Socolata's log (English)

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Socolata
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Socolata's log (English)

Postby Socolata » Mon Aug 20, 2018 7:47 am

Hi everyone,

I'm 27 and I come from France. I'm learning English (and Spanish, a bit) and I think this forum can be very useful for me :)

English first. I would speak English for many reasons : it will be good for my professionnal life, I like this language (it sounds great ! Even I understand nothing), I like reading and many authors I like wrote in English (Agatha Christie, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien...), one of my favorite film director (Joseph L. Mankiewicz) is American, etc. Problem ? After years of study (mainly at school), the situation is not very brilliant. I can read English, but for all the other skills (oral comprehension, writing, speaking...), I'm really bad.
My goal is to have a B2 level before the end of 2019 but I don't know if it's possible.

What I'm doing at the moment :
- A lesson per day with L'anglais : la méthode sans peine (Assimil), book + CD
- Reading books in English. Currently : The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie and Heretics by G.K. Chesterton (the first is easier than the second).
- Listening one podcast each day (Tea Time Mag)
- Learning 10 new words daily with Memrise
- Watching at least two films in English each week
(and : writing in this forum each week, I hope)
A journey in the United Kingdom or in Ireland is not possible at the present time, infortunately.

My main difficulty, for a long time, is oral comprehension. Seriously, I don't understand anything. I use subtitles (in English) all the time, maybe it's an error ? What should I do to improve my comprehension ?

And for Spanish ? At school, I learned German as a second language (not a success), so... no habla español. My parents live in the south-west of France, not too far from Spain. I don't have real objective except to familiarize myself with this language.
What I'm doing ? I use Duelingo daily, and listening Disney songs in Spanish.

Thanks for reading and sorry for mistakes :oops:
Last edited by Socolata on Fri Sep 07, 2018 1:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Jaleel10
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Re: Socolata's log

Postby Jaleel10 » Mon Aug 20, 2018 8:37 am

Welcome, Socolata!

I hope you enjoy your time here and I must say that your English seems way better than the 'bad' that you put in your profile :) I did notice some mistakes but I still understood what you wrote. English is not my mother tongue, so I'm afraid to correct you haha but I am sure there are many members who'll be willing to help in that aspect.

Good luck with your studies!
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Brun Ugle
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Re: Socolata's log

Postby Brun Ugle » Mon Aug 20, 2018 8:49 am

How is your pronunciation and your understanding of English phonetics and phonology? I had trouble understanding Spanish speech until I learned how the different letters are actually pronounced and how their pronunciation changes when they are next to different letters, for example the way a b sounds different at the beginning of a phrase than in between vowels. Learning about the pronunciation not only helped my pronunciation, but also my listening.

I suggest you check out the French group here. I’m sure you could find someone who’d be willing to help you with English or Spanish in exchange for help in French.
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Re: Socolata's log

Postby Elenia » Mon Aug 20, 2018 9:33 am

Welcome to the forum!

Brun Ugle gives some very good advice! A good phonetic understanding will go a long way. Another thing I would say is that people often underestimate how much listening they need to do to get to a high level of aural comprehension. You really need to do quite a bit! Many of the forum members prefer using TV series to films to build up understanding, as you have a longer amount of time to get used to the characters' accents and speech patterns, as well as lots of repeated vocabulary for vocabulary learning. TV series also tend to have more actual speech in them than films, especially Indie and Art films. If you find you have difficulty with a certain accent, you might be able to find youtubers from that region to help train your understanding. Podcasts and audiobooks are two other great ways to train listening.
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Socolata
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Re: Socolata's log

Postby Socolata » Tue Aug 21, 2018 8:17 am

Thanks all for your replies !

Jaleel10, thank you, your post reassures me. Feel you free to correct me (if you want, of course) even if English is not your mothertongue, I'm sure I did big and/or obvious mistakes.

Brun Ugle, my comprehension of English phonetic and phonology is low (I studied these things a little in school, many years ago, but that's all), and my prununciation's not better... I'm really a cliché. You're right, I think it's necessary for me to learn more about that.
The French group you talk about, is it "Le groupe français 2016 - 2018 Les Voyageurs" ? I'm shy but it's a good idea too.

Elenia, thanks for your tips ! Just, I'm sorry, I'm not sure to understand what "quite a bit" means :oops:.
I like lots of British and American TV series, but it's precisely these series which are discouraging for me. When I saw Doctor Who for example, I never understand the Doctor (especially David Tennant), and that make me feel "sad" (not really, but I don't find the right word). I never use audiobooks, even in French, but I'm going to do that. :)
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Brun Ugle
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Re: Socolata's log

Postby Brun Ugle » Tue Aug 21, 2018 11:49 am

Yes, I meant the group Les Voyageurs.

If you have trouble with pronouncing the sounds, you probably also have some trouble hearing and distinguishing them, so I would suggest trying a course for that, perhaps something with minimal pairs. Unfortunately, I don’t know what course to suggest for a French speaker. You could also try speaking along with a recording and trying to imitate the speaker exactly. I find Assimil recordings very good for this since they tend to speak very clearly and a little on the slow side.
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Re: Socolata's log

Postby Elenia » Tue Aug 21, 2018 12:49 pm

Socolata wrote:Elenia, thanks for your tips ! Just, I'm sorry, I'm not sure to understand what "quite a bit" means :oops:.
I like lots of British and American TV series, but it's precisely these series which are discouraging for me. When I saw Doctor Who for example, I never understand the Doctor (especially David Tennant), and that make me feel "sad" (not really, but I don't find the right word). I never use audiobooks, even in French, but I'm going to do that. :)


'Quite a bit' is very vague, partly on purpose. It varies how many hours of listening people need to do from language to language, and from person to person.

For example, after almost 3000 hours of audiobook listening, plus an unknown amount of hours of TV, podcasts, youtube videos and general day-to-day listening, I understand pretty much everything I hear in Swedish*. I live here, now. When I first arrived a year ago, I could understand people speaking standard Swedish, or speaking slowly, but had trouble understanding dialect, especially the dialect of the area I live in.

*Apart from my father-in-law. I still only understand about half of what he says. :oops:

My French listening comprehension was pretty poor until about half a term of listening to maybe 15-20 hours of French per week. This was after ten years of studying French, but with little focus on listening comprehension during most of it.

By contrast, I've done very little listening in German, but find it much easier to pick out individual words.

When training listening, an important component is attention. You do have to pay strong attention to what you're listening to. Maybe take notes on what you're hearing, or find a partner with whom you can talk about whatever you listened to afterwards. It can be a nice way to do a language exchange or lesson: you can find a TV program to watch and then discuss it with your partner or tutor. Forum member Iguanamon has a very good method of structuring tutoring sessions around a TV series to improve listening. He talks about it here, in a response to PeterMollenburg's log. PeterMollenburg has shared in his log how he works on accent production. He studies French, so you can judge for yourself whether the work he has put into it is worth it (I think it was... but, it's also something I'd never try to replicate. I care about being easy to understand, so as long as my accent doesn't make it too hard for people to talk to me, and as long as it doesn't make me cringe, I'm okay with it not being near-native).

Another good thing to keep in mind is that not all listening content is made equal! The easiest things to listen to are often audiobooks, because you can use the book as a transcript. They are often read by one person, so you can get used to the voice, and they go on for quite a while. You might want to choose the audiobook of something you read and enjoyed in French. For me, the easiest audiobook to understand in any language is Pride and Prejudice, because it's something I have read a lot in English. I am used to the style of speech, and as long as I can understand a few words, even just a few proper names, I can tell what's going on. Lots of people use Harry Potter for the same reason: it's a book they've enjoyed and read once or more times in their native tongue. It has the advantage of being a long series. When using audiobooks, you can use the Listen Reading method. Forum user Yuurei had success using the LR method for Italian before going on a holiday to Italy (she has a high level of French, so it was easier for her). I talk a little bit about how I used LR at the end of this post.

After audiobooks, news and documentaries are usually the second easiest to understand, especially documentaries that don't involve interviewing groups of normal people. I like nature documentaries generally, and find them good for learning with. Cookery shows can also be good, as they tend to have a fixed format. Next comes dubbed television shows, which can be a bit harder to find in English, unfortunately. Again, watching something that you've watched and enjoyed in French can be useful, because you know what is happening, and can use that knowledge to help puzzle out the audio. Finally, native series are usually the hardest. Here, using subtitles is okay, but you have to be careful that you don't rely on them too much. There are advantages to using L2 (your target language, here English) or L1 (your native language) subtitles, but there are also drawbacks for both. It's good to test yourself without subtitles, too. Finally, I recommend working with transcripts, because it is much harder to use them as a crutch, and you can spend more time over them, making sure you know what the words mean. Personally, I would read through the transcript first, and look up unknown words and concepts, then watch the episode. If you don't mind repetition, watch the episode two or three times, trying without subtitles, then with, then without again. To get you started, here are transcripts from David Tennant's episodes of Doctor Who.

Give each of these methods a fair trial, maybe a few weeks each. LR especially can take some time to get used to, and is most effective when you can do long sessions, but I've found it works even in shorter sessions of thirty minutes to an hour. It's fine to tailor methods so that they work for you and fit in to your life. If you don't like something, or if it doesn't help you, it's fine to get rid of it even if it seems like everyone else loves it and is recommending it. If something that is supposed to be 'good' makes you put off studying, get rid of it. The most important thing is that you keep going at it. Getting better listening comprehension can be a slow path sometimes, but if you keep actively working on it, you will see improvement.

Some other interesting posts to read through are emk's on Cheating and Consolidating and Iguanamon's Multi-Track approach. Also, it might be useful for you to look through people's logs. We often share what methods we have used or are using in them, and what has worked for us.

Hope this helps :)
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Deinonysus
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Re: Socolata's log

Postby Deinonysus » Tue Aug 21, 2018 6:53 pm

Welcome!

I noticed that you are using French punctuation rules. In English, we do not put a space between a word and the punctuation that comes after it. There are also no spaces between parentheses and the words that they surround.

So:
(These are some examples)
How are you?
I am fine, thank you!

Something looked a bit off with your posts, and I think that's all it is, because your English is very good otherwise.

I had a hard time with French listening comprehension, and something that helped me very much was to watch a lot of news in French on France24.fr. Video news is very good because you can understand a lot from context. I don't know what English news sources are available for free live streaming in France, but if you can find something I would recommend it. You seem to have good grammar and vocabulary so I think you should be fine without subtitles unless you really want to get every single word. Just be prepared to miss a lot in the beginning.
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Socolata
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Re: Socolata's log

Postby Socolata » Wed Aug 22, 2018 6:13 am

Elena, thank you SO MUCH (yeah, with caps lock) for your post and advices (and Doctor Who transcripts)! I didn't know this method (Listen-Reading method) but it seems very, very interesting and efficient. I'm going to think about what I do with L-R. Thanks again!

Deinonysus, you're right! Then I know the rules... I'll try to be careful with the ponctuation. For news, I have access to France 24 :) (avalaible in English too).

Edit : ponctuation
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Re: Socolata's log

Postby Elenia » Wed Aug 22, 2018 9:10 pm

Hi Socolata! I have been made aware of a typo in my previous post. I talked about 3000 hours worth of audiobooks, when what I mean was 3000 minutes. :oops: Well, I'm embarrassed now! Thanks to Morgana for pointing it out :D I hate being wrong, but I hate being wrong without realising even more!
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