I will seek a place to stay in Montreal as I have several friends there from last winter including my best language partner in Longueuil who is expecting my continued help with his English. I have done very little over the past 4 or 5 months other than listen to the radio, tv and some podcasts so it is time to get back to more active study and more importantly, some speaking. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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