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TAC09 French-Goal Listening fluency (LR)

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Adrean
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Senior Member
France
adrean83.wordpress.c
Joined 6172 days ago

348 posts - 411 votes 
Speaks: FrenchC1

 
 Message 17 of 98
17 January 2009 at 8:59am | IP Logged 
glidefloss wrote:
Since I'm on a similar path with French, I'd like to know how you like l-r without dual texts. Have you tried dual texts at all? Also, I'm doing about 4 passes of each book. Maybe I shouldn't be repeating.


Well to be honest I've never tried Listening-Reading with a dual text. I prefer to have a hard copy of a book when i'm reading because I can just flick open to the page and just lie in bed. You really don't have this option with a dual text unless you like to print loads of pages.

It has been some time since I've read that mammoth first post on the subject of L-R, so I'm sure that I've ventured quite far from the original idea that was proposed. For the moment L-R for is simply reading the text first in English all the way through, and then listening in French and reading in English. I do only one sweep of the book because I quickly lose interest in the novel after having read it twice. I think one of the principles of L-R was the enjoyment factor and if I do more then one sweep I simply don't enjoy it. However I'm going to return to the original post and find some of the things which attracted me to this kind of study in the first place.

In regards to dual-text until I get back to the original post on L-R and find the value of dual-texts, my opinion is that there is no great benefit or necessity of them. Simply following the story in your native language is challenging enough. I can see some benefits of maybe underlining a word or two that you are not familiar with but I think the main goal of L-R is to tune your ear in and let hours and hours of uninterrupted audio flow soak in. I'm happy for somebody here to correct me with the benefits of dual-texts who has experience with them.
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glidefloss
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5972 days ago

138 posts - 154 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, French

 
 Message 18 of 98
18 January 2009 at 3:00pm | IP Logged 
I watch a lot of dubbed Seinfeld. All the American DVDs have French. I think it's very helpful.
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Adrean
TAC 2010 Winner
Senior Member
France
adrean83.wordpress.c
Joined 6172 days ago

348 posts - 411 votes 
Speaks: FrenchC1

 
 Message 19 of 98
23 January 2009 at 9:25am | IP Logged 
Not a great deal to get back to you guys with in regards to my progress. I am in the middle of L-Ring a rather large book so it is difficult to give an informative and valuable update. However, I come here each day to check on everyone else's logs for inspiriation and for a little procastinating. There are some particuraly good ideas that are coming up that I would like to take on board at some point.

I wanted to ask the french learners in europe if you have access to the French channel TV5 Monde. I have been in Ireland nearly two months now and a real highlight has been having not one but two channels in French. One of the channels is a dedicated news channel which is not only broadcast in French but about 14 languages, the others is TV5 Monde. TV5 Monde has become a really good study resource for me. For people that aren't familiar with it, it offers games shows, soaps, straight to tele movies and documentaries. There is also a very good website for those of you without the channel, it offers plenty of video footage of the channel www.tv5.org . For those of you with the channel I wanted to ask you what do you like to watch? Do you have any favourite shows? Personally I cannot stand the soaps, they just plain stink, for example la plus belle vie rubs me the wrong way. I find myself watching above all else the games shows. There are two that I really like the first is 'Des chiffres et Des Lettres' and the other one is 'Tout Le Monde Veut Prendre Sa Place'. The latter one is only any good because of the host, he is absolutely brilliant and really funny. I don't understand most of what he says but I can tell it's really funny.

OK sorry to waste your time, I'll get back real soon with a constructive post.



Edited by Adrean on 23 January 2009 at 9:26am

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Adrean
TAC 2010 Winner
Senior Member
France
adrean83.wordpress.c
Joined 6172 days ago

348 posts - 411 votes 
Speaks: FrenchC1

 
 Message 20 of 98
28 January 2009 at 4:47am | IP Logged 
I'm ahead of schedule for the target I set myself for the month. I just have to knock off a few chapters from Jane Eyre and I've done everything I've set myself for the month and a little more.

The little more is actually the Michel Thomas French Vocabulary discs that use the Michel Thomas method. This is the 3rd time I've run through the course and I managed to squeeze in a little each night just before going to bed. This course is still really challenging for me as it is quite an advanced course. The best thing about the course I think is the amount of vocab that is on the discs, in particular the french words that translate litterally into English. I would say this is about 30% of the course. Michel Thomas touched on this point in his own courses but they really elaborate on this strongly and introduce even more direct translations. Just to give a quick example here of what I mean, words ending in ~ion like globalisation, proclimation or words ending in ~able like table, confortable, miserable. It would be very useful at some point to write all the kinds of words and structures like this that translate into french.

Overall however I think that the course is not a faithful representation of the Michel Thomas method for a number of reasons. First of all there isn't the feedback of the students to bounce back with Michel. Also the course is not very strong on points of teaching grammar. Also the style that Michel used is sadly absent. His style was always absorbing and interesting, especially in his advanced course where his teaching is divine, I learned the past tense, w~ing tense, subjuncitve etc. from this course. I hope that one day they can do an highish advanced course while faithfully sticking to his method.

I'm beginning to plan my study for next month and it will comprise strongly of chapter studies as Dmg is doing on his log. I will update in a couple of days



Edited by Adrean on 01 February 2009 at 1:44pm

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Adrean
TAC 2010 Winner
Senior Member
France
adrean83.wordpress.c
Joined 6172 days ago

348 posts - 411 votes 
Speaks: FrenchC1

 
 Message 21 of 98
01 February 2009 at 3:02pm | IP Logged 
Hi all,

Have completed all the goals and a little bit more for the month of January a week early. I think I might drop down my goals for Feb here and be even more ambitious (oh dear).

One of the main focuses this month for me will be an indepth short story study, I had the choice of choosing a chapter for study but I think it will be more interesting to have a short story. I've choosed the La Peur by Guy de Maupassant, it's a 16 minutes audiobook. My goal by the end of this month will be to have 100% listening fluency of this short story. As for the method first I would listen to the story with full concentration in French without English or French text. This will I hope give me a valuable insight into how far my listening comprehension has come. I may do this twice to see if I pick up things the second time around. Second would be to read the chapter in English to find out how well I went. Third would be to L-R the chapter several times, this should be where the French sounds begin to become clear. After this step it becomes a little vauge. I imagine that listening and reading in French is the next step followed by underlining any unfamiliar words and finally shadowing. Then by this point I think I should be able to flick on this story in French and listen away with a pretty commanding understanding. I anticipate a little boredom.

Can I drop down a flow for my short story study here. This is just for my reference.

1. Listen only in French x2
2. Read in English
3. Listen-Read x3
4. Listening and reading in French x2
5. Underlining and studying any unfamiliar words, conjugations or phrasing.
6. Shadowing

Alongside the short story study I will ideally have about 25-30 hours of L-Ring. I have choosen to read Ivanhoe by Walter Scott because it seems to be a popular book in France despite being an English story. An advenutre story will be nice for a change as well. I am also going to read Un Armour de Swann by Marcel Proust if time permits. I have heard that his books are quite heavy reading and not for the faint hearted but I'm ready for the challenge.

Chuck in a few French films and that's my plan for the month. I would like to see a few more films by Eric Rohmer if I can get my hands on them. If anyone has any suggestions for French films feel free to tell me as I'm pretty bone dry in this department.

Edited by Adrean on 01 February 2009 at 3:07pm

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Adrean
TAC 2010 Winner
Senior Member
France
adrean83.wordpress.c
Joined 6172 days ago

348 posts - 411 votes 
Speaks: FrenchC1

 
 Message 22 of 98
03 February 2009 at 5:13pm | IP Logged 
I've begun my short story of La peur by Guy de Maupassant.

I've completed steps one through three as below.

1. Listen only in French x2
2. Read in English
3. Listen-Read x3

I think step one was a good test for me to see how far my listening fluency has come so far. I was completely unfamiliar with the story and I only listened in French to see what I could pick up. The first time around I did not pick up a great deal. By the second time around I gathered that the story was set on a boat and a mysterious man was recounting a story about fear. I believed that the story was set somewhere in Africa during the day and later it moved into a house at night. Inside the house there were a number of people,a dog howling and a stranger or a ghost outside the house.

The next step was to read the story in English and find out what exactly happened. Well the person was acutally recounting two stories, the first was in Africa as I thought but the second was set in Northern France in a hunters house. I did not pick up on this at all as I thought it was one continuous story in Africa. Also I did not pick up on the final conclusion of the story. Overall I feel I did pretty well to pick up on some of the points I did but I do have a very long way to go.

The third step was to Listen-Read the story and as I anticipated much of the vocabulary became much clearer to me as I read in English. I berated myself naturally for not picking up some very simple words. There were only few words which were completely new to me.

I have the final three steps to complete still but overall I think this is an interesting and more importantly a good test for listening comprehension. I will definitely use it again in the future as means of testing.
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Adrean
TAC 2010 Winner
Senior Member
France
adrean83.wordpress.c
Joined 6172 days ago

348 posts - 411 votes 
Speaks: FrenchC1

 
 Message 23 of 98
13 February 2009 at 5:10pm | IP Logged 
Hi just about half way through the month and thought it about time to update the log.

Well I cannot say that i've got through much study at all. I guess the major draw back of the form of study I'm doing which is listening-reading is having to read through in English first all the books you are going to eventually listen to in French. Yes it is really frustrating not being able to dive straight into studying.

I have just about finished Ivanhoe and i've found it to be quite an interesting read. The novel is quite relevant to French studies because as it is set in the 13th century you can get the sense of how modern English came to be and how it is a kind of hybrid between French and German languages.

I guess because of my lack of study this month I can talk a little bit about the French music I like. Actually my knowledge of French music is very very limited. I don't know anything about modern French music. I just like the usual suspects. Anyways here are a few links youtube clips of French music.

Ou ca Ou ca - Sacha Distel

Harley Davidson

Brigitte and Serge - Bonnie and Clyde

Serge - Je suis venu te dire que je m'en vais

Edited by Adrean on 24 February 2009 at 11:40pm

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Adrean
TAC 2010 Winner
Senior Member
France
adrean83.wordpress.c
Joined 6172 days ago

348 posts - 411 votes 
Speaks: FrenchC1

 
 Message 24 of 98
25 February 2009 at 12:22am | IP Logged 
Hello

A very positive update this time.

My language goal for the month seemed very far away so I decided with a few days off work to tackle as much French as I could. The result for me was to finally complete reading Ivanhoe by Walter Scott. I did roughly 10 hours of listen-reading in 2 days. It was very pain staking and arudous but well worthwhile.

I had a little time to procastinate and was reading some of the forums where the people who contribute audiobooks share their ideas. I was completed dumbfounded by the amount of work these people put into an audiobook. I have great admiration for them already for reading so clearly but I did not understtand just how much time went into each audiobook, some of them even rehearse, some of them click their fingers when they make an error eo they know where to fix it later.

I watched a French film as part of the Irish film festival a few days ago. It was called La Captive by Chantal Akerman. It's a little known French film but I was very impressed. It was one of those films where it had you thinking about it for days afterwards. The director was supposed to be there to discuss the film afterwards but unfortunately could not make it. I was a little dissapointed because it would have been nice to clear up some of the motives of the film. I went to the film with my brother who is also learning French and though we did not 'love' it immediately we still felt the need to discuss it afterwards which I think is a very good thing.

Edited by Adrean on 25 February 2009 at 10:20am



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