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tastyonions Team PAX [French / Spanish]

 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
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tastyonions
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4461 days ago

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

 
 Message 113 of 329
17 January 2013 at 12:37pm | IP Logged 
tastyonions wrote:
2. I found a local French conversation meetup about half an hour away. Actually it seems to be a combined class and conversation group, with a one hour class for beginner to intermediate level, followed by an hour and a half conversation group. And it meets every week, too! The next session is tomorrow and I'm going to check it out.

I went to the conversation group and it was fun! Levels of French there varied quite widely, as I thought they might, from highly proficient to complete beginners; I was somewhere in the middle. It met at a restaurant in a very relaxed atmosphere. The "class" part was very informal, mostly just people taking turns reading texts aloud and the group's leader explaining any vocab / grammar that people didn't understand. I found the conversation part more fun, and got to talk to a few people who had been to France. There was one native speaker, from Morocco, but he arrived not long before I had to go.

All in all it was a good time and I'll be visiting again.
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tastyonions
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4461 days ago

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

 
 Message 114 of 329
17 January 2013 at 9:16pm | IP Logged 
Had a second tutoring session today. Went pretty well but I felt like I was bit off my game, hesitating too much, slow to think of the right way to put something. Guess that happens to everyone at some point, though.

[Edit: I forgot to mention that with my new computer, Skype now works beautifully. Not a hiccup in the whole process this time.]

Edited by tastyonions on 17 January 2013 at 11:12pm

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emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5328 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
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 Message 115 of 329
17 January 2013 at 10:18pm | IP Logged 
tastyonions wrote:
Had a second tutoring session today. Went pretty well but I felt like I was bit off my game, hesitating too much, slow to think of the right way to put something. Guess that happens to everyone at some point, though.


Yup, this happens to me, too. Here's a nice interview that talks about the subject:

Quote:
M: … A certains moments, je parle super mal, j’ai l’impression de régresser. Je pense que c’est typique dans l’apprentissage d’une langue, ça fonctionne par cycles. La régression est toujours suivi d’un énorme bond en avant.

S: Oui en effet j’ai cette impression aussi, comme si la langue était dans un cocon avant de redevenir un papillon. Donc pour les lecteurs: il ne faut jamais se décourager, les phases de régression servent à reculer pour mieux sauter!



S: Oui c’est exactement ça. Il y a aussi la fatigue qui joue pas mal quand on a un coup de moins bien en langues. On cherche des mots simples, on fait des fautes qu’on ne ferait jamais si on était en forme.


Edited by emk on 17 January 2013 at 10:23pm

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tastyonions
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4461 days ago

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

 
 Message 116 of 329
17 January 2013 at 10:23pm | IP Logged 
I think my brain have had some "French fatigue" today because I had some free time and by when the session rolled around I had watched two un-subtitled movies (with full attention and a pen in hand) in a row. :-)

Edited by tastyonions on 17 January 2013 at 10:27pm

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Flarioca
Heptaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5678 days ago

635 posts - 816 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian
Studies: Catalan, Mandarin

 
 Message 117 of 329
17 January 2013 at 10:50pm | IP Logged 
emk wrote:

Quote:
S: Oui c’est exactement ça. Il y a aussi la fatigue qui joue pas mal quand on a un coup de moins bien en langues. On cherche des mots simples, on fait des fautes qu’on ne ferait jamais si on était en forme.


I'm sure that we all have had this experience in our native language. A big problem once you're in front of an audience and need to explain something ... [/me last tuesday]
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tastyonions
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4461 days ago

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

 
 Message 118 of 329
19 January 2013 at 2:15pm | IP Logged 
Three days left in TAC Week 3 (including today)!

1. I've stayed on track with my Assimil every day (one passive and one active), despite not logging it here. I did Lessons 100 and 51 this morning.

Both the active and passive waves have been going *very* smoothly the past few days. I'm not sure if I just hit an easy stretch in the course or if I made some kind of jump in ability. :-)

2. Yesterday I tried a new exercise: whenever my fiancée and I were talking, I formulated a response in French in my head before responding in English. It was pretty tiring and I lost the plot when the conversation got more complicated, but I think it will be a valuable exercise. I don't think it will reinforce too many bad habits as long as I remember to ask my tutor (or the good people here) about things I'm unsure of.

3. I have another tutoring session this week on Monday. I hope I'll be in better form this time around. I also signed up for one next Thursday. I'm going to try and make Monday / Thursday a regular thing if possible.

Edited by tastyonions on 19 January 2013 at 2:16pm

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liammcg
Senior Member
Ireland
Joined 4400 days ago

269 posts - 397 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 119 of 329
19 January 2013 at 3:04pm | IP Logged 
Great log tastyonions! It sounds like you're making great progress, fair play. I use self
talk quite a bit, especially when I was learning Irish. It's a great exercise, but can
become quite boring if you have nothing to say! I found this tip from Arekkusu yesterday,
which seems to work VERY well, particularly for using new vocab in context.

Have a look at message 157:

talk">here

Edited by liammcg on 19 January 2013 at 3:05pm

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tastyonions
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4461 days ago

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

 
 Message 120 of 329
19 January 2013 at 5:16pm | IP Logged 
liammcg wrote:
Great log tastyonions! It sounds like you're making great progress, fair play. I use self talk quite a bit, especially when I was learning Irish. It's a great exercise, but can become quite boring if you have nothing to say! I found this tip from Arekkusu yesterday, which seems to work VERY well, particularly for using new vocab in context.

Have a look at message 157:

talk">here

Thanks for the link. I had actually read that post some time ago, but never got around to using the full exercise myself, because at the time I didn't think I had enough vocabulary to give it a proper go.

In fact, my tutor had me do a very similar exercise during our session on Thursday. First she gave me a short list of vocab to help me out, then had me watch a video and make sentences (out loud, not written) describing (sequentially) what happened in it. And afterward I realized that what I had just done was basically what Arekkusu had described in his post, and decided to do try and do it regularly on my own. :-)


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