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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4805 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 17 of 42 20 March 2015 at 2:43am | IP Logged |
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Hello, teammate! Nice log, sorry to be a bit late. And great progress, it's awesome
and inspirational to read about your progress (it motivates me to move further my German :-) ) About your grammar worries: You might like the series Grammaire Progressive by CLE, it's been recommended on htlal many times and it is popular in many other places as well and for good reasons. Left page: grammar explanation with good examples that usually provide all the context you need to understand the rule. Right page: exercises, usually things like filling the gaps, which is fine at first. There are four tomes (the last one is the most advanced and the most fun and useful of them all, of course ;-) ) And many grammar points will get clearer with more experience and input as well, especially if you'll have covered the theoretical base. Assimil is great but I feel similar need to look up my grammar elsewhere when using it as my main resource for German. Congratulations to moving to graded readers, that is a good sign. You might as well like some BDs already, emk's log is full of good advice on them. What is interesting to read and where to find it, he had an awesome online link, not sure what was the adress now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| fortheo Senior Member United States Joined 4832 days ago 187 posts - 222 votes Studies: French | Message 18 of 42 03 April 2015 at 3:28am | IP Logged |
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@cavesa, Thank you for stopping by. I appreciate it a lot. I've heard a lot about Grammaire Progressive by CLE and I definitely plan to check it out! There is a book that one of my professors recommended called English Grammar for Students of Frenc And it's supposedly very good at showing you the Grammatical differences between the two languages; I'm an English major, so I don't mind going over some English grammar at the same time :) I will probably get both at some point because I'm a resource junkie.
On to a quick update: I'm ashamed to say I haven't been doing much lately. Assimil has more or less been paused—I review it a lot, and add a lesson here and there, and I maintain my assimil anki deck—which has audio as well; but that's pretty much all I've been doing with Assimil. I only have 12 lessons left on the first phase; I really should just bite the bullet and plow through them. With french in action, I was coming to a point where my understanding was decreasing dramatically (around episode 35 or so) so FIA has fallen into a sort of review/watch one here and there pattern. This too needs to change. Okay, what have I been doing? I've at least been listening/reading and listening while reading graded readers. Mostly A1-A2 level, which I'm sad to is where my listening ability seems to be at. My reading level may be into the B1 level, but I really want to increase my listening ability so I'm listening to these A1-A2 books before I move on to harder books. Hopefully once I plow through the rest of assimil I can simply focus on audio books for a while and some sort of grammar course book. There was also a few days where I had written conversations with a few of my french language partners; they were only about 10-15 minutes long but it kept me in touch with the language. so yeah, I haven't been as productive as usual, but I also haven't completely fallen off the band wagon. A lot of my laziness I'd like to attribute to being sick—which I'm now thinking could be some kind of sinus infection or strep throat. I have no health insurance, and I am relatively poor which makes treatment difficult at the moment; but sick or not—I need to kick things up a notch. That's why I decided to sign up for another intense french class :) This will be a six credit french class that meets for three hours a day from mid May to the end of June. Then of course, assuming things workout financially, I will take a 5 week intensive french course in Québec. I really hope the Québec professors can get the output out of me! Edited by fortheo on 03 April 2015 at 3:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4705 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 19 of 42 03 April 2015 at 1:49pm | IP Logged |
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Interesting post. There's nothing wrong with letting your courses drift for a little while. You will gain nothing by the simple act of finishing them, and if you felt you needed more work in them you would be motivated to push on. In the meantime you are doing a lot of useful things, and when you decide to continue with your textbooks you will have more examples of French usage in the back of your mind.
I'm a fan of the graded readers + CD combos, although many of them are dead boring. How do you work with readers? Since I also feel the need to improve my listening, I do what I call "audio first reading". I listen to the story several times, during which I gain more and more understanding of the story. I usually listen 3-4 times before reading the text. Then I alternate between reading the story and listening to it, or listening and reading together. Obviously this requires an interesting enough reader. Fortunately, I have a couple suggestions of readers I found interesting enough to read many times over. I really enjoyed Enquête capitale, which I first listened to near the end of my first year learning French, but I've read several times since. The audio is a bit slow, but it meant I was able to get the gist of everything on my first listening. It also had a lot of colloquial phrases I had to look up, but which have been useful ever since. In addition, it gives a nice background to several important sites in Paris. For example, did you know that the oldest house in Paris was owned by a character in Harry Potter? (The book didn't mention HP, but he was a character). This was the only really interesting A1 reader I found. Another reader I can't recommend enough is Pas d'oscar pour l'assassin, by Vincent Remede. Although it is written for A2 students, it is a bit more substantial than most A2 readers, and feels like you're reading a real novel. If you have a kindle or tablet, the kindle edition is a bit cheaper. When you have the book, you can download the audio for free from the publisher's website. You will have some questions to answer (e.g. the xth word on y page) to download the audio. Two more A2 readers which I enjoyed a lot are Maigret et la jeune morte and Maigret et la Grande Perche, both adaptions of books by Georges Simenon. Although they are adaptions, Simenon's books were rather short anyway, so you're probably getting most of the story. One more Simenon adaption I like is La Tête d'un homme. This one is listed as B2, and is a bit longer than the others, but it's a good follow-up story. Finally, since your listening is A1/A2, you also might want to try the podcast L'avis de Marie. There is a full transcript for every episode, and it actually highlights each sentence in the transcript while you listen. Plus she speaks about a variety of current event topics, so it will help expand your vocabulary for general use. The one downside is that she speaks a bit slowly and her voice sounds a bit like a little girl; at first I didn't like it, but I got used to it because I enjoyed her topics and the fact that I could really understand what she was talking about. I've made these suggestions elsewhere, so sorry if you've seen them before. They are just a few of the things that have helped me a lot. Edited by Jeffers on 03 April 2015 at 2:07pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| fortheo Senior Member United States Joined 4832 days ago 187 posts - 222 votes Studies: French | Message 20 of 42 04 April 2015 at 3:10am | IP Logged |
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Thanks Jeffers! your post is exactly what I needed right now. I think I will stick with audiobooks for a little while. I am still making progress with assimil; it's just at a slow pace. I'm just going to do what I enjoy for now; which is audiobooks!
I started a new one yesterday, but once I finish that I'll definitely get started on your suggestions! Also, I work through audio books pretty much the same way you do: I first listen to the audio a few times, then I read the text, then I listen and read the text at the same time. It seems to be helping me. I find audio books, even the dull ones, to be more interesting than the random sentences in Assimil. Edited by fortheo on 04 April 2015 at 5:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4705 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 21 of 42 04 April 2015 at 12:02pm | IP Logged |
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Very nice! So what audiobooks have you found most useful and enjoyable? I'm always
looking for new ideas. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| fortheo Senior Member United States Joined 4832 days ago 187 posts - 222 votes Studies: French | Message 22 of 42 05 April 2015 at 4:10am | IP Logged |
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Well, considering all that I've read before these audio books was assimil lessons and FIA lessons, just about all of these audio books have been enjoyable. These are probably way below your level, but I'll list them anyways in case a beginner comes by.
I first read Quinze Jours Pour Reussir! It was easy for me; there was maybe one word a page that I didn't know, but for the most part I understood everything. I'm reading a series now that's at A1-A2 level, some of the books are higher—this is the one I'm reading now Alex Leroc The speaker speaks much closer to native speed in this book, so It has been helping my listening a bit. that's about all I've read so far. I go pretty slow considering I listen to each chapter at least twice, then read it, then listen and read. So one 5 minute chapter will take me about 20-25 minutes, plus I usually review it the next day as well. So, after all my reviews (I still do assimil reviews as well) I usually do one chapter a day in an audio book. It all adds up to only about an hour to an hour and a half a day of french studies;but it's the end of the semester at uni right now and work is piling up, so this is my pace for now! Edited by fortheo on 05 April 2015 at 4:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5272 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 23 of 42 05 April 2015 at 6:03am | IP Logged |
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It looks like you're doing a pretty good job fortheo of keeping up your French language learning. Well done!
This is what brings success in learning languages- consistency. PM 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4705 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 24 of 42 05 April 2015 at 1:19pm | IP Logged |
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I think your method of working through readers will be very productive. In a way, it's
treating chapters of the book like an Assimil lesson. I actually thought about mentioning Alex Leroc, but I only have one, and the mystery was solved entirely by luck and coincidence. I do agree that it has a pretty good reading pace, and uses some good colloquialisms. So maybe not the best stories, but they are very good language lessons. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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