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Allons-y: Anna Learns French! | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| dandt Senior Member Australia regarderetlire.wordp Joined 4413 days ago 134 posts - 174 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 1 of 51 06 April 2012 at 10:33am | IP Logged |
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I love the French language. Ever since I first read the Madeline books and saw the cartoon I longed to speak
French. When I first heard my relitives speaking the language I wanted to be able to communicate with them. Ever since I saw the film Amelie I wanted to ignore the subtitles and focus on the words. You get the idea. I travelled to France 5 years or so ago when I was 15 and my dad did most of the communication, with the limited French he knew and his Italian (his first language) plus English. I remember English being easy to communicate in but want to be prepared. Plus, there is no time like the present. I began learning about 2 years ago, but with no focus. Last year I bought some second hand readers and started learning grammar and vocabulary, but life got in the way. Well not anymore. I'm planning a trip to Europe later this year and I am determined to have some language skills. While we do not have a travel plan, my heart is set on French and as I see it, it can only help. So I decided to start a log. If nothing else, it will keep me accountable and serve to be a reminder of my progress. Where am I now? I started with the most common French words (500 I believe) last year but I made the flash cards without articles and used a bad list. I also found it difficult. As my immediate need is travel, I am starting with travel-orientated language. I have made flash cards for those sorts of things, and will be making word lists for these. Of course, I am not traveling for another 9 months, but I figure if I start by learning those things, there will be no hesitation when I have the need to ask someone if they speak English. I am a few discs into Michel Thomas and will continue with that. I did 4 discs 2 years ago and still remember much of what I learnt with little to no reinforcement, so it does work for me. Once I have got the travel and 'essential' vocabulary down pat, I am unsure of where to go. I may go back with the most common words or I may get targeted word lists and make flash cards for those. I have dietary issues so I may learn food words first so it will be easy in restaurants. I am a big fan of reading so hope to use books to learn a fair bit. I'm also a fan of French music so can't wait to get into lyrics training. Any advice is greatly appreciated! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4798 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 2 of 51 06 April 2012 at 11:52am | IP Logged |
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Welcome to the forums, Anna!
French is a wonderful language, I wish you a lot of success. Pieces of advice: You may want to try some digital flash card application. Anki is very popular around here but I love memrise.com Michel Thomas seems to suit you well but as you said, you will need some continuing. Popular and good choices of members of the forums are Assimil French with Ease or FSI (FSI is free online). You can find a lot of information on both around here. A good thing to use is a grammar book. There are many on the market. The best, in my opinion, are those with a lot of exemples and exercises. You'll surely find many in a bookshop to have a look at and decide. Just my two cents (not more so I don't make you feel overwhelmed :-D ). Feel free to ask, if you have any questions. I'm looking forward to reading your log :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| dandt Senior Member Australia regarderetlire.wordp Joined 4413 days ago 134 posts - 174 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 3 of 51 06 April 2012 at 12:29pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks Cavesa!
I have tried anki previously so I will give memrise a try. I have a real thing with real flash cards, but I think it maybe best to stick with digital. I have an iPad now and it is just begging to be used for flash cards! I'm definitely on the lookout for a good grammar book. In fact, I think it is where I have struggled in the last. I did buy a grammar book recently, but I haven't started using it because I haven't had a good chance to lookat it yet. I've never used word lists in my French attempts or back in my schooldays of Japanese but I plan to make them, if for no other reason than to help make flash cards and to have a hard copy of what I am learning. For both word lists and flash cards, should I include more than the word in French and then in English? Should I include a sentence for context? Oh and I meant to write in my initial entry that one source of inspiration and incentive to go on is that in my babbling the other day I managed to get the r sound in 'tre' etc sounding right out of the blue on more than one occasion. It's now at the point that in the week since the sound magically came out of my mouth I have got it wrong less than 5 times. This has really made me feel good about my efforts as I know I've made progress. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| JujuLeCaribou Diglot Newbie Thailand myonlinefrencht Joined 4492 days ago 28 posts - 44 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Portuguese, Thai, German, Dutch | Message 4 of 51 07 April 2012 at 3:48am | IP Logged |
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Salut Anna !
Like Cavesa, I recommend you to study French with Assimil : this is, in my opinion, the best tool to go from the beginner level to the intermediate level in French in a little bit more than 3 months. For this, only 1 lesson per day (about 20-40 minutes, depending on the complexity of the lesson) is required ! The dialogues in Assimil are very natural and pleasing : this makes a huge difference with other methods that I know (Teach Yourself, F.S.I., etc ...) Anki is a wonderful tool but, unlike most of the other forumers here, I would not recommend to use it to learn basic vocabulary. In my opinion, you learn the basic vocabulary by exposure while reading texts for beginners/intermediate, so there is no need to review again these words on Anki ! On the other hand, to learn specific words to order food in a restaurant (for exemple), I think Anki will be your best friend ! Michel Thomas is good, but this is just a first step. You will have to find other ressources. Everybody is different and has a different "method" to learn a foreign language. But if I were you, I would do like this : 1. Michel Thomas (to get some familiarity with French) 2. Assimil (to acquire an intermediate level) 3. Reading and listening native materials (articles of Wikipedia, French TV/radio, etc ...) Bonne chance !!! :-) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| sgh78 Diglot Senior Member France Joined 4430 days ago 163 posts - 215 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish, Russian, Norwegian, Latin, Persian, Biblical Hebrew, Arabic (classical), German | Message 5 of 51 07 April 2012 at 5:46pm | IP Logged |
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Anna I hope to read new posts of you.
The flashcards is a good method to learn new vocabulary. Good luck or Bonne chance. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| dandt Senior Member Australia regarderetlire.wordp Joined 4413 days ago 134 posts - 174 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 6 of 51 12 April 2012 at 3:08pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks everyone for the advice. I have a tendency to go hardcore for a few days, abandoning my actual studies
for university, and then going hardcore again. It is an inevitability, as I have so many commitments, but at least this time I have kept french in mind. Last year I bought a book on my kindle called Il fait Beau (http://www.amazon.com/Easy-French-Reader-Edition- ebook/dp/B0057P30CS). It's basically designed so you can start reading early and get a good grasp of the language structure. As I was away with no way of accessing the internet or any dictionaries or other books that I had, I started looking at the book. I've really been enjoying it and, although I didn't know all the words, I could work out almost everything. There are 'footnote' links to some more complicated words/phrases as well, which helps. Also helpful are the questions at the end of each chapter. So not a great deal of progress. A positive note is that I now have my french dictionary again, so that's bound to be helpful. Aside from that, nothing new to report. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Homogenik Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4613 days ago 314 posts - 407 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 7 of 51 12 April 2012 at 4:19pm | IP Logged |
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I think any kind of progress is worthwhile. I don't agree with people who say "you HAVE to study every day for a
LEAST an hour if you want to make any progress at all in any language, if you don't do one hour EVERY day, you might as well not learn it, not even try!!!!!", etc. I think that's bollocks. That's just not how life is and the brain responds to a variety of stimuluses and in various contexts. You found a way to make the most of a situation, good for you. And good luck with your process! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| dandt Senior Member Australia regarderetlire.wordp Joined 4413 days ago 134 posts - 174 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 8 of 51 13 April 2012 at 12:27am | IP Logged |
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Thanks homogenik. I'm starting to appreciate the little things, like the othe day when I got the r sound right, I
had just decided I could make do without for now; surely I'd be understood without it. As I took my kindle to bed last night I realized how far I had gotten in the book while on the plane. The trip was an hour or so and I got through a couple of chapters, with no access to a dictionary or Internet to look words up. In fact, I didn't spend The whole trip on the book as I changed to the hunger games when the French tired me. I've Also found myself reading outloud. Whether it is helpful, I'm enjoying it. Once I finish the book I am reading I may move onto the other two. I have found another similar series on the kindle store, of easy readers designed for adults. The current one I am reading is comedy-action while the other one is more comedy-romance. At some point, perhaps sooner rather than later, I will star on Harry potter one. I have the PDFs but have ordered the book and when it arrives, which should be any day now, I will start work on it. I know it is well above my level, but it can be a good exercise. I'm watching the first episode of Buffy right now in French with English subtitles. As a fairly low level learner, it's a bit of a futile exercise, especially as it is really for nothing more than listening to the language. I suspect watching the news in French could be better for just listening. I mean, I can't understand either. id love to get my hands on Disney films in French. I suspect the DVDs I get in Australia have French, but I will check at some point. Must hit up my Uni library at some point too. I know there are a good deal of DVDs there, not so sure about French books. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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