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Gary’s TAC 2013 - PAX | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5003 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 121 of 160 09 September 2013 at 1:09pm | IP Logged | ||
Definitely good points. I certainly have been guilty of overusing things like "parce que" when other phrases would be more appropriate or simply provide more variation; recently I've gone through some of the lessons on car, comme, puisque, etc. in Grammaire Progressive and it's made me a lot more conscious of that. And it's similar for Italian; it truly has a wealth of conjunctions yet I just find myself sticking to a few basic ones. I suppose that now that I can generally express myself quite easily, it's worth working on doing so more elegantly. I still have that copy of Alter Ego 5 on my shelf, which I suppose would cover a lot of the academic side. I wonder if I'll manage to crack it open before the end of the year... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4503 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 122 of 160 09 September 2013 at 1:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Oh. Alter Ego. I would rather not.
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| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5003 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 123 of 160 09 September 2013 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Is it that bad? I just picked it up a while ago because it was discounted and there aren't many proper advanced French books out there. I had a flick through and it seemed OK, I thought there might be some interesting reading material in there if nothing else.
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4503 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 124 of 160 09 September 2013 at 2:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's classroom material. Be sure I hate the thing. Generally classroom textbooks annoy
me, because it seems to be very big on hand-holding. I do not need hand-holding. Especially not in French. And I certainly don't need my textbooks to look fancy. I need my textbooks to describe French. A decent layout (à la the modern Assimils) is fancy enough. If you use some really funny cartoons, then okay. I'll humour that because it's good humour. I haven't used Alter Ego 5, just 2/3, but I was more annoyed by it than I am by many things in my daily life. Apart from the fact group classes do not suit my style of study (apart from I Meet People). But there might be some interesting texts in there. In the almighty words of the first LOTR movie "Don't count on it, Pip", and take the apple if it's thrown to ya. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5003 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 125 of 160 11 September 2013 at 11:29am | IP Logged | ||
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I suppose I'll see for myself whenever I get onto it! I'm not a fan of classroom/group learning either but I figured that I might still get something out of the book even if I don't use it as intended...
Still on the subject of books, I've mentioned a couple times that I'd like to find an Italian equivalent to Grammaire Progressive niveau perfectionnement. I had another opportunity to flick through Grammatica avanzata della lingua Italiana, one of the books that I looked at when I was in Paris but decided wasn't for me. After a more detailed examination of the first few lessons, I've changed my mind and realised that it maybe is what I'm looking for after all. The organisation of the book and table of contents can give an impression that it's something more basic than it really is, with lessons on topics like present, future, past, and prepositions. And I know that in language teaching the term "advanced" is thrown around a bit and sometimes simply means "beyond the complete basics". But after a better look, it seems that it earns its title by going into a lot of detail about the subtleties and nuances of when and how to use these grammatical features. It does seem a bit heavy on the exercises as opposed to just explanations, but that's not necessarily a bad thing and you can just skip the ones that don't seem useful. I've ordered a copy, which I'll start work on once I've finished the film challenge, but now I feel bad about not buying it when I was at Attica! It would have been nice to support a proper specialist bookshop, and the guy there was really friendly and helpful. Ah well. Since I mentioned the challenge: Italian Super Challenge Films: 93.5 done, 6.5 to go. Conversation hours: 100 done. I've watched more Camera Café, a bunch of other Youtube stuff (including one of the funniest videos I've seen for a while, a blindfold challenge), and started Benvenuti al nord. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5003 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 126 of 160 16 September 2013 at 11:18am | IP Logged | ||
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Since the last post:
Films In Italian, I finished Benvenuti al Nord (which I actually enjoyed more than Sud, perhaps because the latter is just a remake of Bienvenue chez les ch'tis so at times it felt like watching the same film again) and started Otto e mezzo. In French, I watched a thriller that a friend recommended me, À bout portant, which I enjoyed a lot and I managed to follow without subtitles; it required a lot of concentration, but it was gripping enough to keep me focused. Also saw Taxi 2, a more fun and less serious action movie, which was very easy to understand. Strange since I watched the first one about a year and a half ago and I remember it being fairly difficult. The sequel does have a much more simplistic plot and fewer characters with strong Marseille accents, plus my listening comprehension will have improved a bit since then, although it's always been my strong point and even back then it was pretty decent. Conversations French meetup during the week; it was fairly average, and I was tired so not at my peak but I pushed through it anyway and made an effort. I spent a bunch of time with two Italian friends on Saturday and we mostly spoke Italian; similar situation, I was tired and struggling but I kept trying, and at the times when the conversation switched to English I was happy for a bit of relief. That evening I went out for a drink with some friends, and I was introduced to a few French friends-of-friends. Hearing and speaking French in a normal social situation as opposed to at a meetup still feels quite strange to be honest, and I felt a bit shy about joining in but of course I did anyway. There were two guys who weren't very talkative with me, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and put it down to them being hungover from the big night they apparently had the previous evening as opposed to French unfriendliness and closed-ness, and a girl who was a bit more receptive and whom I had a short conversation with. I tried to follow the conversations between them but it was in a noisy bar with live music so it wasn't easy. Despite all that, the French conversation still felt really easy compared to the Italian ones earlier. I've written before that my Italian might eventually overtake my French, but that day reminded me that it's not going to happen soon, and my French often "flows" in a way that my Italian just doesn't. Hopefully I'll meet these people again in a situation more conducive to conversation. A few more messages on Conversation Exchange, including one from an Italian who speaks French which would be pretty cool, and I joined the HTLAL Google hangout group. Not had time to take advantage of these yet though. Edited by garyb on 16 September 2013 at 11:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4805 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 127 of 160 16 September 2013 at 4:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wouldn't damn Alter Ego that much :-D. I think especially the 4 an 5 are better than the earlier volumes. THe first three volums look like a usual classroom series of courses primarily meant to be good looking, I agree. (But they can't be worse than Panorama, probably the worst course ever :-D )
But I had used the AE 4 a bit before my DELF B2 for explanations of the common writing genres and the info there is much better structured than in other sources I could access. It did help me and I should have got it much earlier before the exam. That is the reason why I recently got AE 5. I want to try DALF next year and I couldn't find the explanations on how to properly write a resumé or synthese and similar things anywhere. I actually think some of the input material there may not be that bad to cover some of my gaps. I just don't cover the social, economy and similar topics enough usually. I usually don't even know where to begin. And a surprise. In a recent thread on textbooks, I expressed a wish to be pointed to relevant native material to the topics presented in the textbook. And here we are. It is not perfect, not at all. But still, you get a tip on one or two related classic books and one or two movies for each chapter. A nice step in the good direction. I am at the beginning and thinking of how to use the thing efficiently. But it seems that AE 5 is not bad at all considering it is first attempt on course for high levels. At least as far as monolingual French courses go to my knowledge. Really. I got two DALF exercise books and one book covering usual trouble spots of active skills (especially writing. My French writing sucks.), a comprehensive looking book on idioms and AE 5. I didn't want it at first. I was looking for a book especially on the active skills, I think I had seen one such in a library long ago. But there was nothing suiting my needs better than the AE, most of the books on writing were covering administrative letters and CVs. Perhaps learners who get to that point in five years from now will have better choice as more publishers may get the courage to enter the upper levels market. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5003 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 128 of 160 16 September 2013 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the thoughts on Alter Ego, Cavesa! Let us know your thoughts once you get stuck into it.
To be honest though, I'm not sure when I'll actually have the time to use it. I'm trying to get through the last few lessons of Grammaire Progressive (only a few months behind schedule on that one!), and apart from that, with my upcoming trip, I'd like to focus on Italian and hopefully even learn a bit of basic Greek in the next month. These last few films are waiting for me, and the grammar book is on its way. And for now I'm still sticking to my plan to start Spanish and cut back on French at the end of December, all the more so now that I've found out that I'm probably going to be performing at a music festival near Barcelona the following December, which is what I came here to post about! And November to early December tends to be a crazy busy period so I don't know how much serious study I'll manage before then. And while I've previously flirted with the idea of taking the DALF, I've abandoned that for the time being. I suppose I'll just play it by ear, and either work through it in bits and pieces over a long period or do a proper advanced French phase at a much later date. Edited by garyb on 16 September 2013 at 5:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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