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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| diplomaticus Newbie United States Joined 3760 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 16 28 April 2015 at 4:20am | IP Logged |
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Per advice of others in the advice thread I made, I am starting a log. Here is that
thread for reference: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=40309&PN=1&TPN=1 Even with having friends surprise me from out of town, getting sick, celebrating a birthday, and suffering a severe sunburn, I've yet to miss a day of study. I am unsure how long it takes to make a habit, but I figure I am off to a good start. I've always found that as long as you don't break the streak, your time-on-task for something may undulate up and down, but you will surely go a long way towards whatever you are trying to achieve! Anyway, I started playing with Lingvist tonight. What a fun site! This seems like something I could see me enjoying for a long time. You can pop on or off at any time. A few minutes here, or a big chunk of time there. I enjoy it. Is this just a site with a sort of built-in spaced repetition like what I see referenced with Anki decks? I've never used Anki, but I got the impression it was similar. What I really like is that it shows the part of speech and has a nice-sounding audio built in. The only thing I am unsure of is how to get it to repeat an entire French sentence without having to click next and back again. I can only get it to do one word at a time with clicking. Any ideas? I decided to set French Without Toil aside for a bit. Today was day 15. I am unsure how to feel about it. I don't hate it. I don't love it. But I just don't feel that engaged with it when working through it. Per the advice of Jeffers, I started listening to L'avis de Marie today. She does have a nice, clear voice, and it is a good length of time. Does anyone have advice on the best thing to do with a podcast like this? Should I copy-paste the text into google translate to compare as I go along? Or just focus on listening to understand the distinct words and picking up what I can as my vocab increases over time? etc... As of today: 1. Continuing to work through Margarita Madrigal's Magic Keys to French 2. Started using Lingvist 3. Started listening to L'avis de Marie In addition to all that, I am sticking to my goal of finding a Skype partner no later than June 1st for speaking/listening practice. I am also continuing my plan (mentioned in the linked thread) to watch the first 26 episodes of French in Action before beginning to work through the course in earnest. Once I am halfway through Magic Keys to French, I think I may make a quick skim- through of that Resnick Essential French Grammar. The table of contents makes me think it is basically a simple grammar of all the things being drilled in the Madrigal book, so it seems like it might be helpful to nail down the forms by seeing them in a more traditional setup. Or not. We will see. For those of you who are more experienced language learners, how soon is too soon to start reading French books? I know I simply don't have the vocabulary yet, but I'd love to be reading sooner rather than later. Are there any writers whose prose is more straight-forward and maybe easier to get into? I want to say I've heard Camus is that way, but I am unsure. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is my favorite book in English, and it seems like it may be a plausible one to work on reading since it is broken up into so many little chunks. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Sorry for writing so much, everyone. I prefer to spend my time studying French rather than making lots of short posts, so I imagine I will be making fewer, lengthier posts rather than many short updates. I appreciate all the helpful feedback and positivity so far. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5002 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 16 28 April 2015 at 10:49am | IP Logged |
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Good luck with your French!
Regarding books, almost every French learner (including myself) seems to read Le Petit Prince and L'étranger as their first two books. On reflection however, I'm not sure they're necessarily the best choices. Le Petit Prince, despite being aimed at children, has a lot of new vocabulary and literary forms that you probably haven't seen yet so it can be a bit of a slog. It's worth it, it's a good introduction to these new tenses etc., but for a first book it can be hard going. L'étranger is popular because it's relatively short and simple, but the absurdism of the story isn't for everyone, and some find it boring. I enjoyed it enough, although I preferred other (longer or more difficult) novels of his. I think your idea of choosing a book that you already like and know well in English is a good one, as the familiarity will help you follow it and figure out the meanings of unknown words and expressions. That said, they say that the first book in a foreign language is always the hardest. The language of almost any book is a big jump up from language courses, simple conversations, and even films and TV. But it's rewarding once you get over the initial difficulty and start to read faster and faster. For that reason I'm not sure when the best time to start reading books is, since you'll never be fully "ready". Personally I prefer to leave books until a bit later on, when I already have a decent grasp on everyday conversational language, because then I have a better idea of what language in the book is important to learn and what is more literary. That's just me though. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4502 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 16 28 April 2015 at 11:04am | IP Logged |
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I actually don't remember reading Le Petit Prince (I must have, but I don't remember it)
and I am reading it now in Italian, for the first time with actual recollection of the story. L'étranger I have read, of course, but I hated that book. I actually recommend people read Amélie Nothomb, which is equally short, intended for an adult audience, more modern, and more relatable. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| fortheo Senior Member United States Joined 4831 days ago 187 posts - 222 votes Studies: French | Message 4 of 16 28 April 2015 at 9:45pm | IP Logged |
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I've been listening to l'avis de marie for the past two weeks or so as sort of a supplement to my studies. Here's what I do: Listen to the whole podcast, listen to the whole podcast again and really pay attention to any areas that gave you problems on the first listen, read the text for the podcast and copy the words you don't know (don't look up the definitions yet, just copy the words down and continue reading); then define the words you don't know, then once you know the words you can read the text again, finally I read the text while listening to the audio at the same time.
That's just how I do it though; it may be a bit bothersome for other people. Good luck! Edited by fortheo on 28 April 2015 at 9:46pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5351 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 5 of 16 28 April 2015 at 10:17pm | IP Logged |
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Bonne chance with your studies in French this year, diplomaticus! Depending on your current reading level, I'd suggest starting out with some easy readers with parallel translation first (e.g., Barron's), and then read a bilingual copy of "Le Petit Prince" with audio (i.e., Omilia Languages) as the usual rite of passage. After that, perhaps you could move on to something a little more challenging but light-hearted like "Le Petit Nicolas" by Sempé-Goscinny. Edited by Teango on 28 April 2015 at 10:17pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Clarity Groupie United States Joined 3317 days ago 85 posts - 107 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 16 28 April 2015 at 11:21pm | IP Logged |
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Welcome aboard!
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| diplomaticus Newbie United States Joined 3760 days ago 23 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 7 of 16 29 April 2015 at 12:55am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the feedback everyone. I did figure out that to get the whole sentence
repeated on Lingvist, you just need to click the speaker button. I like the site quite a bit, but some sentence choices seem odd. Je comprends avant les autres. That seems a bit unnatural to me. But, whatever, it is helping me remember avant. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4704 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 8 of 16 29 April 2015 at 8:49pm | IP Logged |
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The first books I read were easy readers, the short books that come with a CD, and I started them about 9 months into my study. More dedicated learners could start within 2-3 months, but I take things slowly (which I also hope also means deeper!) Some of them are absolutely awful, but some are pretty good. The worst ones are the ones made for kids, or poor adaptions of classic stories. The best ones are targeted towards adult learners. The first good one I read was Enquete Capitale, and I re-read it and re-listened to the audio many times over my first couple years of learning. It's an interesting story, and introduces you to some interesting things about Paris. Another series of easy readers which are popular is the Alex Leroc series (just do an Amazon search, but beware that Amazon has two versions: audio-only or book + CD.) The stories are a bit thin (most things solved by coincidence), but use nice idiomatic French and are quite approachable for a beginner.
When it comes to real books, Le Petit Nicolas is very popular among learners here on HTLAL. It is a series of about 15 books of about 100-150 pages each. The stories are amusing and each story is only about 8 pages long, so they come in bite sized chunks. The audiobook of the first book (just called "Le petit Nicolas") is absolutely wonderful, but rather fast. Even if you don't understand much, there are sections that will make you laugh. However, there is a lot of idiomatic language used in these books, and some phrases are difficult to make sense of. I started with the first book about 2 years into my study, but a faster learner could probably start to tackle them after a good year of study. When you do begin to read, consider some sort of e-reader. I have a kindle, and when I figured out I could install a French dictionary it absolutely overturned my methods. It used to be you had to choose between reading quickly and letting the unknown words pass or reading slowly and looking up every word. With an e-reader popup dictionary it scarcely breaks the flow of reading to look up every unknown word. Just bear in mind that with a difficult text, knowing the definition of every word is no guarantee that you understand the whole sentence. Pas d'oscar pour l'assassin is an easy reader on Kindle, with a free audio download. It's a pretty good story, written for adult learners at about A2 level, and actually feels more like a short novel than a reader. Edited by Jeffers on 29 April 2015 at 9:05pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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