|
 |
French: On a path to engineering school | ||
Tags: French | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| wookermuffin Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5087 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 1 of 7 21 November 2013 at 6:06am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Is this my first post on HTLAL? It wouldn't surprise me if it is; I have strong lurker tendencies.
I have decided to start this log as way of keeping track of what I do on a daily basis to improve my French. I think the public nature of the forum will encourage me to keep my writing both legible and readable. Something I'm not guaranteed to do if I'm just writing in my own journal. I am a first year engineering student here in the US, and my goal for French is to study abroad during my third year. So that gives me a solid 20 months to improve. Currently, I've never studied french formally nor have I ever really had a conversation in french, but my experiences with attending a canadian international school overseas means that I've only ever heard french spoken naturally. My level in french would probably be described as lower intermediate, though it's heavily biased towards listening. Nearly all of the "self-study" has been me listening to french music, watching french cartoons, and listening to a few random podcasts. The only part that even sort-of resembles study is that I'm going through French in Action; I'm currently nearing the end of a second pass through. I plan to make a third pass, this time actually following Monsieur Capretz' instructions of "Vous etes Mirielle". I've also been making a concentrated effort to improve my pronunciation this past month. Due to this I've found myself muttering random things in french throughout the day. Oh right, I forgot to mention how long I've been learning french. I started right around the new year this year so it's been almost a year. Wow, I didn't realize it had been that long; I'm torn between thinking I've made excellent progress and that I've hardly learned anything. I'm not going to think about it too much because I don't care: I'm having a blast. I don't know if I can my level of french to a high enough level to be able to do what I want but I'm going to try. My plan going forward is to work on oral comprehension and production for the remainder of the academic year and then study french during the summer in France (You'll give me course credit for spending my summer in the alps doing my favorite activity! Sign me up), and seeing where that brings me. Edited by wookermuffin on 21 November 2013 at 6:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| wookermuffin Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5087 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 2 of 7 21 November 2013 at 6:16am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Here's what I've done today, I don't include all the french music I listen to while walking to classes.
French-in-Action # 49 Code Lyoko #9 Satellite Code Lyoko #10 Créature de rêve Le Reveil de Xana Partie (Code Lyoko Prologue) Les malheurs de Sophie #1 Les fruits de confits Les malheurs de Sophie #2 Le thé I have a self-imposed rule of not watching more than one FIA episode in a day; I used to do that and would a) absorb less each episode and b) burn out and abandon the series for weeks at a time. I just found out about Les malheurs de Sophie today, and watched the first too episodes of the late 1990's cartoon adaption, then I was delighted to find out that I have a Chantal Goya song about Sophie. I'm really enjoying this stage of my learning because I understand enough to keep up with these (admittedly simple) story lines but I'm still learning things of such high frequency that they'll appear in multiple sources naturally in one day. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4459 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 3 of 7 21 November 2013 at 11:40am | IP Logged | |||||
|
Good luck with your studies! Your plan (spending a summer in France) sounds like a dream to me. I'll be reading your log. Do you mind if I write to you in French here?
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5326 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 7 21 November 2013 at 6:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
This sounds like an amazingly fun project, and I really envy you! The first thing to do is check the entrance requirements for your engineering school. Quite often, you won't need anything more than a B2 certificate (either TCF or DELF B2), which is easily within reach given 20 months and your current low-intermediate level. And certainly, if you can pass the DELF B2 with a decent score, you can at least survive your first term at a French university. Also find out what the possible exam dates are, because they may fall at inconvenient times—the TCF is every two months, and the DELF is usually twice a year, and you will need time to receive your results. If, on the other hand, your university demands a C1 certificate, find out now. That would require more work and more planning to pull off. Once you've got a handle on the exam requirements, all that's left is the cool part: learning lots of French. :-) Your general plan looks pretty reasonable, but here are a few thoughts anyway, just in case they help. 1. For listening comprehension, one fun way to improve is to find a TV series that you understand well enough to follow the general plot and at least half of the dialog. We have a list of French TV series with subs which may help you find something fun. By using a TV series, you would have a chance to get used to the characters' voices and the vocabulary of the series, which helps tremendously in the beginning. You can use subs and transcripts to get started, and then turn off the subs. Within a season or two of the series, you should understand quite a bit. Repeat this with two or three series, and your skills should then broaden out considerably. 2. If you're having vocabulary troubles, you may benefit from adding some reading to the mix. It's possible for an English-speaker to make considerable listening comprehension gains by supplementing TV with a couple thousand pages of reading, because reading will build your vocab quickly. Again, the reading can mostly be fun stuff. 3. If you're making lots of errors while speaking, it may help to try writing short compositions on lang-8. Be sure to look for literate French speakers and correct their essays—they'll reciprocate, which is much more effective than relying on random drive-by corrections. By writing, you'll have a chance to slow things down and go over them in detail, which will alert you to any major grammar misconceptions. Even writing 100 words per day for 30 days can make a drastic difference. If, on the other hand, your vocabulary and grammar are fine, no need to worry about (2) and (3) right away. And for whatever it's worth, I was roughly at an A2 (high beginner) level 21 months ago, and I have an online math class from the École Polytechnique in Paris starting this coming Monday. So I'm totally convinced your goals are achievable if you consistently work a bit every day, and if you find quality ways to goof off in French for when your brain is fried. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| wookermuffin Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5087 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 5 of 7 22 November 2013 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks and no, I don't mind, French is welcome here. Though I will be responding in English for a while, I don't really have a good sense of where the words end and start yet. emk - Thank you for the advice, you brought up a lot of things I hadn't considered yet. I'll be going to France through my universities exchange program, the requirements for most schools are simply 4 semesters of French, but the engineering school has different requirements. It's listed as "Only students with GPAs of 3.2 or above, as well as a strong science background and good French skills are eligible for INSA." and then their's a note later which says that eligibility will be determined by the school in France. That's pretty vague, but the study abroad advisor said that was a higher standard.... Then she suggested that I study in an English or Spanish speaking speaking country. I was not impressed! (In her defense though, she was just looking at my schedule and acknowledging that fact that I don't have time to take enough language classes in order to get to the level needed.) The listening bit is essentially what I'm doing right now, which is why I'm watching Code Lyoko; I can always follow the plot and understand about 60% of the dialogue. I've shy'd away from reading (and thus from writing) because in the beginning I found that once I saw a word in writing I would invariably pronounce it with a much heavier American accent than if I hadn't seen it. I'm starting to read more now, mostly because I'm using materials from french websites, but I'm still going to concentrate on learning vocabulary from the spoken word. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| wookermuffin Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5087 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 6 of 7 22 November 2013 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Yesterday was a busy day, as I had a chemistry exam, but I still managed to do a bit of French "study" It's hard to
call it studying; other than FIA, I've mostly just changed my homepage to google.fr and continued to surf the web as normal, just now more french results show up. Anyway, French-in-Action # 50, second round For me, this second run through has been all about comprehension, the third (and final) pass through will be about actually using the language presented in it. Les guignols de l'info 21/11/13 Zapping 21/11/13 So I don't usually watch news programs that aren't parodies, but maybe I should try to in French because these went over my head. The only thing I understood was a part where they were making fun of Hollande's popularity/lack there of. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5326 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 7 22 November 2013 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
I checked a bunch of INSA schools in France, and I couldn't find detailed language requirements for exchange students. However, I did find a page with graduation requirements, which seem to be B2 on the TCF or a DALF C1 diploma. So this will probably depend on your school, but B2 seems like a pretty reasonable goal. However, if your school requires a C1 exam for admission, you need to know that as soon as possible. The distance between B2 and C1 is at least as large as the distance between nothing and B2, and 20 months of French while also studying engineering might not be enough for you to prepare for a C1 exam, pass it, and get your results back.
I just watched a few scenes from Code Lyoko, and if you can follow 60% of the dialog, you're actually in pretty good shape. My suggestion is to give it a bit more time—maybe another 50 or 100 hours of actively watching cartoons—and see if you get up to 90+% comprehension and learn to pick out the clitic pronouns clearly (the COI, COD, y and en pronouns which appear before the verb). But if you put in another 50 or 100 hours of cartoons and your comprehension has plateaued below 90%, you might need to change your strategy. That's one of the weird things about the intermediate levels: After a while, any given strategy hits a point of diminishing returns, and you can often make much faster progress by switching to another skill or study technique. So be alert for this. And yes, you may mess up your pronunciation a bit by reading. But that might be an acceptable tradeoff, if it helps you get to INSA. And the good news is that French pronunciation is quite regular once you get a handle on it, so you can undo maybe 80% of the damage once you internalize French spelling. Also, since you're pursuing French through cartoons, you might enjoy SensCritique, which is a huge database of French shows, movies, books, graphic novels and video games. Good luck with your studies! 1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
