Still learning French, and now starting Russian

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Fortheo
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Re: Still learning French, and now starting Russian

Postby Fortheo » Fri Feb 10, 2017 8:48 pm

Carmody wrote:Congratulations!

Is this the Hugo French that you have?
https://www.amazon.com/Hugo-Complete-Fr ... ugo+french

I am not familiar with it.



That seems to be a collection of the one I used, Hugo's French in Three months:

https://www.amazon.com/Hugo-Three-Month ... 1405301007


and the advanced course, which I own but haven't used yet:

https://www.amazon.com/French-Hugo-Adva ... h+advanced


The advanced course looks great, too, but I have so many books that I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
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Carmody
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Re: Still learning French, and now starting Russian

Postby Carmody » Fri Feb 10, 2017 9:18 pm

Many thanks for the clarification and good luck with the Russian.

Just wondering which French course you liked the best and why between Michel Thomas and Hugo.

Thank you.
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Fortheo
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Re: Still learning French, and now starting Russian

Postby Fortheo » Sat Feb 11, 2017 2:59 pm

Carmody wrote:Many thanks for the clarification and good luck with the Russian.

Just wondering which French course you liked the best and why between Michel Thomas and Hugo.

Thank you.


I like both, but if I could use only one I'd chose Hugo's French in three months without any hesitation. I use Michel Thomas as my very first introduction to a language and it serves that purpose well, but realistically it teaches very, very little vocabulary and offers very few examples in the target language. Not only that, but Michel Thomas is not good for multiple reviews because you'll quickly become annoyed by the students' mumbling and the wasted time where the teacher explains things 20 times that you already understand. Don't get me wrong, Michel Thomas is good as an introduction to a language—it gives you a decent grammatical skeleton of the language—but it's very limited in content.

Hugo's French in three months just offers far more substance. My French book didn't state how much vocabulary it teaches, but my Russian one says around 800 words, and I imagine that the french course taught a similar amount of vocab, which is far more vocabulary than you'd learn from Michel Thomas. On top of that, with Michel Thomas I'd constantly get flustered with the students making mistakes because it was slowing me down and wasting my time, where as with Hugo's you can truly go at your own pace with no wasted time listening to other students mess up. It's also much easier to review Hugo's because you can simply turn to the page you want to review, read the notes, and then do the exercises.

If you're above B1, though, and I believe that you probably are right there at that B level, Carmody, then there are probably better grammar books for you, books targeted towards intermediate and advanced learners. As I said, I'd recommend Michel Thomas to an absolute beginner, and I'd recommend Hugo's French in three months to A1-A2/false beginners who want to get up to the B levels. Of course, there is the Hugo's Advanced French, which goes further, but I haven't used it yet, so I can't comment on that.

There's a lot of members on here who enjoy the conciseness of the Hugo's Courses—peter Mollenburg and Smallwhite come to mind—so it seems to have a good reputation beyond my opinion. It's just a really solid course for helping students reach the B levels.
Last edited by Fortheo on Sat Feb 11, 2017 4:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Carmody
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Re: Still learning French, and now starting Russian

Postby Carmody » Sat Feb 11, 2017 3:21 pm

Fortheo

Many thanks for the very comprehensive review; greatly appreciated.

Of course I am still in the midst of FIA for the time being but I am just looking ahead to the time after finishing FIA, if I ever finish it.

Thanks.
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Fortheo
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Re: Still learning French, and now starting Russian

Postby Fortheo » Thu Mar 09, 2017 4:33 am

Just some thoughts: I'm continuing onward with the consistent ups and downs of being an intermediate language learner. I'm constantly asking myself this question: "should I take my comfort zone—the easier young adult books I read, the easier podcasts, the dubbed shows— should I leave all that behind and just jump into the advanced stuff—native shows, adult books, native podcasts, etc etc—? My opinion changes a lot because I do think I need to make that jump into the advanced material, into the real, raw language, but when I do I become very frustrated and end out going back to my comfort zone.

Maybe if I just continue to read what comes easier to me, eventually the harder material will become easier as well? I'm not sure. For now, I'm having a pretty low, frustrating day, so I'll likely just read some comics or a few chapters from a book that I'm comfortable reading, and then watch a show dubbed in french.

I guess what my question comes down to is this: "is it better to read something leisurely that you enjoy and understand the majority of, or is it better to push yourself into more advanced lectures, despite the fact that you don't understand it as well and despite the fact that you become frustrated with it? I'm leaning towards the first option. I just hope that after doing the first option for a long time, the second option will become easier, but I'm not sure if it works like that, hence my frustration. It's probably also a question of personality type—my mood, being as precarious as it is, has days where my self confidence is harder to find than Ferris Bueller in a high school, thus my inclination to continuously read lots of what I enjoy and find relatively easy to read.


long story short: I had a few bad french days. Hopefully I'll have a breakthrough moment sometime soon.


*edit about Russian*

I almost forgot about my snail like Russian studies! I'm still going strong with 20-30 minutes a day. I have a few more lessons left, but I'm just about finished with Michel thomas Foundation. I've done about 300 or so words from the memrise deck for the duolingo course. I've done very little duolingo, but what I've done I've done several times. I'm hoping to start assimil at a very slow pace (two lessons a week) in conjunction with the advanced Michel Thomas course. Arnaud also recommended the Vocabulary course from Michel Thomas, so I'll do that too once I get there.
Last edited by Fortheo on Thu Mar 09, 2017 7:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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neofight78
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Re: Still learning French, and now starting Russian

Postby neofight78 » Thu Mar 09, 2017 5:02 am

I would recommend a bit of both. Staying in your comfort zone is more sustainable and helps with making what you already know more automatic. However, you also need something difficult to push forward into new territory. Try to find a balance that is optimal for learning whilst suiting your temperament. For me it one of those things that's should be reviewed and adjusted every now and again.
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DaveBee
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Re: Still learning French, and now starting Russian

Postby DaveBee » Thu Mar 09, 2017 6:57 am

Fortheo wrote:My opinion changes a lot because I do think I need to make that jump into the advanced material, into the real, raw language, but when I do I become very frustrated and end out going back to my comfort zone.
That's not a bad thing to do.

You're trying new things, and dropping those you don't like. That's a good policy. If you don't like what you're doing in french, you have to either drop that, or you'll drop french.
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blaurebell
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Re: Still learning French, and now starting Russian

Postby blaurebell » Thu Mar 09, 2017 9:13 am

Just engage with content that you like, no reason to torture yourself! I started learning French with reading all of Harry Potter intensively with LWT. I can now read a lot of stuff extensively, Jules Verne, Simenon for example or even super specific stuff about cave paintings. I can also listen to audiobooks - I was surprised about that, since I fail at those in Spanish. There are still books where I just shake my head in despair - failed miserably with La Horde du Contrevent, because it contains too many invented words - but I just leave them for later. And after about 10 seasons of dubbed series I discovered that I don't have any problems with France culture, so now I listen to a lot of that - I'm aiming for about 150h of that. Maybe from there I will move on to some native series. It's good to be engaging with content that is only slightly above your level so that you still make progress, but don't overstrain yourself too much. Just have fun and it will pretty much come automatically if you seek out content that is challenging but not too challenging for your level.
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Tristano
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Re: Still learning French, and now starting Russian

Postby Tristano » Thu Mar 09, 2017 9:33 am

You can do both. Easy stuff because it's fun and more advanced because you learn a lot. Just be sure you can follow the story. I read a novel in Dutch at 10% of comprehension and it was the most autopunitive activity of my life. Much more than eating hákarl in Iceland.
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DaveBee
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Re: Still learning French, and now starting Russian

Postby DaveBee » Thu Mar 09, 2017 9:51 am

Tristano wrote:Much more than eating hákarl in Iceland.
Is that the rotting shark thing?
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