Komma’s Log: Focus on French

[Komma]

Hello there!
I'm still here, but currently taking a short break, because my exam phase takes too much brain capacity.
I have done a chapter of grammar since my last post, but not much more..

I think I'll continue in about a week or so, then I have less university stuff.

Thanks for your posts @Rotasu and @Fortheo.

[jennybenny25]

Good luck with the exams!

x

[Komma]

Ahh, cette pause était trop longue!

It's been too long, as always. But I revisited Assimil again. listened once to all the lessons from 1-18 and started with number 19. I am not making any promises again, but I try again to add some French to my week. Maybe not every day, but doing about 15 min every second day and maybe a bit more on weekends is better than nothing!

I also have a new flat mate who comes from Spain, so I maybe should use that time to start with spanish again instead of French, but I had those problems with confusing those languages before, so I wanted to get my French all right before... But she only stays for a few months, and I could talk and practice spanish with a native. Ahh.. these decisions!!

[Marais]

Ahh, cette pause était trop longue!

It's been too long, as always. But I revisited Assimil again. listened once to all the lessons from 1-18 and started with number 19. I am not making any promises again, but I try again to add some French to my week. Maybe not every day, but doing about 15 min every second day and maybe a bit more on weekends is better than nothing!

I also have a new flat mate who comes from Spain, so I maybe should use that time to start with spanish again instead of French, but I had those problems with confusing those languages before, so I wanted to get my French all right before... But she only stays for a few months, and I could talk and practice spanish with a native. Ahh.. these decisions!!

Personally i would hammer Spanish and do maybe an hour of French a day on the side. Great opportunity not to be missed!

[Komma]

@Marais thanks for your reply I decided to restart my Spanish while still doing some french on a weekly basis or so.

I will soon make a post about my plans and material once I have a plan and material With French I think I continue Assimil on a day where I do no spanish.

Does anyone has any tips on learning two rather similar languages at the same time? Or even if I would pause french again, my fear of confusing everything is still there. Though it might just be fine.

[Komma]

In this post I want to give my background to each language I speak and learn. Will be updated when I might start more languages. (I got this idea from Yuurei's log )

English
I started learning a bit before 5th grade at school (I've been about 7 or 8 years old). We did the basics of the basics 'Hello' 'Good bye' 'How are you' etc. at school, but I also learned with my father at home. We had a little pocket quiz english which we did every morning. Of course I had no idea about what really was right, but at some point I just knew the answers by heart and it was kind of fun.
In secondary school we learned english then like all languages at school are taught. Not so very interesting, but I liked the teacher, so I liked the subject. But though I was good at vocab and grammar I couldn't really talk or form proper sentences without much thinking about it.
I guess it was in 8th grade or so, that I started watching tv shows like 'suite life of Zack and cody' and after watching some in german I discovered that there are so many more in English and at that time they were available in bad quality on youtube. I watched them because they were funny and had huge problems at first, but since I really wanted to watch more episodes than those which were available in german, I continued and of course my listening comprehension got better and better.
A bit later it had been the release of Harry Potter 7 which brought me to actually read a book that was not some graded school lecture. After looking up almost everything on the first few pages and (since I wanted to learn something) wrote them down to learn them some time (which I never did actively) I started to just read for the story and looking up only words where I couldn't guess the content. And even though I didn't actively learned all those words I used them in my short stories we had to write at school, so my teacher really was impressed by how much I improved since my last stories which were actually awful
Since then I haven't been studying actively anymore, but I always had the plan to try to revise the grammar and look which things I don't really do right intuitively. Also since I need English for scientific reading I plan to learn some useful vocab for understanding these things.

French
I also started French at school being not that bad at all. I learned it for 3 and a half year there and then just did nothing at all for about 4 years. Last year I then took a university course of one 3 hour session each week, but still didn't really do much for it. I used Assimil and paused again. I'm not really sure what my level of French actually is now, but I have kind of problem to really get into it again. I am still going through Assimil, though I am very slow, because I only do it on some days a week (but that's because I'd rather push my spanish at the moment due to a native speaker as flat mate for about 3 months.. see next paragraph). I guess I don't have that much of a hook for French as I have for English and maybe I should just stop at all and go on. But as I put all this effort into it at school it's so hard to let go.

Spanish
I started Spanish three years ago, doing two semesters of a weekly spanish course. The courses were not that good, but at least I learned something. I've been to Spain twice in the past two years, but never really talked to anyone since I couldn't build a proper sentence and as an introvert I'm not very comfortable just talking to strangers. Also my french and spanish started interfering, resulting in me thinking of french when I wanted to talk spanish and vice versa. That had been my reason to refresh my French to a higher level (which I didn't succeed until now). The reason for taking up spanish again is an opportunity to talk to my spanish flat mate. I hope I have the courage to talk 'bad' spanish while learning how to talk good spanish. We will see. I want to first learn to form (basic) sentences without much effort.

[Komma]

Here is my list of resources I am using, or just found to look interesting and need to explore them in the near future. I try to make it clearly and neat, maybe I change the strucutre at some time. Also always welcome for suggestions. And I just decided to list my books and films in a separate post.

explanation of symbols:
* = used/ in use
! = useful (for me) (I guess I will mark resources once I am at least halfway through, otherwise they might not really be so useful after all)
? = to be explored (like I find interesting websites or books somewhere and just bookmarked them)
= wishlist

Courses

• * Language Transfer - Complete Spanish : 55 / 91
• Assimil - Spanisch ohne Mühe heute (New spanish with ease) (1987 course) : 7 / 109
• Assimil - L'Espagnol (2004 version) : 3 / 100

Grammar

• ? Praxis Grammatik Spanisch (practical grammar.. combination of reference and excercises)
• Gramatica de uso del español

Vocabulary

• Leo and word reference
• ? Langenscheidt Grund- und Aufbauwortschatz Spanisch (basic and intermediate vocabulary. With a lot of sentences)

Audio/Video/Websites

• Notes in Spanish: Beginner: 0 / 30
• Destinos : 1 / 52

[Komma]

Since I mostly review what I know or seem to know, this list is rather small. The native material used for the SC will get a separate post.

• English Grammar in Use : 0 / 145
• Advanced English Grammar in Use : 0 / 100

[langwijes]

I guess I don't have that much of a hook for French as I have for English and maybe I should just stop at all and go on. But as I put all this effort into it at school it's so hard to let go.

People have often said that continued motivation is the #1 factor that trumps all others when it comes to learning languages. We all need the hooks and drivers to keep us going. Although normally we would probably say "Don't give up!", I think it's great that you're also honest with yourself about motivation levels and what really keeps you going when you pull out the materials during language learning sessions.

Thanks for sharing and I really do hope you don't give up!!

[Komma]

@langwijes:
Thank you. That is what I thought. Maybe the reason of me making huge pauses is because I just don't really have an aim. So why I want to learn French. Maybe it will be there some day, when I get to know some french people Or maybe not. I still give it one other try as a low priority language at the moment with only one or two days of practice each week. And getting some more native material to actually work with. i still like the sound of french and some music. So I could try and use podcasts and songs for learning. This maybe won't push my active skills, but at least I would not completely forget everything again and again.

Another reason I thought of is that I just can't get around to it because I already learned it, so that many of those things sound so familiar and boring, though I can't use them actively. Starting a new language, everything at first is exciting.