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luke TAC15 Français - [TAC14] Deuxième | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5465 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 409 of 439 13 April 2015 at 10:55am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Luke,
Sorry to learn of the sad news regarding your brother-in-law. I hope your family and his cope as best as possible in such a difficult time :( Reading about your diversified approach with French lately just makes me think; whatever works to keep you motivated with your learning and content with your methods is a great recipe for progress, so keep up the momentum as you are doing great as usual but particularly in such trying times. PM 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4898 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 410 of 439 13 April 2015 at 3:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hey Luke, good to read you're still slogging through. The "end game" approach makes sense: do now what you want to use the language for in the future. I'm getting annoyed that you keep adding new cards to Mr. Anki, because you'll soon catch me up! I'm in the 2200s right now, and just getting back to reviews after a break of about 10 weeks, so when I click, Increase Review Limit, it always says I have 1000 cards due... There are obviously too many in the queue for Anki to count.
I've always been curious about your reading/listening choices, which tend to center around philosophy. Is it just out of interest, or is it also part of your general education? I'm tempted to try some philosophy in French, but it's intimidating! I've got L'etranger, which has a reputation for being easy, but I still haven't made a start. Maybe next week/month/year. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7194 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 411 of 439 13 April 2015 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks Peter, great supportive post.
Hey Jeffers. I'm usually contemplating ditching Mr. Anki, but I keep doing it every day. On the 1000 card backlog, what I did when mine was in the hundreds after a week or so of neglect was reset the max review cards to 100. That was low enough that I could slog through and later get the daily reviews down to the low 60s. At that point, whimsy comes in and I add more cards. Right now, my daily review cards is set to 80. Daily reviews are still in the 60s-70s. If it gets as high as 80, I'll probably dial back the new cards to something even lower than 10. As far as philosophy, I've just been interested. I took one course in college. To summarize my current thinking: Ten Year Reading Plan - The Plato reading/listening is on deck. These are from the start of year 1. The Ten Year Reading Plan has the benefits of: * Some great books have better free recordings in French than English. * Particularly for ancient Greek and Latin, English has no inherent advantage in translation quality compared to French. * It's nice to have a big goal. The list seems to be well thought out by someone in know. (Mortimer Adler, I believe). Assimil Intensive and Extensive Extensive is just listen/reading FR/FR courses I've been through before. At the moment, Business French is my extensive choice. It has the most vocabulary to teach me. The Assimil Intensive track is Using French. It fits well in trips to the bathroom. FSI Basic French This is currently listening and listen/reading the "truncate silence" recordings I have. My goal is to pick up more grammar points and familiarize myself with the rest of the course. So, in a nutshell, we can say this track is in preview mode. Narrow Listening and Reading Using Jeffers' phrase, this one is primarily in listen and winding down mode. I haven't read all the books available on the topic, which is the best kept secret in the forum, but I have become quite familiar with the recordings I have. Mr. Anki Word 1900 is animer, apparently as a warning to French students who go bi-polar in their love/hate relationship with Anki. Edited by luke on 13 April 2015 at 6:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7194 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 412 of 439 21 April 2015 at 12:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Ten Year Reading Plan - I've done L'Apologie de Socrate, Criton, and I'm about half way through livre 1
in La Republique de Platon. I mostly listen to the audiobooks in English and French. I.E., not much reading so far. Actually, I started each of these books with listen/reading EN/FR and FR/EN and have done some reading just in French or English. I read all of Apology in English. Just to give a clearer idea, I've probably passed through the three works mentioned above by Plato a half dozen times or more in one way or another. Probably over half of the passes have been listen only. Note: The Chambry French translation goes well with the Allen Bloom English translation. Litteratureaudio.com uses the Chambry translation. Librivox has the Benjamin Jowett English translation. I wonder if the older Victor Cousin's French translation would go well with that. Assimil Intensive and Extensive Business French is in extensive mode. I've been doing one new chapter most days. I listen/read the previous one for review. Using French is on the intensive track in the john. It's on Lesson 6. I'm also reviewing the previous lesson each day. FSI Basic French Preview mode is around tape 16.3. Hugo Advanced French This one is in the other bathroom. It's less travelled. I'm in the first chapter. I've been through the dialogues and the grammar points and now am in the exercises. Mr. Anki Word 1900 is still animer, warning French students who go bi-polar of a potential love/hate relationship with Anki. Ten new cards flow in each day. There's 127 unseen cards, so I won't have to add any for another week or two. 3318 mature cards in the frequency deck. Thoughts I've been reading several of smallwhite's posting. She has a more goal oriented approach that is very effective. I'm thinking about morphing my approach to be a bit more goal oriented. That may tend to ramp up the intensity for me. There's something attractive about the notion of finishing something up and moving on without necessarily always planning to circle back and pickup more. The way that's jostling around in my head is to intensively read some of the books in the 10 year plan, rather than just focusing on listening. It would be more of a combination. At times I even think I might add words from that track to Anki. I also have picked up that she gives grammar a lot more attention than I have. Here, similarly, I could focus more on both the grammar in the 10 year plan books, to get the answer of the moment, as well as do an even lighter pass through FSI so as not to totally abort my odyssey through FSI. There is the self-talk she has mentioned, an area I have neglected terribly from day one. Oh, and she uses the frequency deck as just clean-up sweep, gathering most of her vocabulary from other material she is using. Stop adding cards from the frequency dictionary before I hit 2000? I'm not sure. I've only been at 10 year plan for a couple of weeks and I seem to be making decent progress. Maybe I shouldn't mess with my plan. We'll have to see what happens this coming week. Maybe I could take another page from Professor Arguelles and do Listen/Reading and Reading/Listening and not create another Anki deck. Edited by luke on 21 April 2015 at 3:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4898 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 413 of 439 21 April 2015 at 1:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was intrigued by the ten year reading list link when you posted it before. I read the first section and thought, "I could do that in 10 years, just." Then I realized that it was a list for the first year only. A little depressing. My second thought was that if I read at the pace they recommend, I'm not sure I would really be taking in and thinking about all those great ideas. On the other hand, reading them in a second or third language might help to really ponder the ideas, since you would be moving through them a bit slower. I'm very tempted to try taking on a few of the Plato readings in classical Greek, while using a French translation to help. (I read a slightly simplified version of the apology way back when I first learned Greek).
After my 6 week break from Anki, I'm now slowly working through my French frequency backlog, while adding a few new words to my Hindi reading and Assimil Sanskrit decks. Some days I do up to 200 French cards, other days I just do 50 or so. Once I catch up with the French deck, I plan to get up to around 2500 before abandoning the frequency dictionary. Some article I read recently, possibly even linked to by you Luke, suggested learning the first 2500 words. After a point it becomes less efficient to use frequency lists and more efficient to learn from extensive reading. I'm doing both, but 2500 seems like a good, if arbitrary, cut-off point. If I'm still getting any joy from the deck at that point, I may keep extending it au fur et à mesure (a nice little phrase I added to my reading deck a few months ago). I think the goal-oriented approach has a lot of value, but it depends on the goals. One reason I joined the Super Challenge is that I know a lot of reading, watching and listening will really help my languages. The SC helps me to quantify and track my progress and see if I'm getting to my goal. I look forward to hearing how you implement goals into your study. I chuckled to myself when I read about your "intensive" study on the toilet. Too many weird images.... Edited by Jeffers on 21 April 2015 at 1:40pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5465 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 414 of 439 22 April 2015 at 7:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Hey luke,
It beats me how you get so much done! And I mean that with a lot of respect intended. You're covering A LOT of courses AND native material. I need to take a page out of your book. When people like yourself and Jeffers speak of classic literature it almost freaks me out. I was absolutely pathetic at reading at school, and I mean pathetic. I was a typical sport fanatic and HATED reading. I fudged book reports without reading them, and could not stand having to read books for homework. Any wonder why as hard as I tried with writing my English grades were barely ever above a C grade. Mind you I did get through the odd few novels (and I literally mean a few- I seriously doubt I read over 5 books throughout my entire high school education). I probably only made it through those as we read them in class as well from memory. I did enjoy those few books that I got through- Perhaps I just didn't appreciate the topics and being forced to read what didn't interest me (based on it's cover).... Things started to change but ever so gradually. After high school I started reading. At uni my grades were excellent (but I wrote well based on analytical formula's- my vocab wasn't exceedingly large by any means, but it flowed very well)... but still... This is why in part I have been so slow on the uptake with native materials, and probably why I clutch so much to courses - I really enjoy the drills, the adventure of a course (yes that's incredibly dull of me) and the analytical nature of courses- along with the opportunity to perfect pronunciation and grammar points. However in recent times I've at least read extensively on new things that have held my interest that hadn't earlier in life. So I see your literary efforts as almost unsurmountable to me. Mind you in latter years I'm very much a believer in anyone can do anything they put their mind to (success in Sport and language learning via self study have brought me that confidence). One day perhpas I'll have half an idea of the classic books (or at the very least some of the simpler Novels like Harry Potter) are like. Great work Luke!
Love this statement Jeffers. Luke and I as you know have come to a similar conclusion recently- that there comes a point when it seems flashcards hold much less value compared with native materials. Mind you I've recently reintroduced them in a smaller degree (after ditching them altogether). They still hold some value. PM Edited by PeterMollenburg on 22 April 2015 at 7:25am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7194 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 415 of 439 22 April 2015 at 9:31am | IP Logged | ||
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It's good to hear from you guys.
One thing about the Ten Year Reading List that wasn't obvious until I'd looked at it a few times was that several of the entries are just a one or a few chapters from the work. Even those that mention "books", are often more like "books" in the bible. I.E. several of them make up a longer work. In several of the "books" I'm familar with, a book is only about an hour or so, so it's not like every item on the list is Moby Dick or Don Quixote. In fact, most aren't. So far, I have detected an elevated theme in the readings. That appeals to me. The tie-in of Aristophanes "The Clouds" with "Apology of Socrates" gave me a better appreciation of what Ancient Greek comedy was like and it puts Socrates (and Plato) in perspective. Open BBC has a production of "The Clouds" in English which I would think would appeal to anyone who likes Monty Python. Jeffers, if you go to 2500 in the frequency deck, there's a good chance you will remain ahead of me. In fact, at 2200, you may have beaten me :) We'll see. I'm getting a bit more drawn into the words and works of Plato. I want to follow his arguments. The litteratureaudio.com recordings of La Republique are very good in that they are spoken relatively slowly and the reader sounds like he understands what he's saying. I like his accent and he has been the sole narrator. Monsieur Le Prime Ministre, you are still a young man. There is plenty of life to develop an appreciation for the classics and more pressing things to focus on right now. I will say that I wish I'd started decades ago. There is a depth of character and characters in the commonly recognized "great books" that helps me understand humans a bit better than I've been able to pick up along the way and through TV and movies. Another nice thing about how I'm going at the Ten Year Reading Plan is that it seems to meld well with my tendency to go through stuff again and again, always looking for something more. Edited by luke on 22 April 2015 at 9:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4898 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 416 of 439 22 April 2015 at 11:24am | IP Logged | ||
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I think I will have to have a closer look at that reading list. It would give another angle to my language learning, since I could marry it to two of my target languages, Ancient Greek and French, with the result that I wouldn't just be learning them for the sake of learning them. I have always said that learning new languages opens up new worlds.
Like PM, I've never been a fan of "the classics", although I did read a heck of a lot of things that I liked (e.g. science fiction, Tolkien, etc.) as a teenager. I think I might enjoy them more with an adult perspective, and as a part of my language learning process. Was it Churchill who said, "Education is wasted on the young"? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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