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Gary’s TAC 2011 - Team Œ | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4995 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 17 of 104 07 January 2011 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Русский
Almost finished MT Russian Foundation (7 out of 8 lessons done) and started on Penguin Russian, which seems like an excellent course so far. Perfect mixture of theory (grammar, vocab) and practice (examples in context, dialogues, etc.) in my opinion. And I really enjoy working from a real book, away from the computer: I can focus a lot more easily. The first few lessons are mostly revision, but there's no such thing as enough practice reading and pronouncing words, and it's helping reinforce what I've learned from MT (pronouns and verb conjugations) as well as fill in the gaps (ты forms!!). I finally feel like I'm starting to make a bit of progress and my enthusiasm for Russian's definitely increasing. I skipped over the handwriting part; it's definitely something I'd like to learn but it's not a big priority right now. Still no news on when I'm going to Ukraine, it could be in a couple of weeks or in a couple of months for all I know. In any case I'd like to learn as much as possible before so I have at least a very basic grasp and I get the most out of the immersion. Not sure whether to go onto MT Advanced or Pimsleur next. Or perhaps some Lingq to see what I've learned in context. Or all of the above, but I'm not sure I'll have the time. Français: Écrire en français me manque alors je le fais. Ce soir je vais à une fête française, organisée par le groupe Meetup, et j’espère que ça sera une bonne occasion de parler français ; je pense que la plupart du monde parlerai en français plutôt qu'en anglais et j'essayerai de joindre la conversation et avec un peu de chance ils pourraient supporter mes tentatives de parler la langue. Sinon, je me casse et je trouve mes amis en ville. Et je commence mes cours avec le professeur ( dit-on le professeur et non pas la pour une femme ? ) la semaine prochaine. Edited by garyb on 07 January 2011 at 12:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4995 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 18 of 104 08 January 2011 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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The French party last night not only met but exceeded my expectations! I was basically in a genuine French-speaking environment for a good 4 hours, which was amazing and I got plenty chance to practice conversation. I understood almost everything that people said, and was able to contribute although at times I got mixed up or I just didn't know how to express a particular idea in French, but the people there were helpful and forgiving. The host was a Frenchwoman who teaches conversational French courses for adults, and she was very impressed by me - probably not as much by my ability (which is pretty mediocre really, as can be heard in my "Speaking too deeply" post) but by the fact that I had mostly taught myself, as she had apparently met quite a lot of self-taught people who were awful. Interestingly she was particularly critical of the Michel Thomas course and reckoned that what it teaches isn't very useful. She said I "spoke very well, and didn't make mistakes". I know that both of these are exaggerations and I still have a long way to go, but it's still great feedback and good to hear that I've made progress. I wish there was a French party every week! I'm going to start going to the Meetups again now that I've met and talked to a lot of the regulars at the friendlier party environment.
I guess it just shows how rare people like us on the forum are. Most people at the party were either French, had lived in France for some time and learned that way, or had been taking lessons for some time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 4997 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 19 of 104 11 January 2011 at 5:36am | IP Logged | ||
Garyb, I looked that up in The Rules for the Gender of French Nouns by Saul H. Rosenthal. (A very useful book which I think I've previously mentioned on the forum.) He has a separate chapter for "Words for People". Happily for us, he uses professeur as an expanded example: "Language is a fluid thing, and words for what used to be male occupations are slipping from the first group to the second group [see note at the end]. For example, most dictionaries will list professeur and chef as masculine words, and twenty years ago they always were, even if you were talking about a woman. However, in practice, many people now say la professeur and la chef when talking about a woman, and do the same for most occupation words. Both forms are acceptable (le professeur and la professeur, for example). I recently encountered the expression la professeur de dessin in a novel by an author who writes in very elegant French. Be aware however that you may encounter language purists who still insist that it's always le professeur. In Canada you may see la professeure (with an -e at the end) but this form would definitely not be accepted in France." ----- Note: the three categories of people nouns that Rosenthal outlines are: 1/ "Nouns that are truly invariable. You use the same noun and the same gender irrespective of whether you are talking about a man or a woman... Each of these nouns is always masculine or always feminine, no matter the sex of the person that it refers to... (e.g. la victime, le sosie)." 2/ Nouns in which "you use the same noun all the time, but vary the gender (un enfant, une enfant)." 3/ "Nouns in which the noun is variable... You can change both the noun and the gender depending on whether you are talking about a man or a woman... (gamin-gamine, acteur-actrice)." --- My copy of Rosenthal was published in 2009. There isn't any biographical info. on the author, so I don't know his credentials, but I'm finding the book both interesting and quite handy. Hope this helps; sorry it's a bit of a long post. As before, I'm enjoying your log! Edited to fix typos. Edited by songlines on 11 January 2011 at 5:45am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4995 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 20 of 104 11 January 2011 at 3:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks a lot songlines for clearing that up, that's very helpful :)
FR: Apparently the library don't have a copy of Assimil Using French after all - it's in their catalogue but wasn't actually on the shelf. The librarian reckoned somebody must've stolen it. Ah well, time to see if I can find it cheaply online. I'm continuing with the Active wave of French With Ease and shadowing the dialogues to try and improve my speaking rhythm and pronunciation, and watching some TV and films. I'm supposed to be starting with the tutor this week but I haven't heard from her yet. If it doesn't work out with her then I'll contact one of the teachers I met at the French party as they seemed very good. I'll try the Yakety Yak meetup either this week or next depending on when my guitar lesson takes place (see Time Management below). RU: I've finished Michel Thomas and am slowly working through Penguin. I'll start Pimsleur and/or MT Advanced soon as I'm keen to keep doing something audio-based, and keep using the Penguin book to consolidate what I've learned and understand the grammar behind it. Recently I've been reading the book on the bus to work. A couple of days ago a guy sat near me and started talking loudly on the phone in Polish, which confused me since I was trying to read about Russian and both languages have some similar words. I also had a look at the BBC Russian website and videos (it's never too early to expose yourself to native material IMO) and could pick out a few words. Latest news about Ukraine is that I'll be going for 2 weeks instead of the month that was originally planned, which is a shame as it means I won't have as much time to try to use the language and meet people and really get a feel for the place, but it's good in that it disrupts my musical plans (gigs and recording) a lot less. Still, two weeks isn't bad; I'm sure plenty people pay hundreds to go on two-week "immersion courses" during which they spend most of their time speaking English with their fellow students. After Ukraine I reckon I'm either going to come back with a love for the language and culture and keep up the work, or completely lose interest and stop studying it. The latter is more likely; as much as I respect those here who study languages just for the love and have little practical use for them, my main motivation for learning a language is being able to use it. We shall see. Even if I do give up Russian, chances are I'll want to learn it or another Slavic language at some point in the future and it'll be good to have already covered the basics. Time management: Trying to sort out guitar lessons, French meetups and lessons and conversation groups, band practice, and gym, with various constraints e.g. I need my bike to go to the gym in reasonable time but I can't carry my guitar on my bike; I can leave my bike at work but would rather not do so over the weekend in case I need it; guitar lessons will probably have to be Wednesday but the Yakety Yak group meets up at that time so I'll have to alternate these week-by-week; I don't know the French tutor's availability yet; band members' availability for practice changes each week; there's also a Yakety Yak meetup on Monday mornings but that would mean having to wake up earlier and being almost an hour late for work; Meetup.com meetups take place later on on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings; I'd also like to try the Yakety-Yak Russian group at some point; social events and gigs can crop up any evening at short notice; I'm considering taking up Krav Maga but I'm not sure if I need yet another expensive and time-consuming hobby; and my weekends vary from completely busy to completely free... It's becoming like a logic puzzle and I think compromises will often have to be made whatever happens. I'm generally quite a disorganised person so I don't mind not having a routine, but I need to at least have a rough plan so I can get the most out of my time. Also I can't complain too much as I'm lucky to live somewhere where all these resources exist. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4995 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 21 of 104 11 January 2011 at 4:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Also... I'm currently listening to my workmate having a phone conversation in Russian, and I'm pleasantly surprised by the fact that I'm understanding parts of it! I don't know most of the words but I'm picking out simple stuff like "hello, what's up?", "the system's not working", "I want that", "I understand", "very good", "right now", etc.. Not bad having a job where you get free listening practice! Edited by garyb on 11 January 2011 at 4:29pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4995 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 22 of 104 12 January 2011 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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I went to Yakety Yak after work today. Overall it was good - it was like a Meetup except slightly more organised: group sizes are limited to 6 and the tutor ensures that everyone gets a chance to speak. The only negative was that there was no sort of feedback - my and others' mistakes went uncorrected and I didn't get much more feedback on my French than "tu parles bien", which is certainly nice to hear but it doesn't give me something to go away and work on. I suppose correction might have got in the way of the flow of the conversation so I'm not sure where I stand on that, but at the very least some feedback to everyone at the end of the session would improve it. Anyway the way I basically see it is that it's like a Meetup but you pay a small fee that guarantees that you'll get a good chance to speak. The fee is £6 for an hour, which is an amount that you could easily spend on two beers at the free Meetup, so it isn't unreasonable. Overall, it's no substitute for a proper private tutor but it's definitely useful and I will go every so often.
Looking at my goal to be fairly conversationally fluent by June, or more specifically, be able to understand almost everything people say and be able to speak and express myself without much difficulty, I reckon I'm already about there with listening. Tonight I understood pretty much everything, and even when expressions I hadn't heard before came up I was able to figure out the meaning from the words and context. However with speaking I still found myself making errors with pronunciation (particularly the usual u/ou and en/on) and language, and often couldn't find the words for what I was wanting to say. About 50% of these latter instances were due to me genuinely not knowing the word or expression, and the other 50% just from not being used to speaking, like the errors. My speech wasn't very fluid most of the time, but I had no trouble at all being understood. So I'd say now that my speaking is perhaps "good enough", but I'm aiming for more than that :) The path from here is obvious: speak as much as possible. Meetup, Yakety Yak, Skype, SharedTalk, whatever I can do really; if there's a speaking opportunity and I have the free time then I'll go for it, and prioritise that over courses/books/TV/film. I'm also thinking of doing some "vlogging", i.e., videoing myself talking in French about whatever comes to mind, just to get used to actually expressing myself as opposed to just reading from a passage. Sorry, I won't be sharing the videos :P Edited by garyb on 12 January 2011 at 9:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Oasis88 Senior Member Australia Joined 5493 days ago 160 posts - 187 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Italian | Message 23 of 104 13 January 2011 at 11:58am | IP Logged | ||
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Good work on getting closer to reaching you overall goal. I can't see any reasons why you
won't make it given your dedication to practice. Regarding your listening fluency, what kinds of materials have you been listening to in order to improve it? I feel that audio books are helping me but I might be over dependent with them. I'd be interested to know what you've been doing to be now be at a stage where you are comfortable in hearing almost anything. Obviously a big part of it is having a large vocabulary, so perhaps you owe your listening abilities to that. Could you explain a little bit more how you've approached listening? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4995 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 24 of 104 13 January 2011 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | ||
It's a difficult question to answer as I've been doing several different things so I can't say what exactly has been the most effective. It's like the old advertising adage, "50% of our advertising is working, but we don't know which 50%!". I'm finding that to be a bit of a general frustration in language learning - I'm going through various courses and listening to various things and so on but I'm not sure where the majority of results are actually coming from. However, the things that I can say for sure have improved my listening comprehension: - Knowing plenty vocab, as you say. - Assimil: I always listen to each lesson a couple of times before looking at the text, then listen while reading to connect the spoken words with the written ones. - Audiobooks: I went through The Linguist (French translation) and then L'étranger. I did this quite thoroughly - I listened to each chapter once or twice during idle times like when on the bus or at the gym, and then read the text (while listening if possible) to pick up the bits I missed. I'd then listen to the chapter again at some point soon. I definitely found that towards the end of L'étranger I was understanding a lot more. I like to use LingQ for reading; it also has a good library of short articles and podcasts. - Films and TV for faster, more conversational speech. Watching with or without subtitles/transcripts are both useful IMO. - I also listen to the radio (news mostly) every so often. - Meetups! I know I was just moaning about how I sometimes hardly get to speak at meetups, but even at that I got a good bit of real-life conversational listening practice! In short it's just lots of exposure I suppose, and a mixture of "blind" listening and listening while reading a transcript. My reading has always been better than my listening, so I reckon listening while reading helps my listening "catch up", while listening without reading helps me develop my listening on its own without relying on reading. IMO audiobooks are great but they only get you so far, because they're spoken relatively slowly compared to a conversation and they might not have a lot of everyday conversational vocab in them, especially if they're old literary works like most of the freely available audiobooks are. So I'd say that modern, less "literary" books are a better choice if you can find them; I liked L'étranger because, despite being a literary and philosophical work, Camus's language is mostly very straight-to-the-point. Once audiobooks aren't too difficult you should add in film and TV and real conversations. I've been watching a lot more films and TV in the last month and I'm sure it's been a massive help for understanding real speech. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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