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Gary’s Language Learning Log of Glory | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5017 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 31 02 September 2010 at 5:10pm | IP Logged |
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I figured I'd start one of these logs to keep track of my progress.
The language I'm focusing on right now is French - I'd like to get fairly proficient in it before I move onto other languages. My background: I studied French at school - from primary 6 (age 10 or 11) up to Higher level (age 17). As everyone here knows, language teaching at schools tends to leave a lot to be desired. All that study gave me a decent foundation in the grammar and the common verb tenses, and a bit of listening practice, but absolutely zero experience in speaking - conversation just isn't a skill that's taught in the school system here. Six years later I've decided to revisit my French and try to actually get good at it. Resources I have Michel Thomas - basic French (gone through this already) Pimsleur French I-III (also gone through this already) A massive beast of a French dictionary (Oxford-Hachette) Anki, with two decks: the public Intermediate French one and one of my own for words I come across. The local French Conversation Meetup Group, where I can go to practice my speaking with other learners and native speakers. Various French language websites and blogs for reading. French In Action videos. french.about.com - basically serves as my online grammar book. Also has some tests that are good for gauging your ability with some of the more confusing aspects of the grammar. UPDATED 2010-09-08: Assimil French with Ease I might try and get a hold of Assimil as well since it gets very good reviews around here. Goals My main goal is to be comfortable with French conversations by next June, as that's when I'm planning on attending a big music festival in France so it makes sense as a goal as I'll have lots of opportunity to chat with natives. Hence speaking and listening proficiency is my main area of focus. Edited by garyb on 08 September 2010 at 4:57am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5017 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 31 02 September 2010 at 5:26pm | IP Logged |
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I went to the French Meetup group last night. The last couple of times I went they were doing a "speed meeting" theme where you chat to one person for five minutes then change partners, which is great as everyone gets to participate and you can meet a wide variety of people. This time, however, it was just an informal gathering at the pub, sitting around a table. There were two French guys there, a few people who had previously lived in France, and a couple of learners like myself.
It was quite hard to get in a conversation for a few reasons: there was a couple sitting in the middle of the table, effectively acting as a wall between the two sides (one member of the couple being a French guy, who spent most of his time speaking to his girlfriend rather than being useful to the rest of us); it was quite a noisy environment so listening was difficult (although that could be a good thing as it'll prepare me for real life situations in noisy environments); and the woman next to me spoke so softly that only the person she was speaking to could hear her, which was downright rude as it prevented others from joining in the conversation since they couldn't hear half of it. Anyway enough ranting; as the evening went on people became friendlier thanks to the alcohol and I got more of a chance to speak. I made a lot of simple mistakes that I'd never make if I had been writing, and forgot a lot of words when I needed them, which I put down to my complete lack of experience in conversation. The only way I can improve that is to get more practice: keep attending the group, and perhaps find a language exchange partner on Skype. Speaking is definitely the weakest link in my skills; I can still barely speak a sentence without pauses or mistakes. Listening wise things were better; I didn't understand every word, but I could usually get the gist of the conversation and understand enough to be able to contribute. I've been doing a lot of listening work recently (French In Action, RFI News in Simple French, etc.) and that seems to have paid off. To summarise, from the meetup I've learned that I need to work on: - Speaking in general - just get as much experience as possible! - Getting a more solid grip on the basics needed for conversation: common verb conjugations and typical conversation vocabulary. Most of the mistakes I made were with basic stuff which I haven't really been studying because I've been focusing on more advanced things like semi-obscure vocab from books. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| michaelmichael Senior Member Canada Joined 5067 days ago 167 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 3 of 31 02 September 2010 at 5:26pm | IP Logged |
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yes, the more french logs the better. If only they would force everyone on this forum to make a french log, I would be in heaven.
I am very impressed with Harrap's shorter dictionary. It is also very big, but the thing i like about it the most, is its explanations of the grammar. I am doing the same thing as you in regard to the anki decks. I have some complaints about the intermediate french one though, too many idioms with "coup". I always mark them as right, even when i get those ones wrong. There mostly at the beginning though. Also i do check all the new words with online dictionaries, and while i have never found a mistake, i do edit them just to add some stuff. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5017 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 31 08 September 2010 at 4:55am | IP Logged |
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Quick update... I managed to get a hold of Assimil French With Ease cheaply. I've been
going through it pretty quickly since I've already got a basic grasp of the language, and I've been putting any unknown vocab from it into my Anki deck, which is quickly reaching epic proportions. To manage the size of the deck, I've created a "daytoday" tag which I apply to words and expressions that I could see myself using in regular day-to-day conversations, so I have the option of focusing on just them rather than the more unusual, hence less important, words. Also on Anki I've made reverse versions of every card (easy to do: select them all in the browser, go to Actions > Generate Cards > Reverse, then in the Add Items window select Forward and Reverse next to Cards: on the top right, then for every future card you add a reverse version will also be added. Since Anki's model is based on underlying "facts", updating any forward card will effectively also update its reverse version, and vice versa. Also I've been adding sound samples and/or IPA to the French sides of the cards, and I practice pronouncing every word out loud. I've finished Le Petit Prince, which was good but I think for now I'm better off focusing on conversational stuff, vocab, and pronunciation rather than reading more books. Lastly I joined LiveMocha in the hope of finding some native speakers to chat with. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5017 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 31 15 September 2010 at 4:10pm | IP Logged |
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I got an unexpected opportunity to practice my French last night - I was in the 24 hour food shop at 3am (where all the drunk people go to get a snack after their night out) and I was buying a Quiche Lorraine. The guy behind me in the queue commented "la Quiche Lorraine, très bien!", I replied "ouais!", and from that we have a brief conversation in French. I'm not sure whether he was actually French or just spoke the language well, as his pronunciation didn't seem perfect, but either way it was good practice. I understood most of what he said, although not always immediately, and was able to respond.
Apart from that I've been too busy to do much serious practice in the last week or so as I've not had a lot of free time, but I've been going through Anki or watching an FIA episode or doing an Assimil exercise whenever I can fit it in. There's a French meetup group meeting tonight but I'm really not sure if I'll be able to make it unfortunately, I have a job interview to prepare for which is more of a priority right now. Edited by garyb on 15 September 2010 at 4:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| genini1 Senior Member United States Joined 5278 days ago 114 posts - 161 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 6 of 31 15 September 2010 at 10:17pm | IP Logged |
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24 hour food stores seem to be the place to go in order to meet people that speak your target language and if your like me having some liquid courage allows you to go up and talk to them even if you know you'll get a lot wrong.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5017 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 31 20 September 2010 at 4:55pm | IP Logged |
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I've had a really busy but interesting weekend. Firstly I found a Skype language exchange partner for French, but I've not had the time to talk to him yet.... Hopefully will today or tomorrow. On Friday I met an awesome German girl who's also into language learning (speaks English, knows some Latin, learning Czech and Japanese). Maybe she's even on this forum, haha. I met up with her and her friend the next day, and while I was at the pub waiting for them to arrive, I got chatting to a nearby group of people. The conversation turned to languages (not my doing, honestly, it was because one of them was Swiss and spoke 5 languages: English, French, German, Italian, and Swiss German) and we had a chat in French (mostly rude topics as you'd expect). Everyone in the group seemed to know a decent bit of French and/or German, as they're the most commonly learned languages at school here. Then the Germans arrived and the group started speaking German, which I know very little of so I couldn't join in much although I did make a couple of attempts which they were happy to correct :).
The experience did confirm German's place on my language hit-list. It would be a change from Romance languages, a good introduction to languages with cases and Germanic languages, and would give me good opportunity for travel to the Mecca of beer, meat, beautiful women, metal music, and nightclubs that stay open till breakfast time. Maybe I'll start learning it within the next year or so, but for now I just want to get good at French before seriously tackling other languages. Back on the French side of things I've started doing some writing a few days a week. I'm just keeping a diary of things that have happened, or my dreams, and I try to write it as if I were telling the story to a friend. I find that really helps me figure out how to express my thoughts in French and teach me important vocab, expressions, and grammatical structures for doing so, which should in turn help with my speaking. Edited by garyb on 20 September 2010 at 5:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| JasonUK Triglot Newbie United Kingdom learnalanguagein1yea Joined 5066 days ago 29 posts - 38 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, French Studies: Thai, Spanish | Message 8 of 31 22 September 2010 at 1:02am | IP Logged |
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Hi Gary B.
Thanks for your log. I've been learning french for a few years. You haven't mentioned FSI French as I think that out of all the resouces that i've used this is the best. The Rosetta stone was good (although far too expensive) but it sounds like you're probably passed that now. Was the Assimil any good? I'd not heard of that before now. The two best websites for learning french at a good level and which happen to be free at the same time are sharedtalk.com and onethinginafrenchday.podbean.com. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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