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 » Mon Jan 13, 2020 3:38 am

so, the first full week of the new year & I have been getting some good studying done. I'm rather liking the "Grammaire progressive du francais" A2/B1 & B1/B2 books. I quite like grammar in a perverse sort of way, but it takes an effort to make it stick.

I've read a few hundred more pages of Le Miroir d'Ambre & I've also been reading Aitchison’s Linguistics which I'm finding really interesting.

I finally gave in & have also started watching Buffy. whilst I'm not getting every word without subtitles, I'm definitely getting a lot more than the gist. I may need to study some vampire-related vocab thogh. ;)

I have put some money on iTalki as an incetive to either use it or lose it. after this week things will be a bit quieter & I may even speak to a French person/ :shock:

I've really been feeling like I have been on the intermediate plateau for a looong time - learning a lot but not really proprtionately increasing my understanding of spoken French - but I seem to be starting to understand a lot more & being on the cusp of understanding the majority rather than not really very much, which is quite exciting. :)
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willfr
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Re: Le singe est dans l'arbre [EN->FR]

Postby willfr » Mon Jan 13, 2020 7:30 pm

Just wanted to say I’m enjoying reading your posts and look forward to the next update :)
1 x
I'm learning French and these are my current resources:
  • Grammaire Progressive du Français - Beginners & Intermediate
  • Schaum's French Grammar
  • Kwiziq
  • Alter Ego 3

366 Day Challenge: 14 / 366

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

Postby badger » Wed Jan 29, 2020 1:36 am

not so much grammar since last time, I was ill for most of last week & it wasn't really going in, so I have been mostly reading.

I finished the last couple of hundred pages of Le Miroir d'Ambre & read all of Harry Potter à l'Ecole des Sorciers. I'm not a great fan of El Potter, but it's fairly easy reading to add to my 10k pages target.

I'm still sometimes mystified by y & en though - I get the obvious there and some/of them usages, but now & then I have no clue what they're referring to. I was quite amused by this in the entry for "en" on wordreference.com: "note: It is not always necessary to translate "en" into English". :?

I watched a few episodes of Braquo, which isn't a patch on Engrenages, but I'm on the third season, so it mustn't be completely terrible. And a few epsiodes of Buffy which is quite amusing in places, although perhaps not the places they intended - terrible SFX, etc.

I hadn't listened to Journal en Français Facile for a while, & when I did again this week it sounds noticeably slow, so my listening must have improved. I'm still not getting it all as I'm missing some news-type vocab, but it's nice to be able to notice some progress.
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badger
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Re: Le singe est dans l'arbre [EN->FR]

Postby badger » Fri Feb 14, 2020 1:47 pm

I've been kind of busy the last couple of weeks, but still Anki'ing & I read Harry Potter et la Chambre des Secrets. time for a change from le garçon sorcier as it's starting to irritate me & I could do with doing some listening/watching. I may give Les Revenants another watch, without (French) subs this time, as I rather enjoyed that.
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badger
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Re: Le singe est dans l'arbre [EN->FR]

Postby badger » Tue Mar 31, 2020 12:30 am

seems like a while since I wrote anything here. I missed a few days early in the month, but got back into it again by watching Narcos Mexico (with subs), did a bit of Anki which I really must start doing again regularly.

I read Harry Potter et le Prisonnier d'Azkaban & have started on La Coupe de Feu - I may put that on hold before I get too far into it & try something else with some different vocab. I have Le Monde de Sophie by Jostein Gaarder that I tried to start a while back & found it a bit above my level, but I read a few pages today & it seems a lot more manageable now.

anyway, hope everyone is staying safe & well in these uncertain times.
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badger
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Re: Le singe est dans l'arbre [EN->FR]

Postby badger » Sun Apr 12, 2020 2:17 am

well, I actually spoke French to a French person this week. one of our French IT guys at work had to do something to my laptop over Zoom & his English wasn't very good - although obviously still much better than my French - so we kind of talked a mixture of French & English which was quite fun. :) I should really use the ££ that I put on iTalki at the start of the year & book some sessions to practise some production.

I've read half of Harry Potter #4, but have put it aside for a while & have started Chocolat by Joanne Harris which I read in English many years ago & can't really remember too much about it, except that the plot runs over the Easter period, which seems kind of apt. it's a bit more literary than La Coupe de Feu which is nice & has lots of new vocab.

I'm up to ~5.5k pages of reading, from ~2.5k at the start of the year, so I guess my reading speed has improved :shock: & my 10k target seems very doable.

Anki is getting hard. I have a pile of words that just don't seem to want to go in. I'll just keep throwing mud at the wall & it'll stick eventually I suppose.

in other language news, while we're all locked away, I may brush up my PERL which I haven't used for a few years & try (again) to learn Python. someone on here wrote a French verb conjugation script in Python (I think) which I will have to try to find as I'd probably learn conjugation better than way that slogging through verb tables. ;)
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badger
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Re: Le singe est dans l'arbre [EN->FR]

Postby badger » Mon Apr 27, 2020 10:10 am

I'm quite surprised, but rather pleased, that I seem to have read ~1,000 pages of French in a fortnight! I finished La Coupe de Feu which got rather tedious by the end & have read about half of Chocolat which I'm really enjoying, but it's slower reading as the language is a bit more involved. The May book club looks good - I was intending to read La Peste anyway given its topicality & Courrier Sud sounds interesting. I'm going to be a heretic & say that I didn't like Le Petit Prince, but I'll give Saint-Exupery another go.

I hadn't done any language exchange writing for ~six months, but one of my partners mailed me & I've exchanged a few messages with her, which has been nice. I'm trying to write without using a dictionary, so my spelling is probably atrocious :shock: - but the meaning seems to go across. :) I've given up entirely on trying to remember the gender of things unless it has an actual gender, ie people, or has an obvious ending like -tion - my brain just doesn't seem to have a way of attaching a (somewhat) arbitrary attribute to a word, except by repeated exposure

my work is offering group French lessons - we have quite a large French office - but I'm in two minds about whether I want drag work into my fun language learning hobby. saying that, everyone who has signed up seems to be an A0-A2, so I might get one-on-one B1/B2 lessons lol :D

not much listening/watching lately as I've mostly been reading, just a couple of episodes of Buffy, but I'll try to do the Harry Potter #4 film this week - probably in stages - now that I've finished the book.
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badger
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Re: Le singe est dans l'arbre [EN->FR]

Postby badger » Sun May 10, 2020 8:38 pm

bits & pieces for the last couple of weeks, but I've been doing something each day still. I finished Chocolat, which I liked & was quite a good level for me. I started Courrier Sud for the book club, but I haven't got very far with it yet. also started watching Le Coupe de Feu. I've been trying to switch my news consumption - which I seem to be doing too much of lately - from English to French, so I've been reading Le Monde & Libération.

I saw on FB last week one of my friends who is home-schooling his kids because of the lockdown & was having to teach his 8 year-old subordinating conjunctions in English, & him (my freind) not having had any idea what they were. he's a similar age to me & I barely remember ever having been taught any English grammar at school - I wouldn't have had a clue about subordinating conjunctions had it not been for my learning French in the last few years, & even then, not that much of an idea. :lol:

by way of Chocolat I discovered this song, which I rather like:

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

Postby DaveAgain » Mon May 11, 2020 8:11 pm

badger wrote:
by way of Chocolat I discovered this song, which I rather like:
YouTube safaris always seem to end up with me listening to Lara Fabian tunes at the mo.

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

Postby badger » Tue Jun 30, 2020 2:12 pm

haven't written one of these for a while ...

I've had quite a lot of other stuff going on, so bits & pieces really. still plugging away through the Harry Potter books - I just noticed that I passed the 7,000 page mark towards my 10,000 page reading target, which is quite gratifying. I have reached a level where I can follow YouTube videos in French & it helps with vocab for areas which interest me, as well as general listening comprehension. obviously it helps to have some visual cues/clues, but I'm pleasantly surprised how much I can follow & it makes a nice change from reading about Le Quiddich. ;)
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