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Drp’s Advanced French Mission. | ||
Tags: Maintaining Languages | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| drp9341 Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 4723 days ago 115 posts - 217 votes  Speaks: Italian, English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 4 15 October 2012 at 1:38am | IP Logged |
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Hello all!
I am currently in the process of trying to greatly improve my French! I also need to maintain the rest of languages that I "speak" So I am going to try and give daily/bi-daily (probably more like tri-daily:D)updates as to what I am doing and what I am encountering in terms of challenges to overcome. Also, I think I might do weekly updates of me trying to tell a 5 minute story in French, I want to it candidly, so I can compare, and I'll put the videos on view only if there's a link so only those here (and with the link) can see the videos. My overall goal is a high B2 level in all skills by the end of this school year (beginning of may) Which might be slightly ambitious but, nonetheless I'll try! So here's where I'm at now. Speaking In terms of speaking I am pretty comfortable at communicating my ideas, it's really not a mentally challenging activity, but I do have to talk around things frequently and I make tons of minor mistakes that I at least think don't hinder my communicative abilities. Listening Listening unfortunately is probably my weakest skill. I am trying to understand the vowels more in French and be able to differentiate them more easily, I am a speech pathology and audiology major, so (I think at least :D)I understand phonetics pretty well. I am trying also to really listen to how words sound so I'll be able to understand them when they're said in isolation as well as in the spoken language. On top of that, I am using assimil and listening to the same sentences spoken tons and tons of times so I can hear all the different phonemes and really internalize the word and sentence stress of spoken French as well as how the sounds aggregate. Then of course, I try to watch a little bit of French news everyday on wwitv.com, I try to watch for 5 minutes straight with the goal of listening to hear words and less with the goal of actual understanding, although at the level I am at I tend to understand most of it. My idea is to be able to understand the standard spoken variant very well, then, I'll start worrying about different variations of spoken French. So far listening is I feel my weakest skill, unfortunately my prior experience with romance languages I feel isn't very useful in this area as spoken French shares, at least to my observation, unfortunately little with Italian and Spanish. Reading My reading skill is by far my best skill, which is ironic because I don't like reading that much, and it's usually one of my weaker skills. Because of Italian, Spanish, and of course English I can read the majority of things, the one thing is vocabulary, but if I scan my brain for a cognate in one of my other familiar romance languages, I can usually get it. The syntax isn't an issue, as I find it strongly resembles that of Italian. Reading is also one of the skill I am least eager to improve, although I really want to improve all aspects, that coupled with the fact that I am studying French at University it is improving at a very very nice rate :) Writing By far my weakest skill, I actually am at a very low level in terms of writing, my knowledge is very weak, but is steadily improving, I plan to work on this more later, but due to French courses it is improving. Vocab My active vocab isn't very strong as I don't worry that much about it because my passive vocabulary is strong so I don't make note of words that I don't know actively. Grammar This is the least of my worries right now, I am going to try and familiarize myself with prepositions and the subjunctive so I can start to notice patterns so when it's time to get down on the grind with this aspect of French I will already have though a lot about it although in passing, which will probably make it easier for me to fully internalize. I am working actively on direct objects and things of that nature (Eux, Lui, en, y, le, les moi) etc. etc. So that's all for today! I have to start on my homework from my university courses unfortunately :P Thanks for reading and I will be updating soon! Edited by drp9341 on 21 October 2012 at 8:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| drp9341 Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 4723 days ago 115 posts - 217 votes Speaks: Italian, English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French Studies: Japanese | Message 2 of 4 21 October 2012 at 7:25pm | IP Logged |
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So here's my first update.
I didn't do much at all in terms of French, I had lots of work for my other classes and had to focus all of my available mental energy on those unfortunately :P I did of course though review old Assimil lessons and even get to a new lesson. So far I am on lesson 65 so I am slowly making my way through, absolutely incredible series for language learning, I am really enjoying it. I did a lot of reading for my class, maybe about two hours in total of reading and maybe a combined hour of writing. I did though manage to upload a video of me candidly speaking French on camera with the intention of putting it up on here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjEyOu6Vb_k I didn't really know what I was going to be talking about, it's kind of just me blurting out some things about how I am learning French, it's on private without the link so you can only see it if you have the link. My French actually sounds pretty good in here, my actual level is I would say probably below this at most times. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5202 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 3 of 4 21 October 2012 at 7:59pm | IP Logged |
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Hello! How funny that our language combinations are practically identical! With two Romance languages already under your belt you have a huge leg up for French but it still takes a while to get there. I'm finding that to be true with Spanish - I understand a lot of things passively, and can work out a lot of things based on my knowledge of French and the courses I have done so far but I still need practice to "activate" it. Reading is by far my strongest skill as I can take the time to figure it out.
Combine extensive listening with intensive listening while working with a transcript, learn the common reductions in spoken French and your listening will get there. French orthography makes writing in French quite difficult - I can tell my written Spanish is already cleaner than a lot of my written French lol. So keep separate evaluations of yourself based on overall structure/word choice and the little things like accents, agreements, etc (you need to care about those but don't be put off by a bunch of red marks on your texts because of them). It helps to make several run-throughs of a text while checking it looking for different things (conjugations, agreements, etc). Good luck! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| drp9341 Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 4723 days ago 115 posts - 217 votes Speaks: Italian, English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French Studies: Japanese | Message 4 of 4 26 October 2012 at 5:33am | IP Logged |
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So far this week has been a very linguistically great week in terms of hours spent speaking foreign languages.
I managed to speak a lot of French with my professor and other classmates who have high levels of French. I studied with my Spanish speaking friend. Grabbed a coffee with an Italian for hour. AND!!! I started my newest language Irish Gaelic and spending 30 minutes a day, and making nice progress so far :D All in all a very good week for languages, especially considering my location (Ohio) :P As far as French is concerned, I did 2 Assimil lessons, but I did lots and lots of reading and writing. I actually just finished writing an essay for Class, which I think I am going to post on here afterwards to show what my writing level is. I also worked on French phonetics and vowel distinction, as well as really working on the imparfait and passé composé and getting on with the irregulars as well as the être/avoir auxiliary verb distinction. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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