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Am I maybe pushing myself too hard | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| vanityx3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6404 days ago 331 posts - 326 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 1 of 11 11 March 2008 at 8:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Here's what been happening lately. I've been studying French a lot close to 3 hours a day and more if I have time. I go to college full time and also work part time.
I'm only been studying listening and speaking everything in French, no English translations what so ever. I've been studying really hard so I can do really well on a University French placement test and also an interview conducted in French. I don't feel I have any major problems with reading or writing so I'm not concerned about the placement test and more concerned about the interview. I've been able to think much much more in French and able to come up with sentence most times although I do still hesitate at times, I hear native French speakers doing this occasionally but since I'm learning I feel that the interviewer will look down on this if I would do it in the interview, so I'm trying not to hesitate as much. I honestly don't feel I'm pushing myself too hard, although I do feel I have a lot of pressure/motivation on my shoulders, depending on how at look at things, to do well. Usually I'm staying positive about things and noticing things I'm improving on, like new sentences popping in my head. But I still have my worries sometimes. For instance, last night I decided to watch some of a French movie, La fille sur le pont, I really enjoyed what I saw, and understood some of it, but I don't think I understood enough to be able to tell someone all about it except for what I saw with my eyes and not what I heard. This kind of got me down a bit because I am trying so hard to do well at this interview, and I need to do well at the interview to get into Advanced French classes at the University. I understand what going on when I watch the the French in Action video I'm studying with and also when I'm in a classroom setting talking about grammar or vocabulary. But now I'm worried because of the movie. An example line from the movie is this: Vous avez l'air d'une fille qui va faire une connerie. Unless I would've be been concetrating on the words and not the movie, I probably would've missed faire une connerie. I've tested myself to see how many words on average I can hear at a time in French and repeat them back correctly and it is between 7-10. I tried to compare this with English, but it is hard for me not to cheat in English and puposely talk faster than the speaker talks to catch back up with him. I can hear at least 20 words in English and repeat them back without a problem. But this kind of test is actually harder than just listening and understanding something that has been said, because you have to actually repeat it back and usually the speaker is already saying something different which can be distracting. here is another quote from the movie: Peut-être que j'ai jamais mérité mieux ? Ca doit être écrit quelque part, j'sais pas où. Y en a qui sont fait pour vivre en rigolant, moi j'ai jamais passé un seul jour de ma vie sans me faire avoir. Edited by vanityx3 on 11 March 2008 at 12:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6065 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 2 of 11 11 March 2008 at 11:28am | IP Logged | ||
I haven't specifically seen "La fille sur le pont" but I find that some french movies are difficult to understand and some are not. For example, I recently saw two movies that were half in french and half in English. The first one was "Heading South" and I understood almost all of the french with very little difficulty. The second one was "2 Days in Paris" and I had a much more difficult time understanding the french. I think the difference was that in "Heading South" The speakers were hatian, canadian, English, and american, and thus they were speaking standard french and not using slang (except for when the hatians were speaking to each other and they spoke creole--very hard to understand that). In "2 days in Paris" the speakers were all parisians and, I think, were using a lot of slang. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mintgreennova Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6129 days ago 24 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, German | Message 3 of 11 11 March 2008 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think French movies are VERY hard to understand. I can understand almost everything I hear in everyday speech in French, everything from slangy teenagers to school classes; whereas German I just began learning a few months ago, and I can honestly say I understand only slightly less in German when it comes to films. My Spanish is between my French and German but I'd still venture to say I understand the same amount of Spanish as French, but only in terms of movies. Why this is, I have no idea. Either I'm way too accustomed to the French-Alsatian accent in real life, or French films are just strangely hard to understand.
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| Topsiderunner Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6861 days ago 215 posts - 218 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Arabic (Written) | Message 4 of 11 11 March 2008 at 5:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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As for the subject line of your post, I don't think its possible to push too hard unless 1) your studying is getting in the way of other obligations or 2) you are losing motivation because of it. If you're enjoying what you're doing, keep it up. And I don't know how your university works, but I'm sure if you felt that the placement test had judged you wrongly you could speak with the department about it.
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| Svengali Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6089 days ago 14 posts - 14 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 5 of 11 12 March 2008 at 2:24am | IP Logged | ||
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You said you study 3 hours a day, that's very good, I wish I was able to do that.
But, what exactly do you do in those 3 hours? And do you study everyday? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gilgamesh Tetraglot Senior Member England Joined 6185 days ago 452 posts - 468 votes 14 sounds Speaks: Dutch, English, German, French Studies: Polish | Message 6 of 11 12 March 2008 at 5:40am | IP Logged | ||
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French movies can be a pain sometimes, this is true.
For a long time I shared your frustration about not understanding French movies and/or even sometimes French TV. I coulc read French literature "with pleasure and understanding" at the time, and was thus puzzled by why I was having such a hard time following a movie. Seeing the same movie with subtitles, I realized the dialogue was far simpler than the books I'd recently read in the same language. I have to admit I am a lazy, lazy, person, by the way. Anyway, this comes from a lack of good audio input. I don't mean slowly-spoken textbook dialogues, nothing adapted. The raw stuff. You need to focus more on that if you know your reading or written comprehension is fine. I achieved this by listening to audio books. (Well, as I said I am lazy, I really only listened to maybe two or three.) I would take a book of the length of about 10 CDs, and then listen to it, gradually. I would make sure I'd first take, say CDs 1-4, listening to them in consecutive order, then listening to each of them separately until I felt I really had internalized the content. After doing this to some degree of dedication, I found I could understand some films I had previously watched (and where, then, only half of the dialogue actually reached my brain) almost entirely. To facilitate this, I used headphones in the beginning. This also really helps - because of distraction, background noises, etc. Well, I hope you could follow me... ...and I wish you good luck with your French studies. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vanityx3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6404 days ago 331 posts - 326 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 7 of 11 12 March 2008 at 10:45am | IP Logged | ||
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ere is a youtube clip of the movie where Daniel Auteiul character say the line,
Vous avez l'air d'une fille qui va faire une connerie. at the beginning. La fille sur le pont To me it sounds just like this. Vous avez d'une fille quive faire une connerie. I listened to it a few times and it is very hard to hear l'air in the sentence, and qui va sounds slurred into quive. Also Vannessa Paradis talks very quickly sometimes throughout the movie. Although I will say I understood more watching some a second time. I think I have come to understanding with this problem though. I'm studying and being taught formal and correct French. I can understand French much better if it's in this more formal way of talking. But I'm not used to hearing colloquial and informal French. Edited by vanityx3 on 12 March 2008 at 10:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mintgreennova Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6129 days ago 24 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, German | Message 8 of 11 12 March 2008 at 11:37am | IP Logged | ||
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OH, another thing that has helped me ALOT with listening comprehension (in real life, anyhow; I do still need to work on movies) is deciphering which letters or syllables tend to get dropped in rapid speech. Just how Americans tend to drop our "t"s and our "g"s when in casual conversation "I thoughd 'bout gointhe store..." the french have certain syllables which are often omitted.
- Ne doesn't really happen in casual speech. "Je ne l'aime pas." is "Je l'aime pas." - "J" followed by an "s" turns into "ch". This was the most obvious when I first arrived in France. The first day I came home I asked my host mom "What the hell does CHAYPEH mean, and why does everyone say it ALL THE TIME?!?" Turns out CHEYPEH was "Je ne sais pas." You'll hear alot of "Chwee désolé, madame" or "Mais chavais pas!" - the "re": for example, "être", if followed by a consonant is usually pronounced "et". "Il va être dans le magasin." = "Il va etdans le magasin." -All non accentuated "e"s. Forget about 'em. I have never even heard someone actually say "Serrait." It's actually "srait." And contrary to the opinion of foodies everywhere, France doesn't have the best "petits pains", it has the "l'meilleur p'tits pains". -Il = Y "Il n'est pas là" is transformed to "EEay pas là." Only said in half a second. - "a"s and "u"s are also sometimes dropped, but not as much as the "e"s. But like in the video "Une fille quivfaire une connerie." or "Tu as vu le film?" "Tas vu le film?" -And one last weird thing is what I'll call sigh words. Sometimes French people inexplicably decide to not finish their word and sigh instead, leaving you to interpret what syllables were to follow and complete the phrase. I can't really explain it, it's not exactly just a sigh, because their mouths are still slightly closed and it produces a sort of whistl-ey siffling sort of sound like the air is coming from between their teeth. I know it sounds mad, but I swear it happens all the time. Like this morning I took 5 minutes trying to figure out "je m'en f*sifflewhistlesound* until I realized it was a lazy "Je m'en fou." Je m'en fou, indeed. I believe this post alone justifies adding another cactus to french in the language ratings. ;) I think there's a few more like this, but this list should get you through understanding a bit more of the headache that is colloquial french. Some of these might be particular to Alsace, so other Francophones correct me if I'm wrong. And sorry if this a bit long, it just all sort of came to me at once. Edited by mintgreennova on 12 March 2008 at 12:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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