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Super Challenge Update thread 2014-15 | ||
Tags: Super Challenge | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5172 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 97 of 198 16 June 2014 at 3:18am | IP Logged | ||
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One nice benefit of the SC is that as long as I have a book on me I don't mind long waits because it just means I'll have more pages to log. Like today when the bus was an hour late...
I finished the first tome of Histoire de la civilisation française by Georges Duby et Robert Mandrou - a couple more giants from the Annales school of history. It was quite readable as the Annales school focused a lot on social history and what prompted changes in society. So unlike the latter chapters of La femme aux temps des cathedrals which focused on members of royalty, there are no complicated family trees to keep track of (even harder when every woman is named Mathilde and I can't keep my Henris straight). I'm now working on L'économie de la Révolution française which is pretty challenging subject matter. I'm getting along...though I may need to look up some supporting information on assignats to really understand the scheme. Though it's okay if it's confusing - the author Florin Aftalion straight up says that some of the financial ministers relied on smoke and mirrors and confusion to manipulate fiscal policy. What helps is that he did his schooling in the US so his book conforms to standards you'd expect in an historical monograph if you've studied academic history in the US. After that I have another work on the Chouannerie and the Revolution which ought to give some good background info for Les Chouans de Balzac. Then the Identité de la France series by Braudel which is a major classic. One of the Alliance Française profs also gave me a journal about historical studies in France since WWII which will give me a great grounding in French historians. I also have some more podcasts that stood out: My old conservative friend Finkie (Alain Finkelkraut) had some interesting appearances on his show Répliques de France Culture: La panthéonisation en démocratie and Qu-est-ce qu'un réac ? He was also a guest on Interactiv' with Patrick Cohen on France Inter where he was on the defensive a lot against the callers and he defended his statements against BDs being art (he did concede that Maus was a great exception). He tends to make a lot of ado about nothing but the discussions are interesting (I also learned that he unapologetically got out of doing his mandatory military service when he was young, which he has apparently been criticized for). Si l'Amérique m'était contée did a show on Mormanism and had a French Mormon guest (if you remember, Mitt Romney did his mission work in France - where Mormonsim failed to take off but there is a slight presence). On Le Mouv's series on Les séries télé, they discussed the issue of subtitles with a panel that included official subtitlers and amateur fan subtitlers. Thanks to Le Mouv' I also discovered a new band (really new - I can really play up my hipster cred), Feu Chatterton. Le Mouv' does a whole series of playlists, including a Francophone only series which is great for discovering new music. I hope some of this is interesting to the French group (who are doing such a great job representing in the challenge)! I'm sadly the only one representing Irish but I've been looking into some potential resources which will hopefully show that there are even options for minority languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| VivianJ5 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4043 days ago 81 posts - 133 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 98 of 198 16 June 2014 at 8:39am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks, sctroyenne, for those great resources! I'm almost finished my umpteenth time reading "L'allee du roi" the fictional autobiography of Madame de Maintenon, the second - and secret- wife of Louis XIV. I love the author's style of writing, and I get sucked in to the intrigue of her "faveur" every time... Have also watched a terrific series on Youtube, originally on Canadian TV, about the "Revolution Tranquille" in Quebec from 1960 - 1980. My two daughters live in Montreal, and the series really gives some pertinent information about the culture and the politics of Quebec today; so much stems from this Revolution Tranquille. Now I've moved on to another Youtube Canadian (Quebecois) series about Rene Levesque, one of the architects of the "Revolution Tranquille." Fascinating stuff. And I have to say, this challenge is accomplishing what I had hoped it would: my French vocabulary is coming back in spades, and there are times when, in trying to describe or explain something while conversing, the French word pops into my head, while the English one escapes me. That hasn't happened in a very long time...the French cells in my brain are being reignited. This is a very good thing! Edited by VivianJ5 on 16 June 2014 at 8:40am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5172 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 99 of 198 16 June 2014 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | ||
I can relate - when I came back to French after not studying it for years it was watching TV5 Monde that got me speaking again. All the input really helps with the output. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hjordis Senior Member United States snapshotsoftheworld. Joined 4967 days ago 209 posts - 264 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 100 of 198 18 June 2014 at 3:58am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, updating in a log fell apart rather fast. I actually got some reading done in both
French and Spanish today since I had time on the bus! I should be able to finish my first Spanish book tonight. I'm reading The Magic Treehouse series, and I'm not quite ready to read fully extensively, but I've been reading some chapters intensively and some extensively and it's going nicely. I've also been watching a bit in French, but mostly series and I've been watching whichever series I feel like at the moment (I'm up to 3 now), so I haven't had an update on twitter in a while. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3925 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 101 of 198 21 June 2014 at 1:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I finally watched a movie I've been planning on seeing for a long time: Tambien la lluvia. It was a very well-made
and riveting film about a Spanish film crew making a movie in Bolivia about Columbus, while local people are rising up against the privatization of water. It was very, very good. Unfortunately, I watched it on Netflix Canada, and there's no option to remove English subtitles. I'm compulsive about reading every single word, even when I don't need to. For anyone doing a French SC, I watched the following documentary with my adult French class, and it led to a lot of discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6KbKQevqj8 It's translated/dubbed, but very well done. It's about a tent prison in Arizona. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6378 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 102 of 198 24 June 2014 at 2:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Last weekend I focused on German!
I counted 72 pages for Tadoku, mostly the first part of Göttekinder by Eddings (I have the rest of the series in Italian, but I still have some 380ish pages to read in German). I also read a bit of Christiane F., which I can't recommend enough to anyone who's looking for serious books written in an easy language. (another rec in the same vein would be Anne Frank's diary btw) It took me between two and three minutes to read a page (at least on all pages where I tracked this - I think there were some better ones but not many). I understood the content well but I'm just not used to reading in German. I also watched the following matches in German: 20 Jun 2014 italien-costa rica 0:1 20 Jun 2014 de-at: schweiz-frankreich 2:5 20 Jun 2014 de-at: honduras-ecuador 1:2 21 Jun 2014 deutschland-ghana 2:2 21 Jun 2014 bosnien-herzegowina - nigeria 0:1 22 Jun 2014 belgien-russland 1:0 22 Jun 2014 de-at: südkorea-algerien 2:4 22 Jun 2014 usa-portugal 2:2 My understanding of those in Austrian German was a little lower, although I can't pinpoint any specific cause. This also means that my general understanding has improved significantly, since I remember barely noticing any difference between the varieties from Germany and Austria, both in what they sound like and in my (relatively low) comprehension. Also, I now have some kind of badge in my 8 most important languages :) Now on to get a silver badge in my Tadoku langs! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sfuqua Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4546 days ago 581 posts - 977 votes Speaks: English*, Hawaiian, Tagalog Studies: Spanish | Message 103 of 198 24 June 2014 at 5:44am | IP Logged | ||
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I've been listening reading in two steps, listening Spanish and reading English first and then listening Spanish and reading Spanish (I only count the last one as reading, or course). I go over the same pages if I don't understand them and move ahead when I understand, usually after 3 times through.
I slowed down a lot on reading and listening for a while so that I could understand what I was reading better. I even slowed down my audiobooks to about 100-120 words a minute to increase comprehension. Boy am I ready to speed up! I shifted things up to 160 words a minute and used that today, and right now I am speeding an audiobook up to 200 words a minute. I seem to be able to listen-read it at that speed, so why not try it for a while...? I have gotten real excited recently about this whole process. I may actually be able to finish, and more to the point I may actually get to the point where I can actually read Spanish for fun. If I could get to the point where I could read Spanish literature for fun, I would be so happy...!!! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4032 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 104 of 198 28 June 2014 at 9:42am | IP Logged | ||
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I didn't give an update yet.
I managed to read 2 "books" since this challenge started, and I watched about 1 1/2 "movies". The reading is much easier for me to understand than the movies... which is at the moment just watching the Spanish version of CNN. With the reading I can look up the words that I don't know, but I can't exactly look up words when people are speaking a mile a minute. I do catch phrases and sentences... so I can tell the topic that they are speaking about, and can pick up some details, but there is a lot that goes over my head. I hope to be able to do more as I get better with the language over the next year. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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