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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 5018 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 9 of 31 22 September 2010 at 3:07am | IP Logged | |||||
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Cheers for the recommendations Jason. I haven't looked into FSI French as I've heard comments about it being boring and repetitive and not as efficient as other methods e.g., Pimsleur. Although maybe by doing that I've missed out on a valuable resource, and it's free so I should really have a proper look into it. Sharedtalk definitely looks useful, and I'll definitely add One Thing... to my Google Reader.
I've found Assimil very useful, and definitely good value for money (I got it fairly cheaply on Amazon Marketplace). It has lots of small lessons which consist of sentences, which are written (in French and English) and spoken on the CD, along with some notes explaining vocab, grammar, and expressions used. It can be used in various ways depending on your level and aims and learning style; since I'm particularly interested in improving my speech, I repeat every sentence, several times if necessary to get the pronunciation and flow right. I go through several lessons per day at the moment since I already know a lot of the vocab and grammar, although I'm sure I'll slow down a bit as it gets more advanced. Overall it's definitely a good resource for learning useful French and learning vocab and expressions in context (a point which I'll get onto later). This evening I went to the French Meetup again, and I found that I did a LOT better than at the one three weeks ago. While my French must've improved somewhat over these three weeks, I think it was more a case of me feeling a lot more comfortable due to several factors: the group was friendlier and more welcoming than last time (it's a different crowd at every meeting so you never know what to expect), it was generally a more relaxed atmosphere, and my spoken French is still in the "newbie gains" stage where it improves noticeably every time as I get more used to the actual idea of speaking the language. I understood people more easily, my pronunciation was better (still far from perfect, but good enough that the native speakers didn't have to ask me to repeat myself too often), I didn't struggle to remember words as much, and my sentences were spoken more smoothly and confidently. I'm still far from any sort of fluency, and I know my improvements will become less dramatic as time goes on, but I'm certainly happy with my progress. Also at the meetup we had a fairly in-depth discussion about learning techniques which was very interesting. A girl was insisting that learning vocab on its own isn't very useful, especially for beginners to intermediates, and learning phrases where the vocab is put into context is far more useful. That definitely resonated with me as I remember phrases, or contexts in which a word is used, far better than individual words. For example I always remember the word "s'écrouler" (to collapse) as it reminds me of a short story I read in which a girl is shot and she collapses, hence it's attached to a pretty vivid image. Similarly a lot of the phrases from French in Action are embedded in my head because I remember characters using them in context. I reckon I'm going to modify my learning methods a bit, by adding some example phrases or even pictures to the Anki cards that I always struggle with. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5018 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 10 of 31 06 October 2010 at 8:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I went to French meetup again last night. As I predicted there weren't any more dramatic improvements, although my listening is definitely improving - I understood most of the conversations, even when I couldn't hear very well due to the noisy pub environment - but my speaking hasn't got a whole lot better. I still make stupid mistakes and mispronunciations, mostly because of not being used to speaking, and I sometimes have trouble expressing what I want to get across in French. It seems that my current conversation practice of attending the meetup once every week or two just isn't cutting it so I need to be doing more. Especially since the meetup is so hit-or-miss in terms of how friendly people are and how much opportunity I get to actually speak.
I still haven't had time to talk to my Skype language partner (I tried once and after over an hour of waiting for us both to be ready, Skype crashed, then I had to go out half an hour later) so I really need to set aside some more time for this. I might also look into finding a person locally who I can chat to, either as an exchange or for a small fee if need be, to get my conversation skills up to scratch. I live in a very cosmopolitan city so there's bound to be someone who can help me. Also I've just been offered a job so I'll have a bit more cash, so I might look into lessons (there's a local Frenchwoman who does small group lessons focused on conversation, which sounds like it could be useful to me). Also next time I go to the meetup I'll take a notebook and write down any useful conversation phrases I have difficulty with so I can learn them. Also I keep getting envy to learn other languages. Italian keeps appealing to me, especially since I have Italian friends; I found myself reading about Latin grammar out of sheer curiosity; and at my prospective new job they said I might be sent to Ukraine for a bit of time so now I'm tempted to look into Russian. Part of it might be that the first stages of learning a new language are always the most exciting and productive, whereas once you get past the beginner stage it becomes a bit more routine, boring, and difficult. But if I want to reach my original goal of being conversational in French by next June then I'll have to resist all this temptation and just stick to it, also keeping in mind that if I keep focusing on French now then learning other languages in future will be easier as I'll have developed better learning strategies and (particularly for other Romance languages) I'll have a more solid foundation. Edited by garyb on 06 October 2010 at 8:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5018 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 31 13 October 2010 at 3:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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So this is pretty much becoming a weekly report of my progress at the French meet-up, because it's the best way to gauge my progress with the spoken language, and writing about how I completed three more Assimil lessons and watched a TV episode just isn't very interesting.
Last night I went along and, unusually, there were lots of native French speakers (about 10) and only one other Anglophone, which was great because it gave me practice in an almost fully immersed situation - natives speaking to each other, discussing things, telling stories, making jokes. I found that I could understand most of their conversation, although it got tricker when the conversation got heated and people started speaking very quickly. However it was very difficult to actually join in. It takes me a good few seconds of "processing time" to understand and to come up with something to say in return, by which point the opportunity to cut in with something relevant has gone because the conversation has moved on. Also I'm a bit shy, and this is amplified in a foreign language because I worry more about making mistakes so spend more time thinking over what I'm about to say. I had a much easier time when the group was quieter or I had an opportunity to converse with just one or two people. I did have a bit of an embarrassing moment when I was asked (by French women) what reputation French women have here and they thought I was saying they were "easy" when in fact I meant something quite different, but it was all a good laugh. To my (pleasant) surprise, a few of the French people said I was doing very well when I did speak! Definitely an improvement over a few months ago when I was in France and my pronunciation was so bad that people couldn't understand me. They were particularly impressed by my knowledge of "useful" vocabulary like the words for "drunk" and "f**k". So overall I seem to be on the right track as far as listening and pronunciation go: I've been listening to and repeating out loud the Assimil recordings, and also listening to various audio like news and recordings of stories/plays/poems (modern ones with everyday language of course) during "dead time" such as when I'm sitting on a bus or resting between sets at the gym. When these start to feel easy I'll move onto material like films where the speech is less clear. If I keep it up then the "processing time" between hearing and understanding should get shorter and shorter. Moving forward: as always I need to get more conversation practice and I need to be less shy about joining in - instead of spending valuable seconds trying to craft perfect sentences, I should just start speaking and if I make mistakes I can worry about them and learn from them afterwards. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6914 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 12 of 31 13 October 2010 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm intrigued to know what it was you said that got you into so much trouble...
I've hunted through my Assimil French with Ease book and couldn't find the word for f**k anywhere.... must be a new edition out. Keep the log rolling :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5018 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 31 13 October 2010 at 6:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
Actually it was just a case of complete lack of understanding causing one of them to assume. What I was originally trying to say was that French people have an (often undeserved) reputation for being full of themselves, but I had no idea how to express that in French and they weren't familiar with the English idiom. So one of them just made the complete guess that I was wanting to say "easy" (maybe they believe that that's a general stereotype about French women so it's what they were expecting me to say?) then announced it to the others before I had the chance to explain that that wasn't what I was saying. If anything I was implying the opposite; my (completely unfounded) stereotype of French women is that they're not particularly "easy" but... let's just say... worth the effort ;). As for swearwords... I have a book called Merde! that's all about slang, and there's the alternative french dictionary and the WikiBooks French page on slang. None of them are complete or up-to-date but they cover the common, timeless swearwords and slang. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5018 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 14 of 31 20 October 2010 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Right, weekly update time. I had a good few hours of conversation experience last night as a few French people invited me back for drinks after the meetup, which was very nice of them. Speaking wise, again I'd say there's been incremental improvements in terms of my pronunciation, speed, and clarity, as well as my ability to express myself. I do seem to be finding it easier to express myself at a basic but functional level, and respond to questions, in everyday conversations. It's difficult to quantify of course so I just have to go by how easy or difficult it feels.
One-to-one conversations are becoming easier but keeping up with and joining in group conversations is still very difficult. I'm finding that if I don't understand something it's better to just forget about it and try to keep up with the current conversation rather than dwell on trying to work out the meaning, since conversations move so quickly. The problem with that, though, is that I often miss an important part of the context. For example, I understood that people were talking about meat, but I didn't catch the part before where they said the meat was from a cloned animal, which makes the conversation quite different from one about the steak somebody ate last night. Every so often they'd slow down and ask me a question to keep me involved, which was nice even if it did make me feel like a child (e.g., "We're talking about seafood. Do you like seafood? Which kinds?"). It feels a bit embarrassing that they have to slow the conversation down and ask very simple questions just so I can keep up, but I definitely appreciate the effort and I don't feel bad about it because I know it's a difficult skill and they've all been there themselves, or will be, while learning English. My foreign friends, even the ones who've been here for a while and are fairly fluent, still sometimes have trouble keeping up with a group conversation among native English speakers so I know it's tough and I shouldn't feel bad about struggling with it. In fact I can empathise a lot more with these friends now that I've been "the foreigner" myself. Afterwards I had a chat with a French guy who's learning English and he was saying he has exactly the same problems in English conversations. So overall I'm still a long way off being able to converse easily but I'm making progress, and diving into the deep end by spending time with groups of native speakers is probably doing me some good! Edited by garyb on 20 October 2010 at 12:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5018 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 15 of 31 25 October 2010 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I signed up for LingQ a few days ago and it seems good so far. It's nothing revolutionary, and its JavaScript reading interface is a bit slow and buggy, but overall I think it'll streamline my listening and reading a lot more by putting everything in one place: there's a large collection of lessons consisting of a passage of text with accompanying audio. I'm going through The Linguist in French, so I'm getting good listening and reading practice while learning about language learning methods. Two birds with one stone.
I've modified my Assimil studying method a bit in order to place more focus on listening rather than reading since listening is more pertinent to my goal: I now listen to the lesson before opening the book and reading it, and listen a second time if necessary, then I listen and read at the same time as before. So my steps are: listen only, listen and read, listen to each sentence and read aloud afterwards (several times to get good pronunciation if need be), read the whole thing aloud, read English translation and notes. Also for the second wave I now do the translation exercise BEFORE going through the French, as I feel that that's a better test of my French abilities as opposed to my recalling-something-I-read-30-seconds-ago abilities :). Finally I plan to do more writing in French (I've said this before but haven't really stuck to it) so I'll write all my entries here in French as well as English, starting from now. I'll try to translate it as if I were speaking, which is to say, instead of attempting a direct and accurate translation I'll try and express the same concepts using words and expressions I already know and only consult a dictionary if I really have to. Expect lots of errors! I doubt I'll have time for the French meetup this week, too busy with musical commitments as my band are recording this weekend. -- Je me suis inscrit au LingQ il y a quelques jours et pour l'instant tout va bien. Il n'est rien de révolutionnaire, et l'interface de lire en JavaScript est un peu lente et bougé(?), mais dans l'ensemble je pense qu'il améliorera mes méthodes d'écoute(?) et de lecture en mettant tout dans un seul endroit: il y a beaucoup de leçons accompagnées par audio. J'étudie « The Linguist » en français, donc je pratique bien l'écoute et la lecture pendant que j'apprends des méthodes pour l'apprentissage des langues. Faire d'une pierre deux coups. J'ai modifié ma méthode d'étudier l'Assimil un peu, afin de me concentrer sur l'écoute plutôt que la lecture parce que l'écoute est plus important à mon but: maintenant, j'écoute la leçon avant de la lire, et j'écoute de nouveau si besoin est, puis j'écoute et je lis à la fois comme avant. Alors mes étapes sont : écouter seulement, écouter et lire, écouter chaque phrase et la lire à haut voix après (plusieurs fois pour la dire avec une bonne prononciation si besoin est), lire toute à haut voix, lire la traduction anglaise et les notes. Aussi, pour la deuxième vague(?) je fais maintenant la traduction AVANT de faire le français, car je crois que c'est une meilleure épreuve de mon français plutôt que ma capacité de rappeler quelque chose que je viens de lire ! Enfin j'ai l'intention d'écrire davantage en français ( j'ai déjà dit ça mais je ne l'ai pas fait ) donc j'écrirai en français dorénavant toutes mes notes. J'essayerai de traduire comme si je parlais, c'est-a-dire, plutôt que tenter de faire une traduction juste, j'essayerai de dire les mêmes choses avec des mots et des expressions que je connais déjà et utiliser seulement un dictionnaire si je dois. Attendez-vous à un tas de fautes ! Je doute que j'aurai le temps d'aller au Meetup cette semaine car mon groupe va enregistrer ce week-end donc je dois pratiquer beaucoup ! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5018 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 16 of 31 27 October 2010 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Si j'écrivais d'abord en français, et ensuite en anglais, pour que je pense davantage en français ? (je me demande, quelle est la différence entre les mots « plus » et « davantage » ? J'ai dit « davantage » parce que « je pense plus » voudrait dire « je ne pense plus » ? Je suis un peu confus, je vais poser la question à un locuteur natif... )
Comme j'ai prévenu, je n'avais pas le temps d'aller au Meetup, j'ai passé une soirée tranquille ( ou pas ! ) avec ma guitare. Grâce à mes amis français, j'ai découvert des groupes français de musique pop. Alors que je suis métalleux dans l'âme, la musique pop vaut mieux pour l’apprentissage parce qu'on peut comprendre les paroles ;). Je trouve que la pop française est plus intéressant que la pop anglaise et américaine, mais c'est pas difficile ! J'aime bien le morceau Jeune et con par Saez ; la musique est un peu générique mais les paroles sont supers. Je poursuis à(?) écouter et lire The Linguist en français et je le trouve intéressant - il me semble qu'il est d'accord avec mon idée que la langue parlée et la langue écrite sont similaires et on peut améliorer son capacité de parler en pratiquant son écriture ( mais bien sûr qu'il faut toujours avoir les conversations afin d'ámeliorer sa compétence de conversation ! ). Je vais traduire mes notes anciennes au fur et à mesure que j'ai le temps. --- How about I write in French first, then in English, so that I think more in French? (I'm wondering what the difference is between the words "plus" and "davantage"? Both mean "more" but I used "davantage" because "plus" can also mean "no more" or "no longer" (because in informal French you can miss out the "ne" in a negative structure, so "je n'en ai plus" ("I don't have it any longer") can also be written as "j'en ai plus", which could also mean "I have more of it"? I'm a bit confused, I'll ask a native speaker...). As I anticipated, I didn't have the time to go to the Meetup, I had a quiet (or not!) evening with my guitar. Thanks to my French friends I discovered some French pop groups. While I'm a metalhead at heart, pop music is better for learning because you can understand the lyrics ;). I find that French pop is more interesting than English and American pop, not that that's difficult! I like the song "Jeune et con" ("Young and Stupid") by Saez; the music's a bit generic but the lyrics are great. I'm continuing to listen to and read The Linguist in French and I'm finding it interesting - he seems to agree with my idea that the spoken language and the written language are similar so you can improve your speaking by practising your writing (but of course you still need to have conversations in order to improve your conversation abilities!). I'm going to gradually tranlsate my old entries whenever I have the time. Edited by garyb on 27 October 2010 at 2:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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