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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4423 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 65 of 101 25 August 2012 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Finished La Chute and Season 1 of Engrenages w/ English subs.
La Chute was fantastic and I'm going to be starting on another Camus book soon. Le mythe de Sisyphe most likely. I feel like I would have enjoyed Engrenages more if it had French subs or English subs that were more accurate. Still an enjoyable show. I'm going to be restarting Braquo with the bad French subs I have, but it's better than nothing. The first episode was great and I think I got hooked on it more than Engrenages. Had another Assimil burnout. Only 16 lessons away from being finished too. One part of me wants to finish it because I'm so close, but the other side doesn't see a point to it since at this point it really only goes over some literature extracts and idioms. I may just skim it over for the grammar notes because at this stage in the learning process I don't have much patience for Assimil anymore. I'm really starting to get used to accents more after watching shows and movies. I believe that's one of the main reasons that people have trouble with oral comprehension. When I hear an American or an Anglo-Canadian speak French, there is not much trouble. Alright, back to my reading and watching! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4423 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 66 of 101 28 August 2012 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wooo! I listened to some videos that I found like 4-6 months ago and when I listened to them back then, I understood maybe 15%. I just watched them again and I got about 85%. Definitely a good feeling.
I finished Season 1 of Braquo and started Le mythe de Sisyphe. I don't think I'll return to season 2 of Braquo for awhile because I have a lot of movies and books to go through. It's really a great show, though. Even though it takes awhile, I find learning a language is quite effortless once you get to a certain point. After NFWE, more than half of Using French, and my first few books and shows/movies, all all I did was soak up the vocab and the grammar seems kind of intuitive after awhile. Edited by sillygoose1 on 21 September 2012 at 2:47am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4423 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 67 of 101 21 September 2012 at 3:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Edited my last post.
Not even close to ready to evaluate myself as soon as I thought. Well, it's been 3 weeks since my last update. I've been doing something in French everyday for 6 months and I think it's finally paid off. My listening comprehension is tremendous right now and my reading is like second nature. With that being said, my writing and speaking are not so hot. I've been taking very long breaks with Using French. Those lessons really drain you. I have 5 more lessons left. I was frustrated before and wanted to just quit but then I realized, it's just 5 lessons and I can knock those out this weekend while I study for other subjects. Movies have been great. Besides the oddly worded expressions and slang, I caught a lot of words. I don't use French subtitles anymore because I get really into movies and rather than experiment with my listening comprehension, I want to get the full story and make sure I catch as much as I can. After I go through my current plethora of films, the subs are coming off and it's time to really test the waters. My C1 passive goal is probably a couple months of movies and a few Proust and Balzac novels away. (It's nice to dream!) As I said before, my writing and speaking are not great. My writing is decent because I have time to think about it, but my speaking is non-existent. I encountered a friend I knew from high school who is from Algeria the other day. I asked him if he spoke French and it turns out he does. After I explained my situation, all he said was "tu parles bien le francais?" I caught it, but I froze. That moment I forgot every word of French I knew. That was REALLY strange. I know I'm capable of having intellectual conversations with him, but it didn't work out. I'm going to try to meet up with him every so often and talk in French to get my speaking up to par. I guess that's what happens when you spend so long worrying about your passive skills and barely anything for your active. I also decided I'm going to take off time from school after this semester and start doing some odd jobs for a semester or two then travel to Europe for 3 months. I think I'm going to work on Italian, then Spanish after French for my little trip. Oviedo, Madrid, Barcelona, Alicante, Paris, Lyon, Nice, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Geneva, Venice, Florence, Rome, Ticino are on my hitlist. I've never done a 6 week challenge before, but I think I'm going to have to soon. :) (Does anyone have advice on those cities by chance if you are reading this?) Edited by sillygoose1 on 21 September 2012 at 3:09am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4423 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 68 of 101 27 September 2012 at 1:29am | IP Logged | ||
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Some updates.
1. Two more lessons in Using French, then I'm DONE!!! I probably won't be using Business French for awhile because I'm French-Assimil'ed out!! 2. Decided to start studying two languages. I'm putting most of my attention on improving my Italian by using Assimil and some beginner's podcasts. But I'm doing German as a side to Italian. I would do Spanish and split my attention to each language down the middle, but learning Italian and Spanish would be a bad idea. I figured, hey, I have a copy of German Without Toil and German/Italian aren't in the same family, so instead of one language why not work on two? Had to take a break from Le mythe de Sisyphe. It's starting to get a little too dry for me right now. I am in the process of L/R'ing L'etranger. I am also going to read La Peste and the play Caligula. Very excited to start Le Pere Goriot soon. The problem with audiobooks is that, even in English, sometimes they speak too fast and you're trying to keep up with it and you miss some words. I'm not sure how to change the title of threads, but I'll just start updating my progress in every language I study now. So to sum up: French - Two chapters of L'etranger Lesson 68 of Using French Italian - Lesson 3 of Italian With Ease (I did up to 4 in L'italien, but decided against using it anymore because it was very light) German - Lessons 1/2 in German Without Toil (I took a semester of German so I'm going to do 2 lessons a day for awhile since I'm fairly familiar with the basics) What I hope to accomplish in a week: French - Finish L'etranger and start La Peste & Caligula Italian - Get to lesson 11 in Assimil Go through as many beginner's podcasts on the Italian101 site as I can before my trial ends! German - Lesson 16 in Assimil Edited by sillygoose1 on 27 September 2012 at 1:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Roman Diglot Groupie Spain Joined 5239 days ago 42 posts - 52 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: German, Italian, French | Message 69 of 101 27 September 2012 at 10:45am | IP Logged | ||
I would suggest Bilbao, since I'm here :b But very inspiring language job you're doing! And I see you are now studying Italian and German and plan to do Spanish... Wow! I was doing German, Italian, French and suddenly drop them all. Now I'm slowly coming back to Italian and maybe French, let's see... If you someday think about doing Portuguese I can help you, hehe... Keep up the good fun. Roman 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4423 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 70 of 101 27 September 2012 at 2:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks a lot!
How is Bilbao? I was actually thinking about doing Portuguese for a six week challenge one day after I finish with these other languages. I hear Brazil has great shows and movies too, so that makes it all the better!! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Roman Diglot Groupie Spain Joined 5239 days ago 42 posts - 52 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: German, Italian, French | Message 71 of 101 27 September 2012 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | ||
Well, Bilbao is a very nice city to live. Clean, well organized, great public transport... For a tourist we have great museums, mountains to do some trekking,small beach towns where you can reach with the Bilbao's metro system and if you like soccer you can visit Athletic Club's stadium and museum. We have many tourists from U.K., France (great for you) and some of Germany and Italy. As for Portuguese, Brazilians always like when a foreigner try to speak their(my) language. So you will be more inspired to learn and use it. I don't like too much of our movies, but that's only my oppinion. But I like Brazilian music in general with some exceptions like Michel Teló and Gusttavo Lima and that kind of music, but mostly we have good music. I hope that helps! Roman 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4423 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 72 of 101 03 October 2012 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Doing two Assimil's was starting to mix me up after I got to around lesson 10.
So for right now, I'm going to just do some German every so often. Maybe Michel Thomas or Teach Yourself. For Italian, I've been going through Assimil and Teach Yourself Beginner's Italian. The latter will plug some of the basic gaps that Assimil doesn't cover extensively like asking for directions, introductions, restaurants, etc. The podcasts were frustrating for me and now I remember why I stopped using them when I started out with French. I can't go by audio, I have to actually see the text that goes with the audio. So as I said previously, I'm using Teach Yourself instead. I went to my grandparents house with my dad and they spoke Italian all night. It was in dialect though. I understood very simple phrases and words from the 11 days of Assimil and French knowledge. I would have learned Italian first in the beginning of this journey, but when I first started learning way back in January, Italian wasn't available in uni at a time that suited me. I didn't know back then about self-learning. :( Oh well. The next time I go there I expect to understand at least 50%. In terms of French, I did not attain my goal. I'm halfway through L'etranger. I did, however, watch a French and a Quebecois movie. Le bonheur des autres & Tous Les Soleils. For anyone needing some movies, Le bonheur has perfect French subtitles. Not a very good movie, but I still learned how to phrase some sentences better and a couple new words. Tous Les Soleils also, which was a very great movie. It's a drama/comedy and the comedic parts were actually very funny. I could have understood about 75% of Tous Les Soleils without subs and maybe 40% of Le bonheur des autres. The Italian accents in Tous Les Soleils got tricky at times. I need to start watching more movies and maybe start a new book to keep me busy. Either Le Pere Goriot or Un Coeur Simple. I'm not going to rely on L/R so much anymore because even though it does help at first to dramatically increase listening comprehension like crazy, I think I need to start getting myself accustomed more to different accents at this point. I'm going to have to start watching more movies. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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