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s.mann’s French ** TAC 2015 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| s.mann Groupie United States lang-8.com/973514/jo Joined 3636 days ago 55 posts - 76 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 17 of 58 28 December 2014 at 12:21am | IP Logged |
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I've been keeping up with minimal efforts on Lingvist and Duolingo, but perusing this
forum for ideas for far more time than I should... I still have lingering questions that maybe some people on here can answer for me: 1. What level is RFI Journal in Easy French considered to be? When should I expect to be able to understand it (in terms of "end of NFWE", "after FSI Basic lesson 6" might be easiest) 2. How do you "win" the TAC? Do I have to keep track of, post, and add up my hours? (And would that be here or in another team thread?) Or do I need to get from one evaluation level to another? Thanks in advance... Edited by s.mann on 29 December 2014 at 10:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| plumbem! Groupie United States Joined 3631 days ago 44 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French | Message 18 of 58 28 December 2014 at 1:11am | IP Logged |
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Hey! This is awesome. I was around A2 a year ago and think I made it to a B2.
Hopefully we will be on the French team together. 1.Michel Thomas (I am not sure what the 'complete' entails) is a great way to hack through the grammar for verbal usage and perhaps comprehension. I would highly recommend it, especially multiple focused listens. 2.Duolingo is also a guilty pleasure for me; I am not sure what I am getting out of it but I always am motivated to do it. 3.The subtitle thing is really frustrating. I am just coming around to really watching a lot of French movies/TV but it really sucks. There is this resource on the Wikia http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/French_movies_and_ser ies_with_accurate_subtitles 4.I think I got a lot more mileage than I realized out of watching Buffy with French dubs and translating the scripts with dictionary help. It kind of worked the textual and listening aspect at the same time. 5.I don't know if you've tried Anki, or how you feel about flashcards, but I really liked this shared deck https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2803610639 You might know a lot of the vocabulary already but its worth taking a look at. 6. Also GLOSS is awesome and I wish I had more of it under my belt. You practice listening comprehension, and build grammar/vocabulary (the teacher's notes are awesome) https://gloss.dliflc.edu/ 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Eagle32 Groupie New Zealand Joined 6499 days ago 56 posts - 83 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 19 of 58 28 December 2014 at 8:55am | IP Logged |
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Subs are rarely perfect, adjustments have to be made to keep the rate words are flying by at a level where most people can keep up with them.
However, English films that have been translated to French frequently have subs that are totally different because different companies/contractors handle the script translation for the audio and for the subs and there isn't usually a requirement that the translations match. Occasionally the subs do match the audio translation, a couple of recent examples: Step Up - All In Pompeii I've also found a couple of translated series that have pretty good subtitles (so far, I'm only on the first season of each): Star Wars Clone Wars Farscape (not as good as Clone Wars, more dropped and abridged sentences) Original French films are much better (but still terrible sometimes) but they are not subtitled as frequently as English films are. Some French films with pretty good subs: La Belle et La Bete Supercondriaque Populaire Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec Comme un chef Un Monstre à Paris If you want to roll the dice on Amazon.fr then films that list Français under "Sous-titres pour sourds et malentendants" (Subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing) are, in my limited experience, a safer bet than ones that just have 'regular' French subtitles. I actually prefer the subs that are for deaf people, a bunch of common actions get a lot of reinforcement like; sighing, coughing, laughing, etc. Edited by Eagle32 on 28 December 2014 at 9:30am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| s.mann Groupie United States lang-8.com/973514/jo Joined 3636 days ago 55 posts - 76 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 20 of 58 02 January 2015 at 4:26am | IP Logged |
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@Eagle32 - I've streamed Populaire and Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-
Sec with good success, and will probably check out Amazon.fr options in the near future. I also liked Farscape, so I may have to see if it is streaming on netflix.fr since they don't have the French dub on netflix.com. @plumbem! - I'm quite familiar with Buffy and have seasons 1-5 available on DVD, so I will probably try your method in the near future. Did you translate a whole script before watching an episode? Is it something you try to understand completely before moving on, or are you watching them more extensively? The drive back wasn't packed with Michel Thomas like I thought it would be. The beginning was very slow for me because of my background in French, and I was frustrated with the woman on there for basically not being able to follow directions (Michel is too). That said I did learn a few grammar points that hadn't been clear or even known to me in those couple hours I listened, so there's still much to gain from the course I"m sure, I just need to do it in a more relaxed environment than the road I think. I also think I just liked the constant interactivity from Pimsleur instead for keeping me alert and entertained on the road. Michel Thomas was one part soothing, one part hard to understand with road noise and the accent and one part annoyance in waiting for the rest of the class to catch up on something I wasn't struggling with for me. I know everyone says it's boring, but I like the constant mental and lingual activity of Pimsleur better overall personally. I've been reading about the LR (Listening-Reading) method, and am really intrigued by the possibilities. I'd probably attempt the Harry Potter series if I do it, although Les Trois Musketeers is also reportedly in a range I could attempt it with. That said, I have an interview and a test to study for before I give up a few days to reading, so it probably won't happen this weekend. My main project for January is turning myself into a morning person, so I'll have to do my 2015 initial stats post tomorrow. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4045 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 21 of 58 02 January 2015 at 9:39pm | IP Logged |
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Hi, good luck!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| s.mann Groupie United States lang-8.com/973514/jo Joined 3636 days ago 55 posts - 76 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 22 of 58 03 January 2015 at 3:12am | IP Logged |
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Started LR'ing Harry Potter today to see how that's going to work. I optimistically
thought it was going to be a full run through of the 7 hours of audio today, but I'm only 1/3 of the way through after about 5 hours of work on it because I need to read the English first since the French speaking is so fast. I am finding that reading a chapter (or 2 if I forget to stop) and then LR'ing is best for me since I've never read the book, and the movie doesn't have all this descriptive detail. I think I'll read the rest of the book in English tonight and do a better job of concentrating on getting through the audio tomorrow. One problem I'm having is that I'm easily losing my place when I try to compare the documents when the French text doesn't make sense, since one is on my computer and one is on my iPad, and it's harder than a parallel text to keep together. I'm using my access to the books via Kindle Unlimited, so that's kinda just going to happen either way. That said, it makes me wonder if I should have done The Three Musketeers instead. I'm okay with bailing out after book 1 and restarting with Dumas, but that would still be a good 20 hours of dedicated work away assuming I go through the book 3 times. If anyone has a good suggestion of how to use my Kindle access to create a parallel text, I'd be grateful. I don't have Windows though, only Mac and Linux. I'm starting the year by catching up on the backlog in my Anki pronunciation deck, addressing the re-gilding of my Duolingo tree, higher than average reviews on Lingvist, and a momentary pause on the Michel Thomas and Pimsleur all because the last week was not very focused although I was getting some French study in most days. I'm also finding it hard to categorize myself in the CEFR scale. I'm a beginner with over 1500 words in my passive vocabulary. I test on the online tests at a solid B1, but that's with multiple choice which is way easier than producing the correct answer myself. I'm probably A0+ or A1 in production, especially speaking. Lingvist: 1254 words (76%) edit: about 24 hours Duolingo: 1236 words (adj 4*pronouns 2/4*verb inf 2, and 5 skills needing strengthening) Anki F-F pronunciation deck: M:43; Y+L:238; U:306; S+B: 27 Pimsleur: Completed through lesson 14 FSI: Did one run though FSI Basic lesson 1, One run through FSI Pronunciation lessons 1&2 Edited by s.mann on 05 January 2015 at 8:53pm 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 23 of 58 03 January 2015 at 2:10pm | IP Logged |
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Bienvenue à Team Français 2015!
It looks like you've been working really hard at your French studies. I'm impressed, anyway. About some of your resouces, I liked Michel Thomas German a lot, but found the French a bit of a let down. My main complaint is he teaches the students to fudge the gender by just saying "l" instead of "la" or "le". But there is a lot to learn from him, and if you use him early on in your studies, supported by other study materials, you can easily ignore the defects in the course. I like both Pimsleur and FSI, and like you I feel Pimsleur is a sort of FSI lite. I find Pimsleur good for driving, and FSI better to use while taking a walk or bike ride. I still find RFI Journal in Easy French difficult to follow at times. Using the transcript helps, but it doesn't always match! Instead, you might like "7 Jours sur la planète", which is a video news programme made for students. It has French subtitles, which are almost always exact when the news readers are speaking, but sometimes slightly different during interviews. Another option for easier listening practice, try L'avis de Marie 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| s.mann Groupie United States lang-8.com/973514/jo Joined 3636 days ago 55 posts - 76 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 24 of 58 05 January 2015 at 3:22am | IP Logged |
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So... I wish I could tell you that I LR'd (listen-read) Harry Potter #1 in French 3 times in the last three days (it's only
7 hours, that should have been possible), but alas I just finished the first run though. I will definitely continue but I don't have the dedication to do that and nothing else for 3 days straight like I thought I did. You'll be happy to know I mostly procrastinated by using Anki, Lingvist, and Duolingo though. I do think it's good for me to hear words properly pronounced while I read them and pick out the phrases and sentences that I'm understanding. A few other things I learned: 1. Without a real parallel text, the English comparison during the audio was nearly useless. I don't think it would have been better with 2 physical books. I think that even if it had been prepared properly as a parallel text I would have had to slow the audio down to be able to compare and not lose my place. I tried to see if Les Trois Mousquetaires was going to work better for me, but alas either the writing is that much more sophisticated or I had gotten used to Rowling's idiolect by then, but it was much more foreign. I'm not really clear how people are classifying it as accessible, since there were words I had to look up in English, like corselette (NOT the same as a corset). Besides, in the prepared text I saw an error in the English in the first paragraph (OCR error probably, wooden instead of woolen). I don't know if that's going to permeate the text or not. I will stick with HP for the moment. 2. I may skip pre-reading in the future. Honestly I was already a little bored when I read it in French, because I already had a perfectly clear picture of what happened because I had just read it. I like the idea that the picture of what's going gets clearer on multiple reads. 3. Another reason not to try to read the English simultaneously is that the audio I'm using seems to be abridged, so some of my place-losing was in not finding the key words because half a paragraph wasn't read (and he's so inconsistent with what he omits!). It's easier to catch that and roll with it if you just read the French straight. I'm able to follow along pretty easily even when the words themselves mean nothing to me. 4. I like warming up with lingvist and testing myself afterward with duolingo. Since I'm currently at a pace of about 16 new words a day on lingvist, I frequently run into words I was just introduced to in writing, which makes it all feel worthwhile. It's hard to say for sure if the LR'ing has done anything for me, but an indication might be that I easily got past what was previously a sticking point on the pronouns lesson on Duolingo after I finished LR'ing today, (but then it was going to happen eventually, right?). <shrug> 5. The narration I'm using gives Ron a lisp and his Hermione voice sounds like a timid child even when she's supposed to be bossy. Old people tend to sound like they are straining on the john. I'm not really fond of these interpretations. I hope there are other readers out there. 6. I think in just some analysis of the reading, the French translator actually improved some of the writing. There are times when Rowling is more ambiguous than she needs to be, especially at the grade school level, and he corrects them. I also think it's brilliant how he was able to make the verses rhyme and mean pretty much the same thing. I would disagree with changing key names though, it's a British school, they should get to be British. (Which is another complaint about the narration, the Weasley name wasn't changed, but he pronounces it Wesley.) In other news, I checked out disk 2 season 1 of Buffy from the library, and imported the scripts into Readlang, so that's all ready to go for entertainment next week. Goals for next week: Duolingo: Complete the "Verbs: Compound Past" skill (9 lessons) and maintain my gilded tree Lingvist: average 15 new words per day or higher FSI: Do one FSI French Phonology lesson per weekday (Lessons 3-7) Michel Thomas: Listen to MT whenever I'm in the car (I plan to keep it on loop until it's internalized, but I don't get out of the house every day...) Pimsleur: On hold; MT is trumping it until I have my grammar in better shape. *Buffy: Not a goal per se, but I'm gonna watch the 4 on this disk in French and return it before it's due on Sunday. (It might be copyable for some, but it's me-proof at least.) Harry Potter: Not going to push a particular schedule, but I want to continue with HP #1 again with LR'ing but more intensively this time, not just letting it run even if I'm not getting the gist of a whole paragraph for lack of vocab or whatever. If I try that for a chapter a day it'll take me 3 weeks or so, and I think that's fair. I have other ideas for studying thanks to the great tips from Team Français, but that seems like enough to commit to for now. Rest assured, I have looked into L'Avis de Marie and 7 Jours Sur la Planete et.al., I just don't know how they will fit into my study schedule. Those and the other BBC/TV5/Le Monde/GLOSS learning segments are almost too modular for me. They would be hard to track progress in and seem in general to be more like proving your level rather than teaching you something most of the time. That said, they tend to have segments that I want to know more about, like the elections in Japan. I'll be interested in seeing how everyone else uses them and try out some approaches myself. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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