eebeejay learns French (again)

[eebeejay]

Still continuing with my daily Lingvist flashcards. I've gotten the number of review cards down to 900, so I'll get into new vocab eventually.

I also started watching Extra French. It's kind of dumb but I'm starting to get into it. I'm never quite sure if I should be using material that is reasonably comfortable for me to understand, or if I should be watching something harder and risk missing lots of stuff. I'm having a hard time figuring out what level I should be studying at right now. I feel like in the past two years of not studying my French has atrophied massively. It's a bit frustrating, even if it's exactly as expected. But maybe it's also that stress is messing with my brain right now.

My dad had a stroke last week. This might end up being good for my French studies because I'm finding that I don't have the headspace right now to do any writing for my course. But rote memorization... I can do that. So more flashcards, more drills. Maybe I should reattempt FSI...

[eebeejay]

Still plugging along.

Lingvist: I'm down to 600 review cards. They've been really easy lately so I'm hoping I can burn through them and hit new vocab soon.

Super Challenge:
Watching: still watching Extra French. It's really corny and dumb but I'm understanding it. Just finished episode 9. Hoping to finish up the series soon so that I can move on to something a little more interesting. I recently discovered a pop science show on Youtube called C'est pas sorcier, which might do the trick. There are 300ish half-hour episodes. My friend also recommends L'épicerie pretty highly.

Reading: Les récrés du petit Nicolas. I'm about 10% in.

[eebeejay]

Didn't get a lot of study in this week. It's the first week of school and peak busy time for me at work. My course has started up again too.

Super Challenge:
Watching: Still Extra French. Almost done with the series now and looking forward to starting on something else.

Reading: Still working through Les récrés du petit Nicolas, via ReadLang. And since I kind of hate reading on the computer, I took out a stack of paper books from the library. Just finished Les manigances de Cloé by Aline Charlebois, about a girl who likes to be mean to her little brother.

[eebeejay]

I've been short on time and a bit unmotivated the past couple weeks, so I've been focusing on reading native materials, like an informal tadoku. I pretty much cleared out all the French books at my level from the local library. When I'm through with them I guess I'll have to go to another branch. My best strategy for remembering to read them has been to just leave them on the back of the toilet, that way I'm pretty much guaranteed to do at least a little bit of French reading each day.

So far I've read:
Les manigances de Cloé 1&3 by Aline Charlebois
Touti le chien magique by Dominique Demers
Tordus cherchent tordus by Christiane Duchesne
Le poulet fermier by Agnes Desarthe
Saturne, le cheval de cirque by Jennifer Tremblay

I'm now onto Un héron, deux tortues, trois amis by Renée Charboneau, which I'm actually quite enjoying. I have another 5 books in my stack to get through and then I guess I'll reassess my reading level and see if I want to jump into something a little bit older.

[Carmody]

Is Le renard et l'enfant available on YouTube anywhere? All I can find is movie trailers. Thanks

[eebeejay]

What is this... January?

April begins and suddenly I'm practicing French daily and running a couch to 5k. I'm trying to figure out what it is that has sparked this and the only thing I can think of is our annual cabane à sucre potluck at my old house. My friend's son was there. He's quite young and shy but he glommed onto me. He's not speaking yet, but I know his mom speaks to him almost exclusively in French so I started speaking French to him, which was really hard at first but got easier. I'm fluent in baby French and he was a nice, non-judgemental audience. I wish speaking to adults was that easy.

I haven't really thought about or used French in any meaningful way for months. Too busy. I was accepted into a writing program at university and trying to write a draft of my manuscript while working full-time has been really taxing on my brain. But studying French is a great way to procrastinate when I just don't want to write.

So right now...

I'm grinding away at French in Action. Duolingo changed up their French tree so I'm working my way through regilding it. I have mixed feelings about the new tree. I think it would have been easier and more engaging when I was a new learner, but since it's all review for me it feels incredibly repetitive, so I work on each topic for a little while and then test out. I still haven't memorised all the vocabulary in Lingvist, so I'm grinding away at that.

I don't have a lot of time to spend on this, right now so I'm limiting myself to the above. When I finish those I will figure out what the next step is in terms of input and further study. It's hard though, because my favourite way to procrastinate is to just keep researching different learning materials and resources without ever using them.

[eebeejay]

Is Le renard et l'enfant available on YouTube anywhere? All I can find is movie trailers. Thanks

Carmody, I'm not sure where it might be available to stream online. I found it through Criterion on Demand, which I accessed through my library. Maybe your local library has access to this, or a similar service?

[eebeejay]

Jumping back in again! I've been very busy with other projects for a few years, so haven't put much time into active language learning, though I've watched a lot of French language TV and using Duo has helped me cut back on doomscrolling.

Am I still at B1? Debateable. I'm in that weird intermediate no-man's land where I'm probably not going to get much benefit out of introductory language materials, but where there are still some grammatical concepts feel a little shaky for me. I would probably benefit from working through a decent grammar textbook.

I work at a university and through the public library and streaming services I have access to a massive amount of learning and native materials so I'm not struggling to find learning resources - more that I need to pick a few resources that meet my needs right now and commit to using them without getting distracted by other stuff. And put in the time.

My goal this year is to wean myself off of kids books. With a few exceptions I hated kids books when I was a kid and my reading level advanced very quickly because I wanted to read more interesting stuff. Hoping to harness that same energy for French.

[eebeejay]

I've been sick lately so I've been tired and spent a lot more time parked in front of the TV than I normally would and in the mood to watch comedies. I don't normally enjoy comedies because I overthink things and poke a million holes in them, but I've been in just the right tired mood with my brain half switched off to suspend disbelief and just go with it.

Trois Fois Rien
The plot synopsis said three homeless guys in Paris win the lottery and then have a hard time cashing the cheque because they're homeless. While I think it's great that they went a little bit into some of the many different ways people may come to be homeless and the multiple barriers to becoming housed again, I'm kind of glad that they didn't stay there and turn this into a social problem film, instead deciding to focus on the relationships between the characters. What kinds of pressure does a life-changing amount of money put on a relationship? Some of the plot points feel pretty implausible and contrived but it wasn't a bad film.

Les Vieux Fournaux
Three elderly men revisit the village they grew up in to attend a funeral. One of the guys discovers that his wife had an affair 50 years ago, and sets off to go kill the guy, and everyone has to chase after him. In the process some old history gets dredged up and old grudges are reexamined.

Intouchables
Loosley based on a true story of a quadraplegic count who hired an African man from the ghetto to be his live-in care aide. They form an unlikely friendship that changes both. It's funny, has good production values and charismatic actors. I feel like the script falters a bit around the 3rd act turn, and it robs the film of some of its emotional weight. It was going fine and then I got kind of confused by how that went and then how it was resolved and maybe some more thorough character development would have helped? But ignore that. It's a fun movie. But then I woke up the next day thinking about the dynamics of interracial master/servant relationships and yeah, this is just what I do.

Reading: De Belles Histoires Manuel de lecture à l'usage des élèves de 2e année

A 1961 Série Feuille D'érable Canadian French reader published by Nelson. I picked up this series of textbooks from the library at work because they had a variety of different short stories with reading comprehension questions, and it seems like the later stories build on the new vocabulary words that were learned earlier on in the book, which is great! In terms of grammar, vocabulary, or even just number of words on the page this book is way more challenging than anything I ever remember being assigned in grade 2.

And speaking of vocabulary, it's pretty incredible to me that they would make you memorize so many different kinds of birds like le moineau, le merle, la fauvette, le chardonneret, la mésange, l'hirondelle (in addition to all of the standard ones you'd find on a farm like poule, coq, canard, et oie). I doubt anyone would do that today. Reminds me of how the Oxford Dictionary tried to cut the nature words out of the kids dictionary a while back.