|
 |
Heading Towards French Fluency | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Samsara Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6337 days ago 21 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin | Message 1 of 6 17 May 2008 at 9:56pm | IP Logged |
|
I've studied French on and off for several years, but the entire time I've been content with passive fluency as a goal. I've recently met another language learner who is simultaneously studying ESL and Mandarin, and she's been a real inspiration to me. She made me realize that I shouldn't settle for just knowing enough of a language to be able to say "I know it." I should be able to live with it; to live in a country that speaks it without any problems and to at least aim for a native fluency even if I may never achieve it.
Thanks to her badgering, I'm restarting my French study with an emphasis on conversation. GOALS
Since I'm trying to achieve different goals than in the past, I'm going to have to come up with new ways to reach them. The accent one especially should be interesting, since that seems to be the largest problem for speakers of any foreign language. I'm also studying elementary Italian on the side, which might impact my study time. If I have to choose though, I'm going to give my time to French instead of Italian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Samsara Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6337 days ago 21 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin | Message 2 of 6 17 May 2008 at 11:04pm | IP Logged |
|
I originally planned to spend a substantial amount of time doing shadowing today with an audiobook, but my husband decided to take a nap and I had to be quiet. I did l-r instead, which is something I don't really see that much value in. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would though. In conversation, I'm focusing too much on my response to pay attention to the details of the native French speaker's accent. This was more relaxed and allowed me to really focus on the elements I wanted to pay attention to, like intonation. The pace was brisk so I didn't overanalyze like I thought I would.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Samsara Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6337 days ago 21 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin | Message 3 of 6 18 May 2008 at 5:10pm | IP Logged |
|
I was able to shadow today for about 15 minutes. If I continue to use this method, I'm going to have to figure out a better setup. The technical elements seem to get in the way like trying to backtrack the audio to the beginning of the element that I'm shadowing and being able to move and have the text with me at the same time.
I also spent about an hour typing vocabulary into quizlet. Previously, as I read novels, I wrote down unfamiliar words in a notebook. Going back and looking each of them up in my Robert Micro took forever, but now I'm able to review them digitally until I learn them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Samsara Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6337 days ago 21 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin | Message 4 of 6 21 May 2008 at 7:55pm | IP Logged |
|
The past few days I've found myself working with vocabulary a lot more than I'd like to. I know that I'll pick up more vocabulary naturally by reading-- I'm not to worried about that aspect right now. Instead, my concern is my pronunciation, which I've been working on the least. To remedy this, I made a pie chart and divided up the different aspects of language learning into the amounts I'd like to practice them. Then I made up a schedule of daily activites based on those percentages. It looks something like this:
sat - reading sun - reading, 30 min grammar exercises mon - study Italian, listen to news in French on way to work tue - vocabulary, listen to news in French on way to work wed - shadowing, listen to news in French on way to work thu - study session with native speaker (a friend), grammar exercises fri - shadowing, listen to news in French on way to work I spread it out in small chunks through out the week, and throughout the day (podcasts in morning, assignments at night) so that I would constantly be exposed to it. My only problem so far has been that by the time I get home from work, I'm too tired to concentrate. Next week should be less stressful; if it's not I'm going to have to rethink this. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Samsara Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6337 days ago 21 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin | Message 5 of 6 25 May 2008 at 1:40pm | IP Logged |
|
I had my first conversation session. The native French speaker that I was working with said I did very well and that mostly all I needed was practice to get over my apprehension, as I had the vocabulary and pronunciation already.
I'm having a renewed appreciation for vocabulary study. I stopped cramming vocabulary in order to work more on my pronunciation and speaking. However, lately I've noticed that I've been reading texts more quickly, and it's partly because of the vocabulary that I've crammed. Every time a vocabulary word that I studied appears, I realize how helpful that studying was to me. It made me reevaluate my plan to learn Italian too. I think that I will pursue some short beginner's course in Italian, like Rosetta Stone or some such simple lesson, in order to get a hang of the prounciation and rhythm. Then I'm going to quickly cram vocabulary and grammar until I can read easy newspaper articles. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Samsara Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6337 days ago 21 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin | Message 6 of 6 08 June 2008 at 10:03pm | IP Logged |
|
I'm now reading with probably 95+% comprehension. I still look up words every now and then, but a lot of the time they turn out to be slange or words I wouldn't know even if they were in English. I have Anki and my vocab review to thanks for my quick improvement in that area.
So far I've had two study sessions with my friend who is a native speaker. She gave me invaluable advice on pronunciation and now my pronunciation abilities seem to be above other French learners that I've encountered recently. However, when I focus on my pronunciation, I sacrafice the rhythm. I have to speak sooooo slowly to maintain the accent. In conversation, I've been going back to speaking with my American accent because it flows much more naturally. At home alone, though, and in my study sessions with my friend I've been praciticing the correct prounciations in hopes of getting my mouth used to the sounds so that one day I can speak at a natural pace. I have almost all of the grammar memorized now, even some the wierd literary tenses that I will never used. During my study sessions, we're focusing on getting me used to producing each tense. The past two weeks have been the various past tenses; next week she's going to have me converse in the future and conditional tenses. 1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
