difficile, oui, but yves's determined soul will always manage. (fr-b1+)

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whatiftheblog
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Re: difficile, oui, but yves's determined soul will always manage. (fr-b1+)

Postby whatiftheblog » Wed Apr 12, 2017 2:34 am

yves wrote:I decided to hunt around youtube and reddit and rebuild my french playlist. I found some great channels too, so I'm pretty excited about actually enjoying and understanding this material.


Woohoo!

Last night I was watching a couple movies(english subtitles still..), and a VOD of the presidential debate(no captions) on 4/4, and I'm pretty pleased with how much I can understand. If I had to put a number to how much I get it's like maybe 60-70%.


Having watched the whole thing myself, I'd say 60-70% comprehension is a really good starting position for you. I'm certain that with enough exposure, that'll go up really quickly. With regards to the debate, you may enjoy this: http://imgur.com/a/xlpoq :) If you have any questions about politics-themed resources, let me know anytime.
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yves
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Re: difficile, oui, but yves's determined soul will always manage. (fr-b1+)

Postby yves » Mon Apr 17, 2017 1:28 am

So for the past few days I haven't been going as hard I was before. I've been a bit more busy but also just less totally absorbed in pretty much only french. However, I did do something I'm proud of! I watched most of Amour(Michael Haneke) wihtout subtitles! As I was watching the movie I realised since the characters are old and talking slowly, I could actually understand them easily without the subtitles.

Hopefully I'll keep improving with listening, which I've been trying to give a lot more attention to. I'm not one that will just put radio on and just listen to it(in french, anyway), I have to pay attention to what I'm hearing to get it still. I've been transcribing videos from Euronews, which has a lot of 1-2 minute videos with what is basically a transcript written below. I think this is what's been helping my listening the most by far.

I plan on watching my 20th french movie tonight, Le Samouraï. I've entered the super challenge for the last half so I'm going to have to get another 25 to watch haha ..lets not talk about the amount I have to start reading :lol:

My one issue right now is that I haven't been doing many flashcards since finishing Lingvist. I realized that i'll still get repeats on lingvist, and will return every other day or so to refresh those...but my Anki situation is a mess because I just don't have much of a personal deck yet(and adding cloze from LWT and manually from other sources is turning me off..why can't Lingvist have 10000 words?! :x ) I think I just need to set aside some time to make cards from the material I'm using. Laziness and depression are coming in here :roll: , which sucks, but I'm going to try. The title of the log is what it is for a reason...

What I like about language learning is that you can adjust your routine to what works for you :)

Au revoir.
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yves
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Re: difficile, oui, but yves's determined soul will always manage. (fr-b1+)

Postby yves » Thu Apr 20, 2017 1:46 am

Turns out Lingvist added new words about a week after I finished, so I just started on those today after getting through the reviews I had stacked up.

So today I did:
- 220 Lingvist cards
- 177 Anki reviews
- 3 pages of La Chute...so far, plan on more today
- watched Le Samouraï
- going to transcribe a video(apparently I decided to watch 13 Reasons Why in French instead, and make cards out of what I don't know in the show) and work on adding/editing more cards after this.

Unfortunately while the audio in Le Samouraï is French, I forgot to put the French subtitles I downloaded yesterday on...so I watched the whole thing with English subtitles. :cry: I might watch it again with the French ones soon though. Good news is that I watched Persepolis and Trois Couleurs: White with French audio + subtitles. Good movies.

If anyone wants to see the list of movies I'm working through, voilà: https://boxd.it/12Qt4

I'd like to do more grammar and Assimil than I am at the moment. I do them maybe every other day...so from now on I'll try to make my routine Assimil -> Grammaire -> reading, Anki updates -> SRS -> movie

^That plus talking on Discord and transcribing a short video (almost) every day.
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yves
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Re: difficile, oui, but yves's determined soul will always manage. (fr-b1+)

Postby yves » Wed Apr 26, 2017 6:42 am

So today was a pretty bad day emotionally for me. Still did some work though.

- hit lingvist goals, almost at 4905 words(the new limit)
- studied 138 Anki cards
- spoke on Discord
- spoke in front of my sister(!!)
- watched Samurai Jack episode in french
- progressed in grammar book

My reading has been suffering the past few days, as I've been more caught up in english books.

I've just started the movie Irreversible and I have two others I have to re-borrow from the library to finish (Conte d'Été and Prendre Femme). I've taken up an output challenge of sorts too, as I want to force myself to work towards actually being able to turn my thoughts into correct french. I'm tossing the daily posts up here: https://writingprojectsdump.tumblr.com/. Should I do audio as well..?

I'm getting help with corrections from natives and saving those as well.

I seem to keep encountering racism on the Discord I visit, so I'm not really sure what I should do. I get good practice there, so I don't want to leave, and the other discords for language aren't really as active. Not to mention a lot of the same people frequent those other servers. :?

Just telling myself I have to keep trying to stay dedicated to my goals. Fall seven times, stand up eight.
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yves
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Re: difficile, oui, but yves's determined soul will always manage. (fr-b1+)

Postby yves » Sun Apr 30, 2017 8:11 pm

I just hit 25 movies watched :) Next goal: 50...then 75...

The movie was The Hours with french subtitles...pretty good movie. I love Virginia Woolf.

I've been taking screenshots of unknown words in movies/shows inconsistently, and throwing them into an anki deck...Today I'm going to sweep through the past couple movies I watched where I didn't do this.

My listening is steadily improving. I can transcribe words I don't know now(most of them anyway)...and I listened to a whole 40 minute podcast about this couple where the man realized he was trans. I didn't get a lot of things but I was able to follow the story and figure out what was happening(there wasn't a very informative description). So I'm just chugging along. I'm glad I've taken up these challenges.

Something that's bothering me at the moment is that there are apparently supposed to be two test dates for the DELF/DALF per year, but the centers near me have outdated or broken websites. I don't think I can pass a B2 in June, but I'm sure I can do it in December. Unfortunately the one that is up to date and nearest to me is only giving the exams in June. :(
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yves
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Re: difficile, oui, but yves's determined soul will always manage. (fr-b1+)

Postby yves » Sun May 28, 2017 3:42 pm

I've been a gigantic mess lately, and fell off the studying wagon. My new job was exhausting and I think I just burnt out at the same time. :x

Just a small reminder that I'm still at it. My goal for today is to work through my now-enormous Lingvist repeat stack, and make a plan for studying.

I'm in an Intermediate French II course at my university coming up next week too. Not sure what it'll do for me. Only thing to do is to keep on truckin'
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