French log d'Heiopei

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Heiopei
White Belt
Posts: 13
Joined: Sat Aug 03, 2019 6:00 pm
Languages: :
N: German
~C: English
~B: Japanese
Beginner: French
Wish List: Chinese, Greek, Greenlandic, Spanish
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10899
x 26

French log d'Heiopei

Postby Heiopei » Fri Aug 16, 2019 2:57 pm

Starting this log to track my progress studying French.
I began intensive study in early August 2019, before that I only played on Duolingo and read about grammar on the net. My short-term goal is to be able to have a basic conversation by the end of September. That is the time lectures start. My idea is to get in touch with a French exchange student as soon as I have the chance.

My primary motivation at the moment is that French is an important language for the industry I want to be working in after I graduate. I'm going to have to find more things to motivate me in the long run, because like this it feels like I'm studying out of necessity. Maybe it's that I like French music. Or how the French glue together words, which gives the language polysynthetic characteristics. We'll see.

As for my methods:

For vocabulary I am using a 5k Anki deck I found on the web, which includes pictures, audio and several example sentences for most words. Unfortunately it's not ordered by frequency.
At my bookstore I picked up a booklet with a thousand important words organised by theme (by PONS). Each word also has an example sentence. For this one I'm trying Anki and Memrise simultaneously to see which works better. I also want to try if learning the full sentences with Anki yields more success, rather than just the bare words. Advice appreciated from anyone who has experience making flashcards from whole sentences.

My grammar book is from PONS too. It encompasses 28 chapters and claims to cover all the way up to B2. However the first few chapters have been rather boring and not very dense at all. Many of the exercises feel stupid and the actual information on grammar is few and far between. I'll stick with it for now because I like some of the listening exercises. Tomorrow I want to pay the university library a visit and look for some better material on grammar.

See you around!
7 x
--- French ---
: 24 / 500 Core 5k Vocabulary
: 3 / 17 PONS Basic Voculary

Heiopei
White Belt
Posts: 13
Joined: Sat Aug 03, 2019 6:00 pm
Languages: :
N: German
~C: English
~B: Japanese
Beginner: French
Wish List: Chinese, Greek, Greenlandic, Spanish
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10899
x 26

Re: French log d'Heiopei

Postby Heiopei » Mon Aug 26, 2019 5:31 pm

First update, it's monday. I was going to post on saturday, but I stumbled across Clozemaster and wanted to try it out beforehand. (I really like it!)

For my vocabulary I have settled on learning the words from my booklet with Memrise, and the example sentences with Anki. I have stopped adding new cards from the 5k deck for now, because those words are not relevant for me at this stage. I don't think I've touched my old grammar book at all during the week except to find out that I still dislike it. But I did get a way better one at the library. It is clear about all the grammar points and explains the rules and exceptions well with examples. I will try a study-encounter-study-encounter-approach. Right now I am in an "encounter"-phase, which brings me to...

Clozemaster
From my first expression this seems like the better Duolingo. Highly diverse sentences and tens of thousands of words. Most importantly I have enjoyed using it a lot. What I have not quite understood is reviews. It has been more than 24 hours since my first lessons but there are still no sentences ready for review.

Today I also tried Japanese in Closemaster. It has some mistakes in the Kanji readings and the voice is very robotic, but I think it can help me improve my vocabulary and repertoir of expressions a lot. I will be playing Japanese too, a little, but French is what's important.
2 x
--- French ---
: 24 / 500 Core 5k Vocabulary
: 3 / 17 PONS Basic Voculary

User avatar
Cèid Donn
Blue Belt
Posts: 513
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:48 pm
Languages: en-us (n); français, gàidhlig, gaeilge, cymraeg, brezhoneg, español
x 1877

Re: French log d'Heiopei

Postby Cèid Donn » Mon Aug 26, 2019 6:12 pm

Heiopei wrote:
Clozemaster
What I have not quite understood is reviews. It has been more than 24 hours since my first lessons but there are still no sentences ready for review.


These are the default times for when sentences are marked for review. Unfortunately, you cannot change them without paying for a subscription. If I recall correctly, free users cannot even access this setting page.

Image

The cut-off time for these aren't exact to a user's own timezone, from what I gather from using Clozemaster for several months. I have a subscription now, so if I want to see a 25% mastered sentence the next day, I change the time to 12 hours or less to make sure when the site itself resets, that sentence falls within whatever gap of time between when I did that sentence in my timezone and when the site resets for the day.

The times for reviews get ridiculously long for more mastered sentences, so if you stick to being a free user, it'll be quite a wait before you see them again. If you are doing one of the courses with plenty of sentences, you'll still have plenty to do. But this is one of things I don't like about Clozemaster, that I had to pay to be able to change those review settings, but I personally find the site beneficial enough overall to be worth the cost at this point.

Today I also tried Japanese in Closemaster. It has some mistakes in the Kanji readings and the voice is very robotic, but I think it can help me improve my vocabulary and repertoir of expressions a lot. I will be playing Japanese too, a little, but French is what's important.


Clozemaster gets its sentences from its sister site Tatoeba, which is a crowd-sourced translation site. So all sentences are user-created and many translations are not verified. One big problem is there are a lot of cocky learners who have gone in and entered poor or incorrect translations on Tatoeba, which no one with more expertise has gotten around to correcting, and those sentences ended up on Clozemaster. The offset is that Clozemaster usually appeals to more experienced learners who then report errors (this will result in the sentence being removed from your queue until a correction can be verified or the sentence is permanently removed from the course). This is another issue with the site, but again, the benefits for users like myself outweigh the problems. The upside is at least the French courses are pretty popular and lot of those sentences have been verified by more experienced users already.
4 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

Heiopei
White Belt
Posts: 13
Joined: Sat Aug 03, 2019 6:00 pm
Languages: :
N: German
~C: English
~B: Japanese
Beginner: French
Wish List: Chinese, Greek, Greenlandic, Spanish
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10899
x 26

Re: French log d'Heiopei

Postby Heiopei » Mon Sep 02, 2019 5:20 pm

Thanks for the tips, Cèid

Monday update:
In Clozemaster I've held a pace of a hundred new sentences per day. I might try to increase this number but I want it to be low enough that I can achieve it every day. I use multiple choice for the fast track and reviews. As for the levels that I finished with the fast track (and supposedly learned all the words), I learn the remaining sentences with text input.

I have not gotten around to start reading yet but I do have a book. It's a compilation of stories that were originally aimed at French elementary students, now revamped for learners.

Here is a picture.

20190902_185905.jpg


Looks doable :geek:
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2 x
--- French ---
: 24 / 500 Core 5k Vocabulary
: 3 / 17 PONS Basic Voculary

Heiopei
White Belt
Posts: 13
Joined: Sat Aug 03, 2019 6:00 pm
Languages: :
N: German
~C: English
~B: Japanese
Beginner: French
Wish List: Chinese, Greek, Greenlandic, Spanish
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10899
x 26

Re: French log d'Heiopei

Postby Heiopei » Tue Sep 10, 2019 6:05 am

On sunday I had my first tandem exchange on skype. I had some difficulties making sentences but my partner was patient with me. It was good practice for me and I'm loooking forward to next time, which will be this week.
1 x
--- French ---
: 24 / 500 Core 5k Vocabulary
: 3 / 17 PONS Basic Voculary


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