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300 days for French B2 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| jayjayvp Tetraglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 3869 days ago 26 posts - 40 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, German, Afrikaans Studies: French, Spanish | Message 25 of 35 14 October 2013 at 7:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Another lesson learnt: a desperate shortage of time is an excellent way to take on Anki
gluts! I have 60 pages left in my Somme book. Unfortunately, it was rained on. Heavily. As I write it is on the radiator basking in the heat and drying its poor soggy pages. Buffy contre les Vampires arrived, but I`m going to finish watching my remaining episodes of the Simpsons with french subs first. Also, a glut of books. I also bought one on the history of Gaullism which however turns out to be a veritable "pave" of some 600 pages of fine print. I`m saving that one for last, obviously. The first book post- the Somme will be a history of the Franks. Nice easy going medieval stuff. I should be alright. Not that the books aren`t actually a bit too hard as they are, I`m using motivation to read them as a weapon towards cracking them. I *want* to read about the Frankish kings, the unraveling of French Algeria and Gaullism. And I will have to grind through these books to do so. Carrot, allow me to introduce you to stick, stick, meet carrot. Also am now trying to make a habit of plonking myself down before the PC when the France 2 news is on, I like the format better than I do other news programmes. Hopefully a more content-rich update soon! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jayjayvp Tetraglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 3869 days ago 26 posts - 40 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, German, Afrikaans Studies: French, Spanish | Message 26 of 35 17 October 2013 at 10:48am | IP Logged | ||
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This is my third attempt to add an update. I finished the Somme book at any rate. A good
experience to read a French book in its entirety, even though its clear I still have a lot to learn. Before I add anything else I want to make sure this post gets through, then maybe find out what the problem is. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jayjayvp Tetraglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 3869 days ago 26 posts - 40 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, German, Afrikaans Studies: French, Spanish | Message 27 of 35 17 October 2013 at 10:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Hurray! It worked!
Also I watched Django with French subs, leaving me with tons of vocabulary unusable in polite society. I enjoyed myself though. I firmly believe in fun as a catalyst in learning. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5325 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 28 of 35 17 October 2013 at 11:52am | IP Logged | ||
Whoo-hoo! That didn't take long to finish. :-) Congratulations. And sure, you still have tons to learn. We all do. There's no point where we suddenly graduate; the hard stuff just gets more obscure. But hey: You just a read a book. In French. This is a milestone worth savoring. And if you do this on a regular basis, you'll get better fast. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jayjayvp Tetraglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 3869 days ago 26 posts - 40 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, German, Afrikaans Studies: French, Spanish | Message 29 of 35 19 October 2013 at 8:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ladies and Gentlemen. I have hit paydirt.
A town some twenty kilometres of where my parents live features both a sizable library and a decently-sized French-speaking retiree population. The library sale saw me leave with three large shopping bags full of French goodness. Including a Larousse monolingual dictionary and a two-volume Dictionnaire des Philosophes (interesting!). I`m afraid French is turning into an obsessive thing now, but then obsessions do tend to be very good things if one has to master something. I am at any rate happy with my purchases. I will soon have more than enough books lying around to start a 10,000-pages-challenge! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jayjayvp Tetraglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 3869 days ago 26 posts - 40 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, German, Afrikaans Studies: French, Spanish | Message 30 of 35 20 October 2013 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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The haul from the Library Sale is as follows:
A Petit Robert 2006 ediction dictionary, which doesn`t look "petit" to me at all. I'm quite sure you could kill a medium-sized pet with it if you tried. A four volume "Dictionnaire des littératures de langue française" which I am just going to leaf through from time to time. A two volume "Dictionnaire des Philosophes". I`m really very happy with this one, as my degree was in Philosophy, so I should be able to start nipping at individual articles pretty quickly. A motley collection of twenty novels, some of which translated into French, including a "policier suédois" but most of them by French authors, two by Didier van Cauwelaert and tons of other ones by people I don`t know. Also, I was fascinated to find out that the Franks who invaded Neustria and laid the groundwork for the later French state were the selfsame Franks whose language - Old- Franconian - is the direct ancestor of Old-Dutch, and a lot of what we know about Old- Dutch and Old-Frankish is based on back-reading Frankish elements that have been found in Old-French. Who'd have thought! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5325 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 31 of 35 26 October 2013 at 1:24am | IP Logged | ||
That sounds like an excellent haul! If you keep tempting us, we're going to be you to post photos. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jayjayvp Tetraglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 3869 days ago 26 posts - 40 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, German, Afrikaans Studies: French, Spanish | Message 32 of 35 04 November 2013 at 8:53am | IP Logged | ||
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Oof. I went down the rabbit hole of Impossible Amounts of Work there for a bit. Things
arent back to "normal", whatever that may be, yet. But an update. Nonetheless. Basically the only thing I have been doing has been my anki revisions. Occasionally not managing even that. I`m going to have look into my anki workload to take into account impossible days, i.e. with 15 new cards and an eventual daily workload of 150 cards I end up with a pile of 300 if I miss a day, which might be just manageable. With 20 I might end up with a pile of 400. Not particularly doable methinks. My deck currently consists of 912 cards with 370 unseens. I have added everything north of 3,200 out of the Frequency Dictionary. Also currently reading Volume 1 of the History of Medieval France, on the Frankish kings, still. It's very slow going, but mostly through to chronic lack of time, not so much not understanding what's on the page. So, that's it for now! Hope things clear up and I can throw a decent four-five hours a week into French! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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