French log d'Heiopei
Posted: 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!
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!