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Resources for studying French: help? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5593 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 9 of 15 02 July 2010 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am not so sure it is a waste of hours - although it feels painfully slow to do! Look at this list of CEFR self test criteria (which is from the Deutsch Welle German course, so the time scales may be slightly out of sync):
A1 'I can ask others questions about themselves (about their background, their family, how they spend their free time, their daily routine and so on) and answer questions like these. I have had about 75 hours of language tuition and have a vocabulary of about 500 words. A2.1 'I can ask others questions about themselves (about their family, their schooling, their work, how they spend their free time, their travels, food and beverages) and answer questions like these. I have had about 150 hours of language tuition and have a vocabulary of about 1000 words. A 2.1 I can communicate in simple routine situations where I can describe my background and education, say how I spend my free time, where I live, what it looks like there and what a typical day in my life looks like. I have had about 225 hours of language tuition and have a vocabulary of about 1500 words. Pimsleur I-III gives you just over 500 words, so that's A1 - I think based on the above a follower of Pimsleur I-III will be able to comfortably deal with the A1 situations due to the inbuilt revision, but will only have a feel of A2 topics. However, one would do so in 45 hours, so based on the model CEFR time scales one is getting there quicker. Of course, the time scales are based on people who are not experienced linguists. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| socks Triglot Newbie IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5293 days ago 26 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English, Telugu, Hindi* Studies: French | Message 10 of 15 02 July 2010 at 7:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for your help, Elexi, I see it's not so bad.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| joebelt Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6361 days ago 51 posts - 68 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 11 of 15 03 July 2010 at 4:05am | IP Logged | ||
It's actually roughly 500 words per level not total! So with French I, II, III and Plus you are over 1500 words. To answer socks, I really enjoyed doing all Pimsleur French lessons. Great foundation builder and it helped me a LOT with pronunciation. I agree with you Michel Thomas in French is hard to take because of the Polish/Germanic accent but you can do it after Pimsleur (don't do it before or your pronunciation is going to suffer). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5593 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 12 of 15 03 July 2010 at 10:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Dear Joebelt, I do not agree with you. I have done all levels of Pimsleur French, German, Italian and Spanish, the 'plus' courses and Pimsleur Dutch I and I am pretty sure they do not contain 500 per level but just over 500 in total (I am excluding the reading lessons, which contains more words but are never used in the actual course). Pimsleur works by being very sparse with vocabulary, introducing 3-4 words per lesson after the initial burst of vocabulary in level I and drilling the learner by recombining those words throughout the course. Learning more than 5 words per day is probably beyond most people (me included) so the 3-4 words a day in Pimsleur is a good idea.
I would say that having mastery of 500-600 words is nothing to be sniffed at - it gets you a long way in basic tourist style communication and provides a functional foundation for learning the language. This is what Pimsleur is good at - as you say - its a good foundation builder. However, it is still only A1 or lower A2 in CEFR terms. My personal approach is to use Michel Thomas first - and rapidly - to get a grammatical sense of the language first. I find having an outline of grammar to be the surest foundation to learning a language. As this takes about 24 or so hours I don't particuarly worry about it causing any problems to my pronounciation. After that I will use something like Pimsleur or TY French Conversation/Phone French CDs to get some practice in speaking whilst studying a 1970s-1990s Linguaphone dialogue course. I will then move on to Assimil. This is because I find that native language only dialogue methods (such as Linguaphone and Assimil) get the language working best for me. I also use a couple of grammar books with Linguaphone/Assimil to read up the grammar points when they arise in the footnotes. That way grammar learning is dealt with as an extended footnote to the dialogue rather than a boring thing in itself. This is what, through trial and error, I know works for me. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| socks Triglot Newbie IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5293 days ago 26 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English, Telugu, Hindi* Studies: French | Message 13 of 15 03 July 2010 at 6:05pm | IP Logged | ||
I agree with you about Pimsleur. I just went through a lesson in which the American male was pretty much stalking the French female character and refused to accept that she didn't want to go out with him to eat or drink! It's quite hilarious, but in a sad way. I've got myself a grammar book as well, so this should give me a lot of material to occupy myself with over the next few months. Thanks for your help again, to everyone who replied. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5856 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 14 of 15 04 July 2010 at 4:31am | IP Logged | ||
I remember listening to that episode in the hall at school with my headphones, and I kept laughing and saying, "jeezus, just give it up already!" and so forth and my friends stared at me like I was crazy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| stout Senior Member Ireland Joined 5399 days ago 108 posts - 140 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 15 of 15 12 July 2010 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am a fan of the Hugo in 3 Months course.I am at the moment studying with Hugo French in 3 Months course.I find the course pretty good.It's not overly difficult,it has a good mixture of grammar and conversation.I believe it's a good solid foundation
for beginners to intermediate learners like myself in learning the French language. I would recommend the Linguaphone courses too.Expensive yes,but I find the Linguaphone French courses are pretty good and thorough when comes to learning the language.I am not too keen on the the Michel Thomas French course and I admit I do find the gruff voice of MT irritating. Do not buy the Rosetta Stone courses! I tried the demonstation part on the RS website and frankly I was not impressed.I would not buy the RS course,no way.RS is expensive and frankly rubbish for the price that RS are asking. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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