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tastyonions Team PAX [French / Spanish]

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tastyonions
Triglot
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United States
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1044 posts - 1823 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 97 of 329
11 January 2013 at 11:52pm | IP Logged 
1. Assimil Lesson 92 (Passive): I found this one pretty hard. New vocab:

les jours fériés / un jour férié
une foule (I think I had seen this before but forgot it)
une kermesse
un défilé
un feu d'artifice
un bal

I'm trying to get used to "s'agir de", which I had noticed before but still don't really "get."

2. Assimil Lesson 43 (Active): I really felt off my game on this one! I'll blame part of it on the fact that I was a bit tired from staying up last night, but I think I need to do this one again tomorrow.

Edited by tastyonions on 11 January 2013 at 11:52pm

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tastyonions
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4467 days ago

1044 posts - 1823 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 98 of 329
12 January 2013 at 1:54pm | IP Logged 
1. Assimil Lesson 93 (Passive): Another tough one. New vocab and phrases:

démarrer
je vous prie de
éteindre
fâché
couper la parole
prendre la parole
une amende

For some reason I misheard "su" both times it appeared in this lesson. I know what it means immediately when reading it, but I sometimes miss it in speech...

2. I scheduled a new italki session with a different tutor, for tomorrow at 8:00 in the morning (not the middle of the night this time, lol). This one had a nice "scheme" laid out for how she does her lessons / sessions. I'm eager to see how this one works out.
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tastyonions
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
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Joined 4467 days ago

1044 posts - 1823 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 99 of 329
12 January 2013 at 2:53pm | IP Logged 
Yay! My new tutor actually talked to me already on Skype. She told me that she won't be available at the time I scheduled for, but that we can do a one hour session later this morning instead. Most of our (text) chat was in French, and she asked me where I was from and a few other things. We had to switch to English for a bit to discuss scheduling and payment, but other than that it was great and she seems quite nice.

The session starts in about an hour and a half. I'm going to do the rest of today's Assimil and some Anki to get warmed up... :-)

Edited by tastyonions on 12 January 2013 at 2:54pm

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tastyonions
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4467 days ago

1044 posts - 1823 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 100 of 329
12 January 2013 at 5:52pm | IP Logged 
Tutoring session was awesome!

We talked for about five minutes in English about how the session was going to be structured, then the rest of the hour was spent in French. She asked me some basic things about myself and had me ask her some stuff. Then she had me read some short words for pronunciation, and a short poem to check my prosody and understanding of text. She complimented my /y/ sound, noting that it was often hard for English speakers. :-)

Then she had me do an exercise where she sent a simple cartoon, asked me to describe the people in it and compare them to each other. And finally we did a short simulated dialogue / scenario type thing.

At the end of the session we talked about plans for next time, and she said she would bring something from the news for me to read and discuss.

Skype was pretty darn buggy and cut out a couple times. I need a new computer. That was the only hitch in this, though. It was thoroughly enjoyable and I will be signing up for more sessions.

Edited by tastyonions on 12 January 2013 at 5:57pm

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tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4509 days ago

5310 posts - 9399 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

 
 Message 101 of 329
12 January 2013 at 6:03pm | IP Logged 
That's good! It's good to use iTalki, I found a teacher for Russian and Swedish and it
worked out great for me (although I asked her to speak only Swedish first time we spoke).
It's good to get regular practice, especially since French pronunciation is quite hard
for anglophones (for Dutch people the sounds correspond much better, although we do not
have nasals).

Edited by tarvos on 12 January 2013 at 6:12pm

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tastyonions
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4467 days ago

1044 posts - 1823 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Spanish
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 102 of 329
13 January 2013 at 2:13pm | IP Logged 
1. Man, prepositions in French are really hard for me! It's rarely obvious to me which one to use. I'm thinking of making a ton of flashcards with different phrases on them and using them to get the right collocations down, e.g. "sur la question", "courage pour [infinitif]", etc. I guess my intuition will probably improve with time.

2. Assimil Lesson 44 (Active): [Yesterday] This one was very hard for me. The active lessons lately have been requiring a lot more time, and not just because the texts are getting longer.

3. Assimil Lesson 94 (Passive): This was a welcome break from a number of difficult lessons recently. Some of the lesson notes were pretty interesting and humorous, too. New words and expressions:

un débrouillard / débrouiller
mélomane
filer
faite pour (same as in English, but I don't think I had ever seen it before)

Today's active lesson later.

Edited by tastyonions on 13 January 2013 at 2:21pm

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tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4509 days ago

5310 posts - 9399 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

 
 Message 103 of 329
13 January 2013 at 2:20pm | IP Logged 
à and de are really fun if you have to fiddle with en/y later.
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emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
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2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
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 Message 104 of 329
13 January 2013 at 3:59pm | IP Logged 
tastyonions wrote:
1. Man, prepositions in French are really hard for me! It's rarely obvious to me which one to use. I'm thinking of making a ton of flashcards with different phrases on them and using them to get the right collocations down, e.g. "sur la question", "courage pour [infinitif]", etc.


Yeah, that helps a lot. Personally, I'm fond of "cloze" cards where I have to fill in the preposition, at least when the choice is unambiguous.

tarvos wrote:
à and de are really fun if you have to fiddle with en/y later.


à and de are really… interesting. They combine with articles and nouns in such complicated ways, and they each have a special clitic pronoun slot in front of the verb (y and en, respectively). Sometimes it feels like they're in the process of transforming from ordinary prepositions into case-marking prefixes. The best analogy in English is probably possessive "s", especially in phrases like "Tom and Sam's house", where an inflection distributes over multiple words. (Granted, French prepositions don't distribute over et, at least in good writing.)

Anyway, those two aren't like the others. Though I must say that y and en are my favorite parts of French. So handy!


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