sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5391 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish
| Message 113 of 336 31 December 2012 at 10:07pm | IP Logged |
Another book is tempting but I already have so many grammar books. I'm trying to see if
a library nearby has it as it's not very cheap on Amazon (not bad on Amazon.fr but
shipping will bring the price up). Whenever I went book browsing in France I would
always consider it against others and I would always take the others.
I feel like the non-English boards could be revitalized if rules for being on topic
were relaxed a bit. By the time you get there all discussions on language learning are
already exhausted so it feels like you're artificially recreating discussions in French
that have already taken place in English. Also, there are no sub-fora. For me, an ideal
French learning community would have the following:
- Sub-fora with categories based on level
: People will mostly sort
themselves but at the more advanced levels there would need to be standards on
spelling/grammar (maybe run forum posts through Lang-8 first though that would cut down
on the spontaneity of discussion a bit). There needs to be a place for beginners to
practice but if a forum is mostly made up of questions about basic grammar/vocab and
other beginner topics, I find advanced learners and natives get turned off.- Study
groups : As I stated in my post above groups based around materials we're using for
learning can be motivating as well as provide a place for activities/exercises that
would normally have to be done in a classroom or with a teacher (written responses,
discussion questions, etc). For written responses, there could simply be a group on
Lang-8 and there could even be audio discussions - either live through Skype or pre-
recorded.- Book club/movie club discussions
: We're all reading, watching
movies/series and absorbing other media, right? So let's talk about it in French.
- "Off topic" boards
: A place where we can just "shoot the shit" in French
(pardon my French). We could talk about our interests, questions we have about French
culture, even news and politics. I don't think we'd need to worry about flame wars as
long as the flaming is in French and doesn't get too personal. Maybe one of the
problems of the French-only board is the total lack of controversy which inspires
discussion.- Native speakers
: The holy grail for French learners - actual native
speakers to converse with. They would need some incentive for participating and I think
one of the main obstacles for getting native French speakers to "mingle" with learners
is quality of discussion. I've noticed that attempts on Reddit to get discussion groups
in French only get overrun with the same old beginner questions, bad grammar, Skype
requests, etc if they're not moderated closely. I find it's the same problem with
Meetup groups. As long as there's at least some filter for quality discussion then some
natives might gladly participate and may even browse over to beginner/intermediate
discussions to help out. If there's also a way for them to get feedback on the
languages they're learning that might help as well.
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emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map
| Message 114 of 336 31 December 2012 at 10:53pm | IP Logged |
sctroyenne wrote:
Native speakers: The holy grail for French learners - actual native
speakers to converse with. |
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Et ça, c'est le problème avec le forum français sur HTLAL : on peut y parler avec une dizaine de francophones (soit des vrais francophones soit des étudiants avancés), et c'est tout.
Mais trouver des francophones, ce n'est pas si difficile si on cherche ailleurs. On peut en trouver sur lang-8, bien sûr, mais aussi sur tous les sites français : les journaux, les blogs, même les sites comme Topito. (Et merci de m'avoir parlé de Topito.)
Alors, si vous voulez lancer des discussions intéressantes sur le forum français, je vais y participer. Mais il serait peut-être plus facile de trouver des francophones ailleurs.
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sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5391 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish
| Message 115 of 336 02 January 2013 at 7:46am | IP Logged |
Je songe à lancer une petite campagne de recrutement sur On Va Sortir parmi mes
anciennes connaissances. Les sorties en anglais sont très populaires et en tant qu'une
des rares Anglophones sur ce site j'étais pas mal sollicitée pour ces sorties. Je vais
voir si quelques-uns d'eux aimeraient rejoindre la communauté des apprenants de langues
étrangères sur Internet.
I got a $50 Amazon gift card and I'm torn about how to use it. I'm considering getting
an Alliance Française membership again in order to use their library which would affect
what I would order from Amazon. For now I'm concentrating on the books I already have,
kicking off the Tadoku challenge with Le rouge et le noir, which I set down and never
picked up again last year even though I was enjoying it.
I'm also slowly making my way through a popular fanfiction, Harry Potter and the
Methods of Rationality. There have been several attempts to translate it into many
languages but French is the most complete (Russian and Czech are pretty well-covered).
It's pretty interesting and it's nice to have bilingual texts.
Later on I'll discuss my "Harry Potter method" I've worked out for Spanish. The first
book has been translated into Irish but I'd really like an audiobook.
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Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5395 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 116 of 336 02 January 2013 at 3:58pm | IP Logged |
Are you going to start a new log for 2013 or use the same one?
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sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5391 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish
| Message 117 of 336 02 January 2013 at 8:48pm | IP Logged |
I think I'll just use the same one. Maybe add some links at the front as a guide.
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Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5395 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 118 of 336 02 January 2013 at 11:12pm | IP Logged |
sctroyenne wrote:
I think I'll just use the same one. Maybe add some links at the front as a guide. |
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Okay, I just wanted to add a link to your log in the team thread. :)
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sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5391 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish
| Message 119 of 336 14 January 2013 at 7:45am | IP Logged |
I'm back! One of the main reasons for my absence is that I used my Amazon gift card and
got a Kindle! I'm pretty much in love with it, especially with my ability to load a
French dictionary and get instant pop-up definitions. With regular books I'd underline
words and phrases as I read and then I would feel guilty for not looking things up. But
this totally eliminates that bottleneck. Now need to work on using the note/highlight
feature to actually export stuff that I can maybe use for Anki (though that would be
tiring to do for all vocab - Learning With Texts is still better for this - it would be
awesome if they had some kind of version for Kindle). I finished Le Rouge et le noir
and went on to re-read L'Etranger (it's been a while and my French wasn't as good then)
and moved on to La chute, also my Camus. I'll be reading his essays shortly. I also
started reading Stefan Zweig, which a lot of people liked in a French literature forum,
starting with Lettre d'une inconnue which was beautiful. For commuting I started Le
Seigneur des anneaux and Le Guide du voyageur galactique to counterbalance all the
bleak, depressing literature I'm reading. There's a local French lit book club which is
reading Le Père Goriot for beginning of March so that's queued up as well. Some Hugo is
in the pipeline as well but not sure when. I have a little reading ADD for the moment
so I plan on killing off shorter works on weekends and tackling bigger projects during
my commutes. I think by the end of this year I'll be well-versed in literature.
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geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4688 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian
| Message 120 of 336 14 January 2013 at 1:36pm | IP Logged |
Good luck! I have my copy of Le Seigneur des Anneaux right next to me ready to go in my bag when I leave for my
commute to work. French literature will come in due time.
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