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Darobat’s French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Darobat Diglot Senior Member Joined 7179 days ago 754 posts - 770 votes  Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin | Message 1 of 5 26 March 2011 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | ||
The bolded part in the brackets essentially summarizes most of my language study to date. To be fair, I have put in a good deal of honest study into Russian (though basic fluency is probably an optimistic estimate of my current abilities, simply because I haven't studied in a while), but it wasn't consistent, and far more of my time has been been squandered and used very poorly. This thread will have two purposes. The first is to serve as a written contract with myself, and the rest of the language community here to reverse my bad habit, and actually accomplish something with my studies. It's truly regrettable that I've been a member of this forum for years, and have so little to show, aside from a great knowledge of the theory of how to study languages efficiently. It's time to actually use the techniques, tools, and ideas which I've amassed over the years to study in earnest. I will, one day, be fluent (whatever the word means) in at least one other language. Preferably more. The second purpose of this thread is to provide a place for me to seek advice and motivation, to share my progress and roadblocks, and also to ask questions about the languages I'm learning. I intend to use this thread to practise writing in my target languages, with the goal of eventually writing my log entirely in the respective language. Now on to the plan (I should have a good one considering how many years I've spent reading other's!). I will mention right off the bat that I don't plan on studying Russian at all for the moment. I've plateaued at that awkward level where I can get by in the language, and I can read and understand most texts, yet I still don't feel fluent. In particular, my knowledge is largely passive, and without anybody (or any reason really) to activate it, I've found numerous times that any attempt to get past this plateau inevitably results in burn-out. This in turn leaves me uninspired and completely OK with abandoning my language studies for a few months. So rather than meeting what seems to be an inevitable fate, I intend to put this language on hold indefinitely, and pursue something else, even if only for a change of scenery. What I do plan on studying is... French My primary focus will, for starters, be French. I've played with the language a lot. I've completed most of the Assimil French with Ease course (I got to lesson 95 before stopping!), and I'm at the point where I can get the gist of many texts (though I miss quite a lot still), and I can usually tell you what somebody is talking about in French (though almost certainly no details). My goal here is complete fluency. French is by far the most practical language for me to learn, and conveniently, it's also one of my favourites. As for my plan, I have the Easy French Reader, which I've begun reading, and fully intend on finishing. I would also like to quickly burn through the beginning of Assimil (I'm sure many of the earlier lessons will still be relatively easy), and then finish the course. After this, I will begin to LR some books, probably beginning with Le Petit Prince. At this point, I will also probably try and find somebody to use the language with (something I've never bothered to do with Russian). My hope is that by using the language, I will avoid plateauing at the same place I did in Russian. By the end of 2011, my goal is to be able to converse with a native speaker comfortably, and in such a way that it isn't overly difficult for me or my partner (B2 I guess). I'm intentionally making this goal a conversational goal, as I think that if I can do that, then my abilities to read and write will necessarily be at a similar, or higher level. Other Languages Having been on this forum for many years, I have quite a bit of theoretical knowledge of how to learn a language efficiently. However, despite this I'm still very much a beginner when it comes to actually using what I know. For this reason, I plan on focusing only on French for the time being. This will be hard, as I am frequently stricken by bouts of wanderlust, and this has certainly been among the reasons past attempts to learn a language have been unsuccessful. After achieving something substantial with French, I'll probably begin something else (or resume Russian), but that will certainly not be for a while. Thank you to anyone who made it through my entire post – it turned out much longer than expected. Rest assured that my future posts will in all likelihood be shorter, as I plan on spending more time learning languages, and less on writing/reading about learning them. I will try to post weekly about what I've been up to. Edited by Darobat on 26 March 2011 at 7:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5547 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 2 of 5 28 March 2011 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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This sounds like a first-class plan, Darobat!
Until I got off my backside and did something publicly about language learning, I was one of those wanderlost souls who simply found himself truffling through Waterstone's language section every other weekend. I'd bring home various tomes of enlightenment with me like rescue shelter puppies, but these would rarely find themselves dog-eared beyond the first chapter, eventually ending up lost again themselves somewhere in the mists of time between a second-hand Colloquial Ukrainian boxset and a dusty dossier of transliterated Aramaic folk tales. And all those crazy theories...one fleeting paper idea after another...draws stuffed full of scribblings, print-outs and doodles...ah, good times, Suntory times! But as for progress...well, very little to speak of really. Then I started my first ever blog, and just tried to get a few humble experiences and ideas down on virtual paper each week. And this made a huge, and frankly unexpected, difference in my language learning. :) I haven't achieved what I set out to by any means yet, and I'm still a terrible language flirt, but when I look back over the previous year, I can't help but notice that I've progressed more than in all the other years put together (and gained much more in terms of camaraderie besides). So I think what you're doing is a great idea. I'm looking forward to seeing your theories get put into practice, and wish you the best of luck with trailblazing through those pesky plateaux! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Darobat Diglot Senior Member Joined 7179 days ago 754 posts - 770 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin | Message 3 of 5 03 April 2011 at 6:43am | IP Logged | ||
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Mar 27-Apr 2: Week Summary
Total study time this week: 7.63 hours Breaking that down, we have specifically: - Assimil New French With Ease: Lessons 1-53 (4.27 hours) - Easy French Reader: pp. 34-88 (3.15 hours) - Other (0.22 hours) In this case, 'other' consisted of me listening to a slightly helpful recording with tips on how to pronounce the French /r/. I should note that I also spent much more time this week passively listening to French music and radio, reading random things I find in French, and looking up words/grammar constructions which randomly pop into my head. I didn't include these activities in my times because keeping track of how long I do such things is not very practical. I decided to start at lesson 1 with Assimil despite having finished up to lesson 95 in the past. Because of this, I was able to plough through the first 25 lessons in one sitting, shadowing all of them without reading along. I was able to continue this until around lesson 30, when I had to stop blind shadowing, and start following along with the text if I want to speak along. As the lessons get more difficult, my lessons per day has slowly been dropping, and my study today consisted of only three lessons. It is still all familiar to me, and I'm not really finding any of the lessons difficult. I'm just repeating the audio more because there is more content and vocabulary in the later lessons. The Easy French Reader began, as the name suggests, really easy. The first section of the book is primarily dialogue between two characters, and I found it really easy to read for the most part. The next section of the book, which I'm now about a quarter way through, consists of short biographical pieces about French history which I'm finding a bit more challenging to read. The sentence structure is a bit less straight forward, and the vocabulary is more challenging. Still, I think I'm able to understand about 90%+ of what I read only using the vocabulary footnotes. I always read aloud when reading my book, and I'm sort of questioning whether this is a good idea, as I don't have any audio to accompany the book. I think I have a good sense of how French words are pronounced for the most part, but I have looked up a few words on the Word Reference dictionary to see the pronunciation, only to find out I've been reading them incorrectly (for example, guerre). As suspected, I've found that just starting is almost always the hardest part of studying. Once I get started doing Assimil or reading my book, I find it quite easy to keep going for half an hour or more. By picking a time to study when I wake up in the morning, and then sitting down to study as soon as that time rolls around, I've managed to accomplish a lot more this week than I thought I would. I was honestly surprised when I added up all my study time and saw that it was more than seven hours — it certainly didn't feel like that much. I know seven hours isn't a lot compared to many around here, but considering how many years that total has been close to zero, I think this is a nice improvement! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Darobat Diglot Senior Member Joined 7179 days ago 754 posts - 770 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin | Message 4 of 5 10 April 2011 at 6:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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April 3-9: Week Summary
Total study time this week: 5.18 hours As for how that time was allocated: - Assimil New French With Ease: Lessons 54-64 active, 5-15 passive (2.82 hours) - Reading: Mostly my Easy French Reader: pp. 89-118 (2.37 hours) Not as productive a week as last week, but I saw that coming. Nevertheless, I did have a few good days of study, and I'm pleased that I managed to find time to sit down and learn French despite my busy week. Assimil has slowed down to one lesson a day, as the lessons are now longer and more complicated. On the flip side, I'm finding that reading in my reader has been getting easier, mostly because I'm becoming more accustomed to the vocabulary used in a simple historical non-fiction. I do feel the need to confess a bit of wanderlust this past week. That said, I'm a bit hesitant to call it wanderlust, as it was Russian which was diverting my attention away from French. I found myself listening to some Russian music, and I was reminded of how nice it is to be able to understand the lyrics. This actually reminds me of a peculiar tendency I've noticed: when I come across a word I need while speaking French which I don't know, more often than not the Russian word will come to me before the English word. I also occasionally find myself making 'Russian mistakes' such as dropping articles. It seems my brain doesn't have separate English, French, and Russian modes, but rather an English mode and an every-other-language mode. I'm sure this will pass as I become more fluent in French. Et maintenant, un petit question pour les lecteurs de mon journal. Quand j'ai fini Assimil (ou mon livre), quel roman dois-je lire ensuite? Je pense, que je vais lire L'Étranger, mais je n'ai pas décidé. Si vous avez une autre idée, dites-moi, s'il vous plaît. Le plus important, c'est qu'il y a un livre audio qui accompagne le roman. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Darobat Diglot Senior Member Joined 7179 days ago 754 posts - 770 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin | Message 5 of 5 26 April 2011 at 5:53am | IP Logged | ||
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April 10-23: Two Week Summary
Total Study Time for these two weeks: 7.42 hours Breaking it down again: - Reading: Easy French Reader, pp. 119-167 (3.80 hours) - Assimil: New French With Ease, Lessons 65-74 passive, 16-25 active (3.37 hours) - Song translation (0.25 hours) I have had a busy couple of weeks, so unfortunately not much study has happened. Still, I managed to get some study in, and doing something is surely better than nothing. In the span of the two weeks, I only had two days with no study, so that is good to see. Assimil is still going well with nothing really to report. As for my reader, the readings have definitely gotten more difficult. The historical non-fiction section ended just as I was getting comfortable with all the vocabulary they were using. I'm now onto the second of four abridged short-stories by actual French authors. These are quite a bit more challenging to read, but I think I'm managing quite well. I usually end up reading each chapter twice, and understanding quite a bit more the second time round. I'm still searching for a novel to read once I finish my reader (which should be quite soon I think), so any suggestions are welcome! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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