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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| vanityx3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6243 days ago 331 posts - 326 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 1 of 52 27 January 2008 at 7:23pm | IP Logged |
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I've decided I'm really wanting my French aural comprehension to be much higher and also my speaking ability. I'd been trying to think of good ways to improve these two areas but had been unable to come up with any good ideas.
But a few days ago a came across the post about the L-R system (Listening-Reading syatem) and it just seemed so different from what I'd thought of before. I was really intrigued, and even more so after realizing that some of the people on this forum who I look up to for their language endeavors all use variations on the same system. So I've decided to do my own variation, the best way I possibly can. I have the audio for the first 7 chapters of Le rêve by Emilé Zola and also for all of, Un cœur simple by Gustave Flaubert. Both recordings are done by native speakers. I have the texts for both stories in English and French. I'm going to listen to the French while reading the English translation at the same speed or just a bit faster. My goal starting out is to listen to the French for 3 hours in one sitting while reading. But I want to eventually get up to 6 maybe 7 hours in one sitting. I only have long stretches of time like this on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, so those are going to be my intense focus days, and the other days will be less intense. I'll keep a log and tell you all how things work out. Derek Edited by vanityx3 on 27 January 2008 at 7:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| albnarinos Tetraglot Groupie Spain Joined 5951 days ago 47 posts - 49 votes Speaks: Catalan, Spanish*, English, French Studies: German, Norwegian, Mandarin | Message 2 of 52 28 January 2008 at 4:15am | IP Logged |
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Good luck with your French!!!
If you need more audiobooks, you should try librivox.org, the French section. They have a quite small, but growing collection of audiobooks in French. Most are read by natives. And you can easily get the English version through their links. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vanityx3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6243 days ago 331 posts - 326 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 3 of 52 28 January 2008 at 2:01pm | IP Logged |
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Alright, so today I listened to the first 7 chapters of Le rêve, which took about 4 hours. I took no breaks and I read along in English.
-- Something strange I've noticed. I'm starting to think in French, but it is just random non-sense. It will be lots of words, but it is like a noun here a verb there, past participle her, no sentense just random words. Maybe this is the first stage of thinking in French subconsciously, I don't know. I've never expierienced this before. Edited by vanityx3 on 28 January 2008 at 4:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6485 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 52 28 January 2008 at 5:01pm | IP Logged |
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It doesn't matter. The isolated words will soon combine into short sequences, and these will soon combine into complete sentences in French without any reference to you native language. You will probably need to supplement the automatic process with a bit of conscious learning, i.e. some central words, maybe a bit of morphology to get a picture of the forms you have to recognize and use, but the 'primordinal soup' of French snippets is the best possible background for getting active fast.
I have to add that I haven't had the patience to listen to literary texts for 4 hours, so I do a lot of formal study first (active reading, word lists, grammar studies), but then I force myself to think in the foreign language even if I can't make complete and correct sentences yet - and in the beginning the result is precisely the unorganized stream of unconnected words you describe. But I also know from experience that it only take a short time to feel the mess organize itself into something more coherent - though for me it has always been necessary to continue the formal study alongside the 'thinking process'. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vanityx3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6243 days ago 331 posts - 326 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 5 of 52 28 January 2008 at 5:44pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you for your responses and encouragement, I've actually had 2 years of college french, but reading and writing was always stressed above everything else. So I decided to boost my listening and speaking abilities, since I already know the vocabulary and grammar, but am not able to respond to questions in french without thinking about what was said in English and then also what I need to say. My goal is to think in French without thinking in Englsih first. I do feel I'm starting to get somewhere with that now.
---- I'm going to try to finish reading L'étranger tonight. Tommorrow I'm planning on listening to Le petit prince. Edited by vanityx3 on 29 January 2008 at 8:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vanityx3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6243 days ago 331 posts - 326 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 6 of 52 29 January 2008 at 2:46pm | IP Logged |
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Today I got a lot of motivation by reading other people journal and progress, especially with the one-week people.
Today I haven't had much time to study since it's Tuesday, but I decided I'd listen to about 10 minutes of Le-réve and read it in French today; and then went over the first chapter of Un coeur simple a 2 times trying to read aloud the french at the same pace as the speaker. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| atamagaii Senior Member Anguilla Joined 5988 days ago 181 posts - 195 votes Speaks: Apache* | Message 7 of 52 29 January 2008 at 3:41pm | IP Logged |
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Read carefully what I write about the incubation period and "natural listening", in the L-R thread. And you'd better not start talking too early.
Good luck. atamagaii aka siomotteikiru. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| vanityx3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6243 days ago 331 posts - 326 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 8 of 52 30 January 2008 at 1:43pm | IP Logged |
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Alright today I decided not to start with Le petit prince. But instead I listened to different books of the Bible in french for about 3 hours. I had to take a break, but I'm planning on doing some more L-R. I plan to go through Un coeur simple, and some more Bible texts. Later I'm going to try to finish reading L'étranger because I didn't get to last night.
I spent some time listening and reading the 1st 2 chapters of Un cœur simple. I'll plan on finishing it later. I just bought a Yukio Mishima novel translated in French, and I may buy a Japrisot novel. These will just be for extra vocabulary, and good reading. ----- Finished up, Chapters 3 through 5 of Un coeur simple. Thinking in French has picked up even more. Now short word clusters are starting to come to me. Maybe just an adjective and a noun or a pronoun and verb. But my mind is starting to be able to think in French without English ever being there. I find if it is mostly quiet I can think in French much better, because I'm not distracted by English in the background. Edited by vanityx3 on 31 January 2008 at 8:35am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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