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Am I maybe pushing myself too hard | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| dmg Diglot Senior Member Canada dgryski.blogspot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6954 days ago 555 posts - 605 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Dutch, Esperanto | Message 9 of 11 12 March 2008 at 1:17pm | IP Logged |
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I am certainly one to similarly push myself very hard, and frequently feel I'm not doing good enough, or studying hard enough to reach my goal of "fluency". Some days when I don't study, I feel guilty about the time I "wasted" doing things other than studying vocabulary, or listening to French dialogs, or shadowing, or whatever. But I also know at the same time that my I just need to take a break, and look back and realize how far I've come in the past few years, and know that really, I'm doing OK. It's a hard thing to tell yourself, especially when (in my case) I'm surrounded by people who are already bilingual, but I also need to remember that for most of them they've been speaking English (native: French) for 10+ years, and that I'll get there eventually. This is more of a personal development issue too, since I know I push myself very hard in the other spheres of my life too (university education, and now professionally at my job). But I'm slowly learning.
On a slightly lighter note, some of this thread has shifted topic slightly. One thing that helped my listening comprehension (vis a vis rapid "popular" speech) was improving my general French knowledge, and listening to the same things over and over and over. I have a number of "Un Gars Une Fille" DVDs (A French TV show) with lots of normal, everyday conversation. There are some scenes I've watched probably 50 times trying to understand a particular sentence or two. I found that when my general knowledge level of French improved, I could figure out what they _should_ have been saying in that situation. Sometimes it was improved vocabulary, sometimes it was flipping through a dictionary looking for synonyms for a word I thought might be being used, or learning a new grammar point or conjugation rule. Once I had an idea, I'd rewatch the scene until I was sure that either I was right or I was wrong. That meant listening intently until I was able to dissect _exactly_ what was being said. What happened, then, was I ended up creating a mental map from the "correct" French (with all the extra letters and sounds) into the slangy spoken French. Then the next time I heard something I didn't quite understand, my brain had overleared certain phonetic sequences and their "translations" back into normal French, which I could then understand. One example I remember being _totally_ flummoxed with was from an episode of French In Action. (I don't have the textbook, only the online videos.) Mireille says to Robert "Tu veux qu'on y aille?" All I caught was "Tu veux ...?" What did she say? Connie-eye? Is that a verb? Probably not, doesn't match any infinitive I'm familiar with. A noun? Nothing I know of, and nothing I could find in the dictionary made sense, and there wasn't even an article in front. Then, I became more comfortable with the subjunctive, and the irregular conjugations. And I heard "il faut que j'y aille" in some other context when the subjunctive was being discussed. Then it just hit me. I went back and watched it, and of course that's what she was saying. Now when I listen to it, I can't hear anything else. There have been a couple of times I've even sent sound clips to francophone friends of mine saying "What does the guy say at 0:38s". (Answer: "Comment faisons-nous?") When I'm watching something, I judge my comprehension in 4 levels. 1) no idea, maybe caught a word here or there 2) I understood the gist of what was being said 3) I understood exactly every word and why it was as it was (conjugated, agreement) 4) I understood everything and could produce the same sentence if I was speaking I found this over-learning of watching and analyzing the same scenes over and over helped me move from being stuck at 2 to immediately being at level 4 for that particular sentence. Being able to do that for the entire scene really helped my internalization of the spoken language. It takes time, but you'll get there. And it'll seem so easy you'll wonder why you couldn't do it before. Hope this helps, and good luck in your studies. Edited by dmg on 12 March 2008 at 2:02pm 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 10 of 11 12 March 2008 at 2:29pm | IP Logged |
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yea, sorry for taking things off-topic. ;)
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| vanityx3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6404 days ago 331 posts - 326 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 11 of 11 12 March 2008 at 2:38pm | IP Logged |
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It doesn't matter it's off topic. I didn't realize why I was having trouble with the movie until I realized I so used to more formal speech and not casual speech. I'm glad it's this way now, because I can learn more about casual speech, which is hard to study unless you live in a French speaking country.
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