el mono está en el árbol.

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badger
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Re: Le singe est dans l'arbre [EN->FR]

Postby badger » Tue Mar 12, 2019 10:01 pm

interesting times chez badger. I've just got a new job, starting next week, that may give me a chance use some French. it's not a role that absolutely needs French, the job itself has nothing to do with languages, but it does involve dealing quite a lot with French corporate clients. it was originally advertised for a French-speaker, but they didn't get any applicants, so they dropped the requirement for French & got, well, me. :)

so, it should be interesting, at least there's no pressure of expectation. maybe the French will be pleasantly surprised that the Rosbif knows a bit of their language, maybe they'll be horrified, we shall see. ;)
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MamaPata
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Long lost: Arabic and Latin.
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Re: Le singe est dans l'arbre [EN->FR]

Postby MamaPata » Wed Mar 13, 2019 7:34 am

Congratulations! I’m in a similar position (though not for French) - it feels very exciting!
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badger
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Re: Le singe est dans l'arbre [EN->FR]

Postby badger » Sun Mar 17, 2019 5:56 pm

Cette semaine-ci était ma dernière sans un emploi car mon nouveau travail commence demain et évidement je n'aurai pas autant de temps pour étudier. J'ai travaillé assez dur à mes études cette semaine et je crois que je m'améliore assez rapidement. Je peux lire "Le Monde" et j'en compris le plupart, certes suffissant pour à suivre le reportage, qui je ne pouvais pas même il y a deux mois (sans un dictionaire).

I heard back a bit more about the French classes at my local college & they seem to think their "Advanced" level is about B1 & may be suitable, so I might have a think about that for the term after Easter. it's only 90 minutes a week, but that's 90 minutes more speaking (to another person) than I'm doing at the moment!

I have been playing with Memrise a bit & creating decks/courses for what I want to be working on, which has been kind of fun. it seems like I may have picked the wrong time to do it with the uncertainty about the main Memrise app & Decks, so maybe I'll have another look at Anki which didn't really grab me when I tried it a few months back.

I've spent quite a lot of time doing some of the B1 video exercises on TV5MONDE to work on my listening skills. it's harder to kid myself that I've understood something when there are questions to be answered. ;) I could probably still do with some listening-only exercises as I'm obviously picking up a lot of visual hints from watching rather than just listening.

I've let my Duolingo streak lapse - it's just got too annoying & my irritation-to-learning ratio has gone past the tipping point now. it's kind of a shame as it's a good platform & a lot of effort has obviously gone into developing the courses, but it's way too pedantic when with a little maintenance work of adding in the user-suggested, obvious alternative translations it would be a lot more usable. oh well, it's been helpful to get me back into learning French & I might go back to it if/when I decide I want to have a go at Spanish (or if the release an Arabic course), but I think I'm done with it for French.
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badger
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Re: Le singe est dans l'arbre [EN->FR]

Postby badger » Fri Mar 22, 2019 12:05 am

I think Duolingo must have been reading my log - eight "We now accept your suggested translation" emails from them today. ;)
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badger
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Re: Le singe est dans l'arbre [EN->FR]

Postby badger » Sat Mar 23, 2019 12:42 pm

Cette semaine, j'ai été occupé avec mon nouveau travail et n'ai pas eu beaucoup de temps pour français étude. Je crois que je vais l'y aimer bien, mais je n'ai pas encore découvert qui est le grand client à qui je pourrais parler français, mais ça peut attendre.

Alors, mes études ... Duoling ne me manque pas du tout et la petite chouette verte a cessé de me harceler. J'ai fait quelque Memrise et j'ai lu un peu plus d' "Exil et le Royaume" de Camus, et un peu de "Winnie L'Ourson". Je n'ai aucun eu de temps pour regarder des émissions de télé ou des films, ou à faire des exercices de TV5Monde, mais j'espère être en mesure de revenir à ceux un peu la semaine prochaine, quand je me suis habitué au travail un peu plus.

J'ai commandé plusieurs livres - le Bescherelle ""Grammaire pour tous" pour travailler sur ma grammaire, et "Shadow of the Wind"/"L'ombre du vent" en anglais et français (à deuxième main et à bas prix) pour le "Book Club". "L'ombre du vent" a 560 feuilles donc je pense qu'il va me prendre plus d'un mois pour le lire!
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Teango
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Re: Le singe est dans l'arbre [EN->FR]

Postby Teango » Sun Mar 24, 2019 3:26 am

Bienvenue sur le forum, badger, et bonne chance pour tes études!

With a year of GCSE French myself way back when, I look forward to following your progress and perhaps joining you in your quest later this year.

As a fun aside, here's the textbook that most likely inspired Eddie Izzard's original "le singe est dans l'arbre" sketch at the 1992 Montréal Comedy Festival (before he corrected it to "le singe est sur la branche" in Dressed To Kill). :)
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badger
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Re: Le singe est dans l'arbre [EN->FR]

Postby badger » Sat Mar 30, 2019 10:43 pm

Another week & some progress, although the new job is tiring & I'm pretty much out of mental cycles by the end of the day for much French learning.

I have however managed to listen to JeFF most days & have read the first few chapters of "L'ombre du vent" for April's book club, for which I have only had to look up a couple of words per page, which is quite gratifying. :)

I also received this morning "Le nouvel éditio" B1 version, which seems to be exactly what I've been looking for. I had previously bought a couple of books which leant either too far towards reference (Bescherelle Grammar) or exam-prep ("Réussir le DELF B1"), which will be useful for what they were intended, but aren't really the coursebook I was after. So I'm quite looking forward to getting stuck into that in the coming weeks. :)
Last edited by badger on Sun Mar 31, 2019 10:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
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DaveAgain
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Re: Le singe est dans l'arbre [EN->FR]

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Mar 31, 2019 8:52 am

badger wrote:I also received this morning "Le nouvel édition" B1 version, which seems to be exactly what I've been looking for.
Is that a typo? Did you mean "le nouvel édito"?
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badger
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Re: Le singe est dans l'arbre [EN->FR]

Postby badger » Sun Mar 31, 2019 10:04 am

DaveAgain wrote:
badger wrote:I also received this morning "Le nouvel édition" B1 version, which seems to be exactly what I've been looking for.

Is that a typo? Did you mean "le nouvel édito"?

thanks Dave, I did, I've fixed it now. my laptop has died & I'm having to write on my phone which keeps "helpfully" auto-correcting French to English. :(
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badger
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Re: Le singe est dans l'arbre [EN->FR]

Postby badger » Mon Apr 08, 2019 2:37 am

bonjour à tous!

still busy with the new job, but getting a little more time to study. I am liking "Le nouvel éditio" a lot - it gives me a bit more structure than my preciously somewhat free-form (ie do whatever I felt like) approach, so I've started working my way through that.

I thought that introducing the subjunctive in the first chapter wasn't very sporting though. I don't think it seems anything like as bad as it's made out to be though, just a bit different. it's not like the subjunctive is ever used in English - if only that were the case in French! ;)

One thing I have noticed at the new job is that there are quite a lot of native-French speakers who chat away to each other, so maybe I can subject them to some of my French & practise my production a bit.

oh, & I started the Spanish tree on Duolingo just for something fun to do on the train. I learned a bit of Spanish about 20 years ago when I spent six weeks in Cuba & I remember some of that, & of course my French helps a lot too.
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