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luke TAC15 Français - [TAC14] Deuxième | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 313 of 439 07 October 2014 at 12:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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Random thoughts.
Listen/Reading I find it helpful to listen/read shorter pieces. At one extreme, there is the Assimil length lesson. More midsize is a short novel like Vol De Nuit, which is under 2 hours. Over the last 3 days, I've gone through Vol de Nuit three times. The pros of short pieces are they are doable with a little fortitude. If I have to go through a longer piece three times, it's really a longer time commitment, and that requires persistence that may wain if the story isn't compelling or I just want to move on. Vol de Nuit has a rather flowery style, so the translation isn't super literal. That has required some time just reading the English. I'm about at the point where I can just read the English and glance over at the French. I'd like to get this to the point of listen/reading in French/French with good comprehension before moving on for a while. A listen only followup then seems doable. At the moment, I'm not certain I have the story down well enough to slog through it without some text support. Of course, if I hit it a few more times, I'll know I've accomplished something. E.G. listening with good comprehension to something that was previously difficult. Anki - I like Anki in what I consider relatively small, manageable chunks. I've been adding about 10 words a day most days for about 2 months. That seems like a sustainable pace if I back it up with a good bit of listen/reading. I'm using a frequency dictionary for the words, rather than pulling them from courses. This is less direct, but with a goal of getting through the 5000 words in the book, it seems smart. I put in word 1010 today, which is prison. I don't want to trap myself in an Anki prison, so I keep an eye on the forecast. I took about a week off from adding words, and that brought the daily reviews from about 13 minutes to 9. My current thinking is to perhaps take a week off every 500 words or so to catch up. Assimil and vocabulary support - I'm getting near the point where just listen/reading the French courses once through in a quick pass will bring up some of the vocabulary I'm working on. I'm also thinking about regulating Assimil more to la salle de bains. It still has things to teach, but merits a bit of winding down and more varied approaches. In addition to the quick listen/read single pass, I'm thinking I'll probably do some read mostly/listen once waves. That will keep the course and it's material and words in ma vie quotidienne. FSI Basic French is really one of my lynchpins. I've been pretty good about getting through a unit per month. My end of year goal is to complete unit 12 and a strong review before the new year kicks off. Grammar - I was sick the first couple weeks Grammar was introduced in grade school, so I never heard the sales pitch. I'm not certain how much explicit grammar study helps, but since I know it's something I haven't slogged through, I know I can get something from it. I'm hoping I can start and stick with the two Hugo courses going through the end of the year to build that base. Professor Arguelles talks about three types of courses and how they all have benefits. For an intuitive learner like myself, his basic prescription is: a) An Assimil/Linguaphone course or two. b) A grammar/translation method (such as Hugo or classic Living Language). c) A full on learn by doing FSI drill method. So, I'm light on b. We'll see if that helps. Getting through it seems like it will open things up for 2015 a bit more. He also mentions doing a workbook if the language has a complex verbal system, which I feel French has. I'd like to do a CLE course, but have resisted spending the dollars, knowing that in the past, I've had a hard time working through a workbook only (no audio) method. Maybe that's something for 2015 as well. I've really got plans that take me through 2015 pretty well. Vocabulary - The Anki ten word a day approach will pretty much fill out 2015 at the current pace. Re-reading or re-listen/reading other books in my personal corpus give me hope that most of the ten words I add each day will seem easy, like I already know most of them. FSI - Units 13-24 is 12 months worth of study if I can maintain the pace I set this year. Assimil - putting this in the bathroom and perhaps mixing in some other short story type readings like Le Petit Nicolas should keep solidifying this material. Grammar - should come about automatically with FSI and the other courses, but a CLE workbook may be helpful. One may ask, what about speaking and writing and reading the really good stuff? 2016 is the year I think I'll look for a Skype type conversation partner. I may do a stint with lang-8 in 2015, or that could wait until 2016 as an additional "spread your winds" step. I also think 2016 will be the year where I can focus more on listen/reading the books I really want to get to. I'll of course sneak some of them in in 2015, but by 2016, formal study will hopefully be there just to fill in the gaps. Right now, I know I have plenty of gaps, so I don't feel the need to practice. And since Nostradamus seems to have taken over the pen, perhaps some sort of proficiency test in 2017. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4907 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 314 of 439 07 October 2014 at 8:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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Sounds like a good plan. I'm up to word 2200 in the frequency dictionary, but I've taken a break from adding new words as my daily reviews are up to 150. I'm also getting a bit frustrated with similar words like le profit, le bénéfice and la prestation.
You might not know it, but many of the newer CLE books have a CD: Grammaire progressive Conjugaison progressive Unfortunately, these editions are a lot more expensive. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 315 of 439 07 October 2014 at 9:26am | IP Logged | |||||
I'm with you on the synonyms or similar words. I've taken to making sure "benefit" is mentioned in my Anki hint with a word like "bénéfice", even if Routledge failed to mention it. I use http://wordreference.com/ as a cross reference and a source for sentences when a word isn't easy to get right.
That is good news - the CD part - not the expensive part :) I learnt a lot about buying material when I studied Spanish. I've got a whole bookshelf of books and courses I only just started. I found there were a few that really went all the way and the time that went into buying the extras could have been spent here posting useless drivel. I've made up for it with my French studies. I was a big poster when I was focusing on Spanish too. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Fortunately, I did resist buying FSI Basic French for $400 back when I was studying Spanish. The nature of the internet, public domain, and advances in publication made that purchase unnecessary. The availability of CLE books with CD is very good news since I've resisted all previous purchases from them. Those CD editions are only about a year old. Edited by luke on 07 October 2014 at 9:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 316 of 439 10 October 2014 at 12:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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French In Action - I have the videos, audio, and books for the first half of the course. This makes perfect sense for my "grammar" and "workbook" tracks. I've only reviewed the intros. I haven't started lesson 2 yet, which is the first instructional lesson. It's funny, I've had this for years and although I've watched the videos, I have hardly cracked the books or audio, and I that's where a big part of the course is.
French Frequency Dictionary - word 1050 is recommandation. I changed the first easy interval from 4 to 3 days. The percentages are the same, so I don't think this will impact my progress much. I think I could even set it at 2 days with a similar result. It seems that with 2 days, a card that is "easy" twice would be on the same schedule as one that was "easy" on the first day. It just gives an opportunity to get it down solid before the review intervals grow too quickly. Using French - Leçon 55 dans la salle de bains. FSI Basic French - tape 11.5 is on deck. Yesterday it was still a hard tape on my 3rd approach to it. I got 10-15 minutes into the tape each day over about 35 minutes. That means I don't think the other half of the tape. It's one of those where the first "verification" drills is at the beginning and the whole tape is verifying the same grammar point (with all the beautiful variations the course has introduced up to this point). I'm really looking forward to the review when I finish up unit 11. There are too many small grammar points that are not yet easy and automatic. On the way home from work yesterday I think I only listened to a couple minutes and quickly switched to a listen only audiobook. I was tired. I even got to the point of thinking of just skipping the damn tape and moving on to the next grammar point. I'm not ready to give up yet though. Audio Livres - I'm on chapter 11 of the old favorite in the car. I've got a couple others audiobooks going on that memory stick. Another new old fave is on chapter 7 of about 24 - 26. Learn French in your Car - on lesson 65. Sur la Liberté - by John Stuart Mill. A week and half ago I finished a grand tour of this listen/reading in En/Fr, Fr/En, and Fr/Fr. I'm into chapter 2 in a listen wave in the car. Vol de Nuit - by St-Exupery. I finished a fourth listen/read a day or so ago. It's now in the gym slot for another listen. By the way, I don't know if it's related, but the day after finishing the fourth trip through Vol de Nuit four days in a row, I seemed to be thinking in French automatically. This morning, I'm tired after maybe 5 hours sleep and I don't feel the same bonus. Philosophie Vivant - is also in the gym slot. Lecture 6 is next. Vol de Nuit is in the front seat though. Edited by luke on 10 October 2014 at 1:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 4005 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 317 of 439 10 October 2014 at 4:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Luke,
I am truly impressed at your sustained study levels. Week after week you accomplish so much! You put my efforts to shame! Kudos to you! I think Vol de Nuit will be in my line-up shortly for the Super Challenge. I appreciated you sharing that there was a recording available, and may have an English back-up to help with some of the flowery language. Edited by Mohave on 10 October 2014 at 4:22pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 318 of 439 11 October 2014 at 1:44am | IP Logged | |||||
That's so funny and revealing for me. Psychologically, I somethimes ask myself why I started this long trek. Oh yeah, I remember. I thought it would be easy. Two years later, I still think I'm two years away from a comfortable level. It really is interesting to me. I am hoping French in Action "activates" French in my head. I have to balance from pushing too hard, which can lead me to thoughts of quitting, which would really be silly. On the bright side, there are many things I hear that seem easy. Mostly old Assimil lessons :) I really need to come up with more variations on my study approach to get everything to sink in. In my moments of greater sanity, I realize that this all just takes a while. The main thing is to maintain habits that will lead us to our goals. P.S. Listening to Vol de Nuit in the gym today gave me particular satisfaction. I'm learning more about the story as a whole without the text. It is an interesting story, from the psychology of the characters to the intro and who Andre Gide calls "le heros". I'm imaging who he calls "le heros" is actually not at all who I think of as the heros of the story. More fascinating still is that I fancy St. Exupery would agree with my assessment. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4907 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 319 of 439 11 October 2014 at 11:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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Like you, I've been sitting on FIA for about 2 years. I bought the DVDs about 3 years ago, and I watched a bit before the first super challenge in which I watched the whole thing. I've started the 2nd lesson on audio a few times, and even the 3rd lesson once or twice. It has some features in common with FSI, but to do it justice you really need to use the workbook, which I suppose is why I haven't gotten far with it. I like FSI because I can use it on the go.
Still, like you I want to do FIA "one day", and like you I think it will do a lot to "activate" French. I think the same of FSI, but the video element of FIA helps to connect the learning to reality. Edit: somewhere, Elexi has written a nice outline for studying lessons of FIA. The main things I remember is that you do each lesson over a week, start with the video, the next day do the first set of audio exercises, the next day the written exercises, etc, then finish the week with the video again. What I thought was good about the outline (which was more detailed) was that it gives you the time to really assimilate the learning, and revisiting the video at the end gives you that boost when you find you recognize the parts you've studied. Edited by Jeffers on 11 October 2014 at 11:27am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 320 of 439 18 October 2014 at 9:49am | IP Logged | |||||
I found xtremelingo's French in Action review, but not Flexi's. I was wondering where I got the idea to watch the video again at the end of the week, and it was in your post. I have the Study Guide. It doesn't mention repeating the video at the end, but repeating the video makes sense because you notice things you didn't on the previous viewing. Note, So far, I don't think the Study Guide is necessary. I've been using it though. I took about a week to get through lesson 2. I studied a bit each day. I ended up watching the video twice. The second time was before the end of the week because that's how I interpreted something in the Study Guide. I think the main thing is just to work through it and for me, to focus on the parts I think I don't need to do, such as write out the answers. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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