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James29’s French Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5655 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 9 of 29 07 July 2014 at 2:53am | IP Logged | ||
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James, i've used Spanish to learn almost every other language after it (except Mandarin, as i don't know of any quality courses in Spanish), often because it's the easiest to use. For Catalan and Basque, for example, there are much better Spanish resources. I wish there were more Spanish audio courses, to be honest i'd really like to make some of my own following the Language Transfer format someday. I'd also love to make some FSI-style courses based off the Spanish course. I feel that the hour-long units are just perfect and the variety of drills and dialogs are great.
I think FiA is a nice choice for a relaxed learning session, though i found that i generally preferred to move on rather than repeat a lesson. But i think that was more because i was too anxious just to finish the course. They are really good though and once you get past the introduction of the characters and away from the know-it-all student things get pretty interesting. I did FSI French half expecting that it would be similar to the Spanish course. It wasn't. It has a pretty standard format and over all i found it pretty dull. It will help you with your French, but i don't think it can be used as a sole course to get you to basic fluency like the Spanish course can. If you feel like going through it, that's fine, but if you're more interested in passive skills for now i'd say set it aside in favor of Assimil and FiA. I didn't use the texts or exercises, though if i were to really get serious about French again i might consider it. At my level (maybe around B1), though, i'd probably choose to do something a bit more fun to me, like intensive reading. Spoken French is relatively easy, i've found literary French to be much more complicated. With regards to Assimil, the new courses differ between the Spanish and English versions. I found a copy of "El francés sin esfuerzo" (from the 50's) in Spain for like €3 and went through that, too. If i still had it i'd gladly send it to you as it's great. Unfortunately i passed it on to someone else precisely because it was so good. It's the same course as "French Without Toil", which you can generally find pretty cheaply at used book shops. Audio rips of the records are available online. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5165 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 10 of 29 07 July 2014 at 11:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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That's a disappointment about FSI French. I don't think I'd get to it for a very long time so I am not too worried.
I have often thought someone could make a "supercourse" that is designed to be like FSI Spanish but also have an Assimil-type component to it. The dialogues could be recorded as full dialogues with grammar notes, etc. Someone could go through the course like an Assimil course and then like an FSI course or vice verse or both at the same time. The thing I don't know how to plan for with FIA is when the videos will start getting too hard. Did you find you could just watch them straight through at the beginning? Also, do you mean to suggest that the two Assimil French courses I have (the two different bases) are different? They have the same amount of lessons and I did some spot checking on the lessons and they look the same. I bought the audio with the English book so I am going to be quite upset if the audio I have does not match the Spanish based book. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5655 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 11 of 29 08 July 2014 at 1:49am | IP Logged | ||
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I guess there's been a new version, i remember the English version i had had i think 105 lessons and the Spanish one had 99, but checking the Assimil website it seems they both have 113 lessons now so they must've redone them. I just remember the Spanish and Italian versions were a few lessons shorter than the English one, which made sense seeing that they're Romance languages. Maybe now the course is more general and not specifically catered to English/Spanish speakers.
I don't remember really having too much trouble with FiA, it's been years since i watched it though. But the lessons really do start so that you can understand it right from the beginning. The actual story only takes up a small portion of the lesson, the rest is dedicated to explaining the story. And i kinda think Platiquemos could fit your description of an Assimil-style FSI course. You could potentially skip the drills and just focus on the dialogs, though they aren't near as interesting as the Assimil dialogs. It's still a dream of mine to make some FSI courses for other languages (like Catalan and Basque) as well as some others for Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5052 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 12 of 29 08 July 2014 at 4:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Alas, there is no perfect course and there never will be, until we get the holodeck technology from the Enterprise. I think you will do quite well with French. You have several advantages.
1) You already know how to successfully learn a language because you've done it. You know what works for you. 2) You speak two similar languages- Spanish and English. Conjugations, masculine/feminine, subjunctive, false friends- none of this is alien to you. 3) You have a plan and your ambitions are realistic. I know you will do well. Spanish and French are different enough that you won't have to worry so much about mixing them. The hardest bit will be the pronunciation, but you have a plan for that too. ¡Te deseo "merde", como se dice en el idioma francés! ;) Quiere decir "¡Buena suerte!". Edited by iguanamon on 08 July 2014 at 4:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4699 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 13 of 29 08 July 2014 at 10:41am | IP Logged | ||
I'm not sure what Crush doesn't like about French FSI, but I think it's great. I suspect Crush and I are looking for different things, because he mentions not doing the exercises, and I think the exercises are pure gold. If you're just looking for dialogues, then the French ones seem dull in comparison to Assimil. The topics are things like: what time will we meet Janine? And while you call her, I will take the mail to the post office. Not exactly thrilling. Maybe the Spanish dialogues are better, I don't know. But if you do have the time to get to FSI French, long term, the exercises are great training. And I can't imagine the exercises are that different in French from the Spanish version. Edited by Jeffers on 08 July 2014 at 10:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5655 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 14 of 29 08 July 2014 at 8:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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When i was going through the Spanish course, i could feel how Spanish was really starting to open up and that my ability to communicate in Spanish was getting better and better. When i finished it, i felt much better about my Spanish than i did when i finished the French FSI course. I think it's still worth going through because it will help you "automatize" (quiero decir "automatizar") your French, but the course as a whole was much less impressive than the Spanish one. The Spanish dialogs aren't super thrilling either, but some of them i did find interesting (eg. Molina having a fight with their partner, a student strike, etc.). Maybe it was because i had a bit more of a base when i started the French course, but i didn't have the same feeling of progression i had when i did the Spanish course and didn't feel as prepared after finishing it. It's still a good course and covers a lot of material, it just seems a little boxed in compared to the Spanish course. It's much better than the German FSI course, though.
If it gives you any idea, i think when a lot of people finish Platiquemos/FSI Spanish that's about the time (give or take a couple months) when they move Spanish from "Studies" to "Speaks". There are a few of us who've finished the French course and still have it listed as "Studies". On the other hand, French Without Toil is really great, i thought it was a lot of fun to go through. To this day i can still hear some of the voices and sentences from the recording :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5165 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 15 of 29 09 July 2014 at 2:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, with all these comments I am going to feel foolish if I quit French.
It is definitely amazing how much it helps to know how to learn a language. I know it will come with time and I know what resources I'd like to use. I also realize that there can be more than one way to say things... when I started Spanish I just could not comprehend so many concepts... particularly the ones we don't have in English. I seem to have determined my basic plan for now. I am going to try to watch an FIA video every night... if I miss a night it will be no big deal... I'll use the drive to work the next morning to listen to the Berlitz French audio. That's the plan. Just 20-25 minutes of passive listening and trying to understand as much as possible. Interestingly enough, I actually "spoke" French with a customer today. She is African and I happened to recall that she spoke French. I greeted her (hello, how are you?) in French and she actually seemed somewhat surprised... she replied in French with "I'm fine... you speak French?" and I replied "a little bit" and she asked "how are you?" I replied "very good, but tired." I was not really tired, but that was the only thing I could think of. Anyway, I am only writing this because I think I used every single French word I could think of in the conversation. It was fun and she got a real chuckle out of my effort to speak French to her. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5655 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 16 of 29 09 July 2014 at 2:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Haha that sounds like the first episode of FiA to a tee ;)
I hope you do stick with it, it'll give me another excuse to dust off my French, something i've been meaning to do for years now... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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