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James29’s French Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5164 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 1 of 29 05 July 2014 at 11:23pm | IP Logged |
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I have finally made a commitment to learn French. I have wanted to know French for quite some time, but I have never wanted to actually make the effort to learn it. I made numerous (probably five or six) false starts where I studied French for one, two or three days and promptly quit. This time, hopefully, will be different.
Two days ago (when I started this time) my French level was basically nothing. I had watched the first video of French in Action a few times, listened to a couple Berlitz tapes and I had done the first disc of Michel Thomas a couple times. That’s about it. I think it is safe to say I am starting from scratch. I have been learning Spanish for about four and a half years and have been studying Spanish quite religiously for 30-60 minutes a day every day. I have never wanted to start French because I do not want to take away from my Spanish studies. Spanish is still my priority and the most important thing about my French studies is that I don’t mind if I quit… especially if it ends up taking away from my progress in Spanish. I can justify Spanish as being minimally relevant to my work, but French is totally for fun. I own my own small business and my business is a major priority. I use my Spanish as a way to relax and “get away” from some of the stresses of work. It has been great for that purpose. I “study” Spanish in a way that it is always fun and I will do the same for French. I also am married with two kids and that, of course, is more important than anything else and takes a lot of time. Both work and family are more important than Spanish and French and if I need to I will take my language time for the more important things. My Spanish is at a fairly solid B2ish level. I would say I am still closer to the B1 side of B2 than the C1 side. C1 seems like it is light years away. Advancing at this level is very difficult and progress takes a long time. I got to B1 in Spanish quite quickly and I think I can get to that level in French even easier (not necessarily faster because I do not intend to spend a ton of time on French). I would be very happy with an eventual B1 level in French. Why do I want to learn French? I have several reasons. I never knew my father in law. He died before I met my wife. He was a native French speaker and 100% French-Canadian. Interestingly, he grew up in the US but never knew English until he was in his 20s. That was hard for him. He made a point that he did not want to teach his kids French. In a strange way, I feel that learning French would help me understand his heritage and maybe pass a bit along to my sons. My wife, interestingly enough, has absolutely no interest in French. I also have a number of relatives who are native French speakers on my side… in Montreal and in Belgium. They are all bi-lingual, but, obviously, their heritage is important to them. When I was in high school the father of one of my best friends was a French teacher. I went with his family to Quebec City a number of times and had some of the best times of my life. I have very fond memories of Quebec even though I was a very ignorant American high school kid. I have a number of things on my French “bucket list.” These are some of the things I’d like to do with French. My wife’s grandmother (her father’s mother) is ancient, but still around. If possible, I’d like to have a meaningful conversation with her in French. That would be cool. She lives by herself in a retirement home and if I get to a decent level she would probably be thrilled to speak French with me whenever I want. I would like to visit my relatives in Montreal and Belgium to “study” French. I’d like to return to Quebec City and go to some of the places I remember from high school. I’d also like to “study” French in Guadeloupe (or some other nice place with a beach). My wife refuses to travel to Latin America with me so I am hoping I can convince her to travel to some French speaking places. I have a meaningful passive investment in a company that has operations in Lausanne, Switzerland. I would like to go there sometime and visit the company. That would be a dream come true as I love to combine my hobbies (business/investing and language learning). I’d eventually like to read or LR Les Miserables. I’d also like to eventually be able to watch some episodes of Les Simpson dubbed from Quebec. I think Quebec French will eventually be my preferred type of French. I'd really like to get to a decent enough level that I can participate in the weekly local French meetup. So, what resources will I use? I currently have the following: Michel Thomas Foundations, Assimil New French with Ease (both English and Spanish bases) and Berlitz’s Think and Speak French. I also intend to use the FIA videos and possibly the FSI French Phonology Course. Today and yesterday I did the entire MT course. I think I will now start watching FIA videos. I will not do more than 30 minutes of French a day. My minimum goal is going to be 20 minutes five times a week. If I do that I will be happy. I am going to use my 20 minute morning commute or 20-30 minutes in the evening for French. At first I do not want French to interfere with my Spanish time which is the hour after I get to the office (but before I start working). When I am ready for Assimil I will probably start doing French in the office and again use my commute and evening time to do Spanish. I also intend to do intensive weekends every now and then where I do what I did this weekend and do an entire MT course or something similar. I don’t mind if my progress is slow… especially at first. I think I will be able to pick up French fairly well. I am going to focus a lot more on listening/understanding at the beginning than I did in Spanish. I will probably do a lot of “passive” things for the next six months like watch the FIA videos and listen to the Berlitz audio. Then, eventually, I will work my way through Assimil. I intend to use the Spanish based Assimil to remind me that my priority is Spanish and to use my Spanish in a new and different way. If I can work through the entire Assimil course I will consider my French endeavor a success. I have found that updating my Spanish log weekly has really helped keep me motivated. I will probably do the same here even though I probably will not have too much to update. Edited by James29 on 05 July 2014 at 11:35pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6994 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 29 06 July 2014 at 2:07am | IP Logged |
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Bonne chance! Bon voyage!
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| rlnv Senior Member United States Joined 3740 days ago 126 posts - 233 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 3 of 29 06 July 2014 at 9:04am | IP Logged |
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It looks like you have plenty of reasons to learn and enjoy French! I like your choices of material. Myself, I just finished the first wave of NFWE. I can't recommend it highly enough. And for the amount of time you are going to allocated daily, it may provide you a just right lesson size. Bonne chance !
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5654 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 4 of 29 06 July 2014 at 1:31pm | IP Logged |
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I used the Spanish Assimil course for French and thought it was great, too.
Btw, forum member Arekkusu published a course for French speakers to learn "Québécois", called Le québécois en 10 leçons. I haven't used it but it looks really good and i'd really like to pick it up at some point, too, as i would really like to get more familiar with Canadian French. I'm really excited to hear you're starting on French, i think you'll find that your comprehension will soar really quickly, particularly once you get the verb forms down. One thing you'll probably notice is that French is much more conservative with the subjunctive. Comme toujours, si tu as des questions n'hésite pas à les poser ! EDIT: Here's the link to the Québécois course topic on HTLAL. Edited by Crush on 06 July 2014 at 1:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 3796 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 5 of 29 06 July 2014 at 1:59pm | IP Logged |
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Looking forward to following your log and your progress. I am using French In Action also, and can really
tell a difference in my comprehension. I was able to find used textbooks rather inexpensively which have the full transcripts and key vocabulary. I have found these helpful. Bonne Chance! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4698 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 6 of 29 06 July 2014 at 2:10pm | IP Logged |
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Welcome to the French club, James! I like your reasons for studying French, and your resources are effective. If I were to make an additional suggestion, it would be to use the FSI courses as well. People say the exercises are dull, but I have found them challenging (after Unit 4 anyway), and so they are interesting in the way a good physical challenge is interesting. I found most exercises worked well when commuting, although when they get tough it's a bit hard to concentrate enough on them and drive safely!
Anyway, the main reason I'm posting is so that I can watch your log for updates. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3933 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 7 of 29 06 July 2014 at 2:53pm | IP Logged |
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Bravo! Let me know if you need any help with Canadian French. :)
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| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5164 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 8 of 29 06 July 2014 at 4:06pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you all for the thoughts and comments. I am looking at this as a very long term project. I have no pressing need for French and I'd like to just stick with it so I am going to go slow and steady... especially at first.
I have heard tons of great things about the Assimil course and hearing so many people say they used it successfully gives me great hope and motivation. I plan to have it be the primary thrust of my learning. And, yes indeed, it will be perfect for how I am going to approach French... 20-30 minutes a day. I am just not quite ready to start it yet. Maybe at the beginning of 2015. I thought about putting down my long term French goals like eventually doing FSI and Assimil's Using French (which I'd really like to do both) but I don't want to bite off more than I can chew in promises to myself and I figure if I thoroughly do the first Assimil program I might be in a pretty good spot and have different goals. I did the Spanish FSI course twice and it was what really pushed me over the edge into competently and confidently using Spanish so I am definitely considering using FSI long term. I intently read the threads about Quebec French. It really interests me. I have seen the 10 lesson program and will eventually do it. One cool side effect of learning French is that it really makes me see how good my Spanish is. I take that for granted sometimes. I have definitely been motivated by seeing people on this forum like Luke and Crush learning both languages in ways similar to I am doing. It is really cool to think about learning French through Spanish. And I can now see that my Spanish is really going to help immensely. Our family vacation plans for the Fourth got all screwed up and I got stuck at home without my family for the past two days. I had nothing at all to do (except work and who wants to work on the Fourth?!?!) so I figured I'd just quit complaining about starting French and just do the entire MT course. I loved the course. I did it very carefully and paused with every single question/translation. I was surprised how well I could do it. I would say I was roughly equal to the male student. I was also able to stay motivated to spend 5-6 hours on it each day in order to finish it. This was already after I spent 30-60 minutes on Spanish. I must say that I felt like the MT course did not cover as much as the Spanish course, but maybe I am not remembering the Spanish course well. The French course pretty much only covered the present tense. It was definitely worthwhile and I think it was perfect for starting French. I was amazed at how much my Spanish helped. I found myself often saying... "that will be easy to remember because Spanish does it the same way" and the concept of verb conjugations was pretty easy. Michel even told some of the same stories in both programs. For now I am just going to spend time building a positive French habit. I watched the first FIA video and it actually seemed somewhat "easy." I'd really love to do the whole FIA course with audio, texts, exercises, etc but I am simply not willing to commit that much time to French. I'll just stick to the videos with FIA. My current plan is to merely watch a FIA video each day until I feel like they are getting too hard and then I'll just watch them again. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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