La grande aventure de Thomas dans le monde des francophones.

[A Callidryas]

Hi Tom

Here are some links to online materials that might be useful at an A2 level.

Two BBC programs on youtube
Ma France https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 9ED534077C
The French Experience https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCGa-uR ... pa&index=1

A podcast
L'avis de Marie http://www.podclub.ch/sendungen/l-avis- ... ?start=135

Some kid's stories with audio and text
Dokeo TV https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... N8DlMB_293
Dokeo TV (again) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... uCkAztsKda
Childtopia https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 1A75B4D463
Bookbox https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... CF06754974
la Fontaine https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 61CBDEBBB9

Slow French with text, translation and audio
KDO Learning https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFUQeS ... 9kQ07AEO_w

Some bilingual texts with no audio
http://learn-french-free-with-stories.w ... story.html

Hope you can find something useful.

[tomgosse]

I just finished the Duolingo French tree. It only took me one year. My longest streak was fifty-two days which I am just about to tie. I'm at level fourteen and have 6393 XP's.

Congratulations! That's a huge deal!

I'm still trying to figure out what I am going to do in 2016. As I've written before, I seem to be stuck in the role of being a faux débutant. I'm not sure how to get out of that rut.

I have a private theory which may or may not help you. Please feel free to use it, to adapt it, or to ignore it.

The whole point of the A1/A2 levels is to develop a certain minimum proficiency—enough so that you can start to use the language. Your goal is to make it to a point where you can "kinda-sorta" read, and "kinda-sorta" listen, and to produce some basic output. Here's how the CEFRL describes it:

lang-cefr-a-and-b.png

You're trying to make it to "independent user" and "threshold." That's the level at which you start to be able to function on your own, and actually do some semi-useful things. But when you pass from "basic user" to "independent user", your learning strategies need to change, or you'll get stuck. When you're a "basic user" (A1 & A2), you can just pick out a course or two and grind through them. But that's not enough to break through to a solid B1 or even a B2. I don't know if you've been following sfuqua's log, but he was stuck around A2/B1 for a long time, and he just made an absolutely massive and heroic effort to suck every last drop out of Assimil and FSI. But eventually, he changed his strategy, and he started using the language for real stuff. And now he's read 2,000 pages and his reading comprehension is headed rapidly for C1, and his listening comprehension is following a bit behind.

Basically, I think the only way to push through to B1 and B2 is to dive right in and start actually doing stuff: listening, reading, maybe trying to speak, or perhaps writing 50 to 100 words regularly and getting some corrections. But how do you know when you're ready for this stuff? Well, that's a bit of a trick question: You'll never feel ready. It's always a matter of just wading in and flailing around. But in that case, how do you know when you're ready to flail around?

I think the trick is that the flailing around should be fun, not painful. To put it in exercise terms, you're looking for an endorphin rush, and not panting so hard you want to throw up. You're looking for pleasantly sore muscles, not debilitating pain. For example, when I tried to restart my Spanish Anki deck after 10+ months of total neglect, it was really painful—I was dreading each card, and I didn't want to do my reviews. So I went and found something fun to do instead. I ended up rewatching the episodes with bilingual subtitles, and then made a little tool that let me browse through an entire episodes worth of subtitles. This was pleasant and fun, and it didn't hurt the way Anki did.

But this morning, I fired up my Anki deck again, and all of a sudden, I was enjoying myself. So I'm going to bring Anki back into the mix and see what happens.

It's possible to start using the language in fun ways, even at A1/A2, as iguanamon points out. But the peculiar property of the A levels is that you don't need to use the language to make progress—you can just grind through courses and still make good progress. But the B levels need something more. And so lots of people use courses to get to A2 or so, but then many of them get stuck. The people who leap ahead, as far as I can tell, are the ones who start to combine their courses with actually using the language. They keep looking for interesting things to read and listen to, and they start practicing output, and they keep looking for fun things to do. They may mix up intensive and extensive activities in various combinations, but they don't just keep doing yet another course, hoping that this one will finally get them over the hump.

So I don't have a good idea of your actual French level. Your profile says "A0", but you're starting to read Jules Verne, which is a typical sort of B-level thing. So you might not have hit the point I'm talking about (and if you're reading actual books, you probably won't get stuck there in any case). But it's worth being aware that a lot of people get stuck in more or less the same place, and when they do get stuck, one thing that usually helps is to just sort of dive in and start looking for fun ways to use the language.

Anyway, like I said, take this with a grain of salt. If there's something useful here, feel free to adapt it to your needs. If it seems irrelevant, just ignore it.

Thanks emk. There is a lot of good stuff to "chew" on in your post. One of things I'm doing in December is trying to figure out how to use the French that I have. I know I mentioned in a previous post that I took a French course earlier in the year. Some of us students have been meeting for coffee and to practice speaking French (as well as we can). One of the things we are going to do in 2016 is to review our textbook, Grammaire Progressive Du Française. I'm looking at some other books from that publisher to help us exercise more French output.

I hope that you are having a good Thanksgiving weekend.
Tom

[tomgosse]

There is nothing different about the language in a course as there is in the actual language.

Not so sure, the native speakers have a tendency to butcher their own language in a way that is sometimes difficult to understand even for B level learners. Real people don't speak/write like teachers or actors.

Fer sure ! As many English text books would write, "How are today?", many of us would say, "How ya doin' t'day?"

Anyway, I agree with emk that you have to use the language. Write a part of your log in french for exemple, or write-chat in french 15 minutes/day: you'll see which words/expressions are missing to express your basic needs/ideas (that morning I discovered how to say "s'asseoir au bord d'une chaise" in russian: something I do every day but I had never seen in a textbook).
Every day I'm forced to write in english on this forum to be understood: try to find an activity or a place where you're forced to use your french as imperfect as it may be.
Congrats for the duolingo tree, btw

Merci beaucoup !

[tomgosse]

Bonjour mes chers amis,

Merci pour vos remarques réfléchies. You all gave me a lot of things to think about. I agree with emk, james29, arnaud, and petermollenburg that practicing "output" is going to be the next big thing to help me get out of being a permanent faux débutant. One of the things I've done is to purchase this book: Exercices Communicatifs de la Grammaire Progressive Du Francais, Niveau Intermediaire. This book is supposed to accompany Grammaire Progressive du Français that we used in my French class last year. Some of us former students meet for coffee and practice our French, as good as it is. This year we will start reviewing the grammar book.

I am still need to strengthen my skills on duolingo. In fact, some days I need to spend as much time on it as when I was working towards finishing the tree. I have a long way to go before I reach level 25!

I hope that everyone is having a good weekend.
À bientôt,
Tom

[Voxel]

I am still need to strengthen my skills on duolingo. In fact, some days I need to spend as much time on it as when I was working towards finishing the tree. I have a long way to go before I reach level 25!

I think Duolingo is too repetitive, it takes a long time and I'm not sure it improves skills. I didn't try in French, but the voice is horrible in other languages.

Bonne continuation !

[Xmmm]

I think Duolingo is too repetitive, it takes a long time and I'm not sure it improves skills. I didn't try in French, but the voice is horrible in other languages.

And it forces you to spend 70% of your time typing in English, which you already know.

And it usually penalizes you for obvious typos in English.

And if you have to work with a foreign language keyboard, you will have to switch the keyboard ten times per lesson because English->Foreign and Foreign->English sentences are randomly chosen.

[tomgosse]

Bonjour mes amis. Je espère que vous allez tous bien.

It has been slow going for the last couple of weeks. I'm still recovering from my last operation. But, I am on the mend!

French study has slowed down quite a bit. I still put in the minimum effort on Duolingo and Memrise. I'm saving my energy for the New Year. One of the things I'm thinking of doing is entering rdearman's Output Challenge 2016. The challenge is writing 50,000 words and/or 50 hours of recording yourself in you target language. I know that I could not complete the writing part. Fifty thousand words in a year is about 137 words per day. I couldn't write that much in my native English. As I understand it this is writing original material.

Now, recording 50 hours appears do-able. That's only eight and half minutes a day. And it can be anything in your target language. It doesn't have to be your original writing. I've been practicing recording my self in English for the last couple of days. This week I'll practice recording myself in French. I'm also looking for material to read out loud.

My biggest fear is my pronunciation. As I wrote in a different post I have a flawless French accent in my head. But when I hit the record button on Audacity my knees turn to jelly, my tongue is super-glued to the roof of my mouth, and I break out in a cold sweat. Recording myself in English is only slightly better. I have a copy of Pronounce It Perfect In French that I want to push through during the remainder of December.

The group of former French classmates that I meet with have decided to start reviewing our textbook again in January. I purchased three books and cd's that accompany the text:

• Exercices audio de grammaire - Cahier d'exercices
• Exercices audio de Grammaire - CD audio
• Exercices communicatifs - Cahier d'exercices

So, between the Output Challenge and these books I'm going to have a full plate of French in front of me.

Hope everyone is enjoying the Holiday Season!
In Peace,
Tom

[tomgosse]

My 2016 quandary.

As most of you know, and are probably tired of hearing about, I have been studying French for the last year. Now, I'm having a bit of language "wanderlust". I'm trying to figure out if I should add or start two of my other interests: New Testament Greek, and Arabic. Please pray for me.

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books (640x360).jpg

[tomgosse]

My 2016 quandary.

As most of you know, and are probably tired of hearing about, I have been studying French for the last year. Now, I'm having a bit of language "wanderlust". I'm trying to figure out if I should add or start two of my other interests: New Testament Greek, and Arabic. Please pray for me.

---

books (640x360).jpg

What was I thinking?

After some reflection on it, I'm going to put off adding any other language study to at least Springtime. My stress levels have risen sharply. An old and dear friend is dying of cancer. I have been writing his daughter to support her and it has brought back a lot of memories of what I went through with my wife at this time last year.

I think that I'll stay try to stay focused on my French studies for now. Speaking of which, this has been a slow month for me. I planned it that way. Again, my tentative plans for 2016 is to review Grammaire Progressive Du Français, use some of the auxiliary books for that text, and enter rdearman's Output Challenge and record eight and a half minutes of audio a day.

All the best,
Tom

[iguanamon]

While there are several people on the forum who study multiple languages simultaneously, most are not raw, monolingual adult beginners. In my years on the HTLAL forum, and here, I have yet to see a single adult in this position be successful with it. Emk has given you some great advice. Ultimately, to get out of the trap of being a "perpetual beginner" or stuck in "low intermediate", I believe one has to start using the language. Now, you don't have to jump in whole hog. Start off small and work your way up. Don't bite off more than you can chew. At the same time, keep working with your course and grammar. Make your use of comprehensible native materials fun for you and make it a habit that you won't want to break. You may feel like it isn't very "efficient" and you are not "learning" anything at first, but you are, even if you don't know it.

It's like making a snowball. It starts off small and ugly but when you put it on the ground and keep building it- packing more snow in, it eventually gets to a point where it is big enough to start rolling downhill. As it rolls downhill, it gathers momentum from gravity and starts filling in voids and hollow places on its own with more snow. Soon it is rolling faster and faster and gathering more snow. Before you know it, you have a beautiful snowball that keeps getting bigger as it continues to roll.

This is what I try to do with language-learning. One of the habits I got into early with my Portuguese studies was listening to the news every day in Portuguese. Ten to fifteen minutes was all I invested, but I did it daily. I had a transcript. I could find translations in English if I needed to and I could use the transcript in many ways and combinations. Here's the clincher, I didn't use a Brazilian or Portugal source. i used Nhk World from Japan which also has a French Service available. Despite NHK being from Japan, the presenters are native-speakers and there is a transcript for each item of the newscast. The newscast is downloadable into mp3 (scroll down to the button marked "ecoutez". The NHK newscast is Japan/Asia focused but there is international news as well. It isn't very exciting but, hey, I can take anything for 10 or 15 minutes a day. It helped me to really get to where my listening was good. This daily habit taught me a lot of vocabulary and turns of phrase. It really helped me to transition to listening without a transcript. YMMV

Tom, I am sorry to hear about your friend's cancer. I long for the day when this disease is eliminated from our planet.