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200 hours of French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6869 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 1 of 176 11 February 2008 at 2:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have set myself a fairly ambitious target. I am aiming to complete 200 hours of French study, at the end of which I feel I will be at the level I feel most comfortable with. I have already been studying it for some time, and have been working in France and Belgium, so have had plenty of opportunities for practise.
Over the last two days I have done 100 minutes of French. Most of this was on vocab, but also some was on reflexive verbs. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6869 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 2 of 176 11 February 2008 at 3:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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Start 09:41 Finish 10.22
Subjects covered being reflexive verbs (different tenses) Vocabulary frequency list Positives * remembered correct verb endings for the tenses of reflexive verbs (ais, ais, ait etc) * remembered gender agreement with reflexive verbs (je me amusé(ée)) * correctly used être for past tense of reflexive verbs * correctly used m', t' in front of h and vowels in reflexive verbs Room for improvement * forgot to use (s) at end of nous for reflexive verbs (nous nous sommes amuséeS) * made an error with the future tense of avoir ('ent' instead of 'ont' for ils) * wrongly listed some re verbs as ir (specifically vivre and comprendre). In the case of vivre, I may have simply had interference from Spanish vivir. * struggled with propositions in vocab check (therefore, neither etc) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6869 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 3 of 176 12 February 2008 at 3:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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Start 16:55 Finish 17:25
Start 17:58 Finish 18:20 I work in a job that involves covering multi-lingual committees, and there is a choice of languages you can listen to the proceedings in. I couldn't get into the main committee room, so a colleague and I went into the listening room next door, and I listened to the proceedings in French. Positives * I understood quite a bit of what was going on. Granted that is a rather vague term, but I did enjoy it when I noticed small, but important differences (e.g. je trouve and j'ai trouvé, I found myself correcting myself when I heard and realised). Room for improvement * the French translation was of an English speaker, and I kept "tuning in" to the English speaker. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6869 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 4 of 176 13 February 2008 at 6:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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Start 18:07 Finish 18:29
I read six or seven articles on lemonde.com. I understood the essence of about 80% of what was being said, and managed to infer the meaning of other words from context (e.g. a story about EUFOR peacekeepers in Chad, I managed to figure out the word "to land" from comments about transport planes). There was also an article on economic losses by GM motors, an article about a French journalist being held on espionage charges, so a good wide range of topics. I also listened to a summary of the week's news in French on a YouTube French channel. This wasn't as successful partly due to the constant use of English terms like "waterboarding" and "kangaroo court". Positives * Good reading comprehension, something that is a traditional strength for me in all the languages I study. I was pleased that I understood a wide range of articles, not just ones that interest me. I was also pleased to be able to infer meanings. Room for improvement * Struggled with listening comprehension 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6869 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 5 of 176 13 February 2008 at 10:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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Start 16:42 Finish 17:17
Subjects covered being IR verb tenses Positives * Grasped very quickly how to conjugate regular IR verbs * Started to notice patterns with the iregular verbs Negatives * No real negatives. Would have liked more time to study, but felt tired, so decided to leave the further exploration of irregular IR verbs to another day. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| vanityx3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6465 days ago 331 posts - 326 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 6 of 176 13 February 2008 at 4:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
The same verbs that are irregular in Spanish are normally going to be irregullar in French. Maybe you can use your Spanish knowledge to help you. Bonne Chance 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6869 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 7 of 176 14 February 2008 at 4:06am | IP Logged | |||||
I will need to look into this further :-) Start 21:38 Finish 22:08 I went home and decided to continue with the IR verbs, and to see if I could notice any patterns in more detail. To my delight, I could. Whilst this could turn into a long post, here goes TIR verb endings I noticed that if a verb finishes with TIR, then it keeps the T in a "reverse boot" shape. See what I mean below: * Sortir je sors nous sortons tu sors vous sortez il sort ils sortent * Sentir je sens nous sentons tu sens vous sentez il sent ils sentent * Partir je pars nous partons tu pars vous partez il part ils partent Then I noticed what I call the stress pattern. That is because Michael Thomas describes how certain Spanish verbs split when the stress falls on them (e.g. tener becomes tiene, tienes, tiene and tienen because the stress falls in the e, making it "split" it ie). I seem to notice a similar thing going on in French with the following two IR verbs, in the "boot" pattern Venir je viens nous venons tu viens vous venz il vient ils viennent Tenir je tiens nous tenons tu tiens vous tenez il tient ils tiennent Only difference between them being the first letter. For dormir, I noticed a "half and half" pattern. If you imagine the singular and plural forms of the verb occupying two columns, you get the singular half of the column dropping the M from the stem, whilst the plural half of the column keeps it je dors nous dormons tu dors vous dormez il dort ils dorment For couvrir, I noticed that it behaves like a regular "er" verb in the present tense concerning verb endings, thus: je couvre nous couvrons tu couvres vous couvrez il couvre ils couvrent For courir, I noticed that it simply had a pattern where the IR ending was dropped, and replaced with a s,s,t ending, and normal plural endings, thus: je cours nous courons tu cours vous courez il court ils courent Not bad for 30 minutes work! I need to investigate how they behave in other tenses though. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6869 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 8 of 176 15 February 2008 at 8:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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Start 14:33 Finish 15:00
Subject reading articles on lemonde.com, BBC Francais and le Figaro. I scanned up and down the news items and had pretty good overall comprehension. There were stories arguing that Sarkozy has abandoned his pre-election promise not to get involved in Africa, that the line of command of EUFOR stretched all the way to himself and that that there were allegations of French complicity in the assasination of Chadian figures. There were also articles on new education reforms in France, a growth in job creation, Kosovan independence and the EU planning to go in. There was also extensive coverage of the school shooting at Northern Illinois university. Several sentenves stood out, largely because of idioms or because of expressions I hadn't seen before like un jeune homme a ouvert le feu un jeune homme a tué six personnes avant de se donner la mort le point de donner son feu vert au lancement la police chargée de lutter contre le grand banditisme la plus meurtrière des ces fusillades reste celle de Virginia Tech Positives Good all round grasp of the stories. Recognised the idioms. Room for improvement Small number of vocab words not understood 1 person has voted this message useful |
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