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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Scratch Groupie United States Joined 5054 days ago 45 posts - 57 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 9 of 18 15 November 2010 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Last week ended up being a tough one in the area of language learning. I got to feeling a bit burnt out and the translation of English into French for the active phase of lessons 36 through 41 felt much harder than the prior week's. I also had a couple of nights of really bad sleep and that didn't help any.
So there isn't going to be anything profound or specific in this entry. It's just a reminder to dust myself off and keep grinding away at it. And that's the important idea here, to keep grinding. Keep grinding and eventually even the largest of rocks can be reduced to dust. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Scratch Groupie United States Joined 5054 days ago 45 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 10 of 18 16 November 2010 at 6:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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So I studied lesson 92 in Assimil New French with Ease and found myself a bit puzzled.
Cette fête commémore le début de la Révolution en mil sept cent quatre-vingt neuf (1789). Then a little later on in telling us about July 14 and its holiday, it says: Plus de cent ans après -- en mil huit cent quatre-vingt huit (1888), plus exactement -- la date du quatorze juillet était adoptée comme fête nationale. That's certainly not more than a hundred years by my calculations. 1888 - 1789 = 99 So is this some inscrutable French humor or idiom that I'm missing? I also wish to note my disappointment in Pimsleur's attempt to insert moderation in the lesson I did today. Une demi-bouteille? Non, non, je ne veux pas une demi-bouteille de vin. Aujord'hui, c'était dur, très dur! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Scratch Groupie United States Joined 5054 days ago 45 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 11 of 18 22 November 2010 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been a bit lazy this past week, and need to get back to doing the daily doses of Assimil. I also felt some frustration sometimes at the struggle with listening comprehension.
I thought some about language learning yesterday while I ran my 4th half-marathon. It wasn't a good result for me, back early in September I had a lot of trouble with excessive fatigue and couldn't do my training runs. It's only been in the past 2 weeks that I've begun to feel more physically normal again. It was tempting almost to not do it yesterday. But I decided I would do it as hard as I was capable of. So this morning I'm back at my desk at work, with the worst race effort I've ever had in a half-marathon, sore legs, a memory of seeing a man down and being attended to by medical personnel a little after the 2 mile marker on the course. It's an interesting thing, doing endurance events, as well as a bit more complicated for someone like me who has type 1 diabetes. Still, for almost everyone, while you're doing them, you're going to have bad patches between the start and finish. A lot of it isn't so much about how good you do while feeling good, but how much you persist while it's going bad. I'm going to guess that learning a new language has some parallels with it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Scratch Groupie United States Joined 5054 days ago 45 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 12 of 18 29 November 2010 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Argh, I've been struggling. Not much study at all this past week except for some passive absorption while watching X-Files. I totally blew off on anything with Assimil. This time of year has often been a struggle for me, the daylight hours dwindle and often affect my mood badly. It doesn't help that this year has been rather tough, my 2 cats both had to be put to sleep this year and the most serious relationship of my life broke apart.
It's been a struggle and I'm tired. I'll try to get back on track this week with Assimil. I did Pimsleur French 3 Lesson 8 this morning while driving to work. Not so bad considering I hadn't done any of it in over a week, so I'm trying to be reassured that I certainly haven't forgotten everything. Mais une hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Scratch Groupie United States Joined 5054 days ago 45 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 13 of 18 30 November 2010 at 4:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I still haven't gotten back to Assimil, but did some reading yesterday and repeated lesson 8 of Pimsleur French 3 again this morning. I did well on it today and will advance to lesson 9 tomorrow. And I'm going to get back to work tonight on New French with Ease.
I think though I'm going to let Spanish go for now though. Along with my mood still being somewhat depressed, I had noticed how language learning felt less enjoyable going after both French and Spanish concurrently. It felt like it was distracting me from concentrating well on French and right now the amount I've learned in French is both my pride and frustration. Pride in how much I've learned, frustration in how far I still have to go before I get to what I would like with it. Also in hopes of getting my mood elevated some more, I did my first workout in a long while last evening. I had gotten away from working out with fatigue issues from mid-September to the early part of November and I think that's been affecting me some too. Physical activity is very good at producing favorable endorphins and I've often felt much better these last few years since I started working out some in 2005 and 2006. I've lost some strength this year because of laziness, but it should come back fairly quickly. C'est tout. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Scratch Groupie United States Joined 5054 days ago 45 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 14 of 18 10 December 2010 at 3:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm finally back working with Assimil. I listened to lesson 95 and translated lesson 46 last night. I've been doing some Pimsleur as well and this morning watched some of an episode of the X-Files with its French dub. I don't do too bad when the dialogues are exchanges of shorter sentences, the tougher ones are when Mulder or Scully go off on an extended monologue.
Oh well, I'm telling myself to feel good that I'm back at it, that I'm trying to move forward during this season of darkness as I sometimes think of this time of year. I think a resumption of working out is helping there some now, helped me get to a point where last evening I finally felt like I looked forward to loading up Winamp with the Assimil lessons, and cracking open its book. Hopefully now I can get back into the rhythm of daily language study. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Scratch Groupie United States Joined 5054 days ago 45 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 15 of 18 13 December 2010 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm plodding away again, and if I keep up with daily effort, I will complete passive listening of all the lessons for New French in 2 weeks. Although I'm not doing much extra right now -- just doing a Pimsleur lesson in the car when I'm driving to work. That reminds me.
S'asseoir amuses me. It's funny and perhaps not coincidence that the verb to sit has ass in it. Assoyez-vous! But when I finish up the passive listening of New French in 2 weeks, I believe I will start up with Using French. I don't know if Using French uses the same passive and active wave idea as New French, but if it does, it should mean that I will reach lesson 50 of Using French the same time as I complete the active phase of New French. I still need a lot of practice with listening comprehension. That's the toughest area for me to get. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 magister Pro Member United States Joined 6422 days ago 346 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Turkish, Irish Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 18 13 December 2010 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | ||
Je suis diabétique de type 2 depuis seulement quatre mois. :-( Bien qu'elle soit une maladie génétique dans ma famille, c'était un vrai choc pour moi quand même. Bon courage avec le français. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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