Amanda's 2020 Log: Spanish, French, and Occasionally Ancient Greek

[Miss_French_2020]

This lesson did not go great. :/ I haven't studied French much lately, and I had a lot of trouble remembering really simple words and phrases, so I kept making mistakes. I also felt like I didn't have much to talk about.

We all have good days and bad days One thing that helped me (particularly if the tutor has sent me an article on a new topic beforehand to discuss) is that I write up a "cheat sheet" with some vocabulary words and phrases for that topic, so I have something to refer to during the lesson if I'm struggling.
Also personally, I don't burden myself with picking topics or driving the conversation. I would find that stressful and for me that's the tutors job. I just remind myself that I'm paying them so I don't really need to be entertaining. If I have nothing to talk about, I just try to elaborate on any questions they ask, even mundane details if I need to, and the tutors will ask the good questions to propel the conversation forward.

[philomath]

When I have trouble with this, I try to remember to pick a topic to talk about beforehand and always try to involve the other person. So, for instance, a conversation might follow this course:

A: "I was just reading an article about Notre Dame in France."
B: "Oh, really? What'd they say about it?"
A: *proceeds to summarize the article* "What do you think about that?" *notes her own opinion as reference* "You're French, so you must have something to say! What's everyone saying where you live?" (aka the hot goss )

Try to always ask people what they think, and keep doing it in a pattern; that way, the conversation propels forward. And just pick slightly related topics to the one you started out with, like street food in France and coronavirus or how your own country has dealt with the epidemic and what you think will happen in the next few months. Take turns. You'd be surprised what you can accomplish! And if you need prompts, I'm sure your teacher could provide a couple.

Good point, I should make sure I have a conversation topic prepared next time. Asking questions in French is also something I need to practice, so I’ll try to think of some for my next lesson!

[philomath]

Here are some goals for next week:

Spanish
[ ] Read Chapter 5 of Harry Potter y el cáliz de fuego.

French
[ ] Review Anki flashcards.
[ ] Write for 15 minutes every day.

[philomath]

I ended up being busy yesterday, so I didn't do my daily French writing. To make up for it, I wrote for 30 minutes today! I'm still a slow writer in French, so this is all I managed to write:

Les deux mois derniers, j’ai travaillé de chez moi, mais récemment j’ai recommencé à aller au travail tous les jours. C’était un peu difficile de m’habituer à ce nouveau horaire. Auparavant j’avais beaucoup de temps libre, mais maintenant je dois conduire pendant plus qu’une heure tous les jours et je suis très fatiguée quand je rentre chez moi. Je ne veux pas faire à manger, beaucoup moins travailler sur mes projets ! Mais j’ai beaucoup de choses à faire : je devrais étudier pour l’examen d’école doctorale, je devrais faire le français et je veux écrire un livre. J’ai trop de projets ! De plus, j’ai décidé que je dois lire plus souvent. Au début de l’année, j’ai fait un but de lire cent livres, mais jusqu’ici j’ai seulement lu six livres. J’ai une liste très longue de livres à lire, donc je dois chercher le temps chaque jour pour lire un peu. Depuis que je peux lire très vite quand je veux le faire, je crois que je peux encore atteindre mon objectif pour l’année.

I used BonPatron to check my grammar and spelling, so if there aren't as many mistakes as usual, that's why. There still might be some mistakes that BonPatron didn't catch though.

Next I reviewed my Anki flashcards. Lately I've been adding audio from Forvo for the words that I'm not sure how to pronounce. (Most of my Anki flashcards have audio to begin with, but some of the cards didn't.) I want my pronunciation to be as good as possible, and I worry about accidentally mixing up the vowel sounds. Maybe I should start Pimsleur French II? There might be a better way to work on my pronunciation though.

[guyome]

Hi philomath,

I don't know if you were looking for corrections (not that there was need for many), let me know if not!

Ces deux derniers mois, j’ai travaillé de chez moi, mais récemment j’ai recommencé à aller au travail tous les jours. C’était un peu difficile de m’habituer à ce nouvel horaire. Auparavant j’avais beaucoup de temps libre, mais maintenant je dois conduire pendant plus d’une heure tous les jours et je suis très fatiguée quand je rentre chez moi. Je ne veux pas faire à manger, encore moins travailler sur mes projets ! Mais j’ai beaucoup de choses à faire : je devrais étudier pour l’examen d’école doctorale, je devrais étudier/travailler le français et je veux écrire un livre. J’ai trop de projets ! De plus, j’ai décidé que je dois lire plus souvent. Au début de l’année, je me suis fixé pour but de lire cent livres, mais jusqu’ici j’ai lu seulement six livres. J’ai une liste très longue de livres à lire, donc je dois chercher le temps chaque jour pour lire un peu. Maintenant que/Comme je peux lire très vite quand je veux le faire, je crois que je peux encore atteindre mon objectif pour l’année.

[philomath]

Hi philomath,

I don't know if you were looking for corrections (not that there was need for many), let me know if not!

Thank you! Corrections are always welcome.

[philomath]

Did more writing today!

Aujourd'hui je me suis levée à huit heures, j'ai pris un café et j'ai commencé à travailler de chez moi. Je n'avais pas beaucoup à faire ce matin, donc je m'ennuyais un peu. Après le déjeuner, j'ai conduit au travail pour faire une expérience dans le laboratoire. L'expérience n'a pas pris beaucoup de temps, donc je suis sortie à trois heures et je suis rentrée chez moi pour continuer à travailler là-bas. À six heures, mon copain a fait des pâtes au pesto pour le dîner et moi j'ai décidé de faire des cookies. J'ai demandé la recette à ma mère parce que j'adore ses cookies maison. Je n'avais jamais fait sa recette, mais les cookies étaient délicieux.

Today I wanted to write about my day, because I usually talk about my day with my French tutor. However tomorrow I should try writing about a more interesting topic.

[philomath]

Today I did more writing practice and reviewed my Anki flashcards. I think all of this writing has improved my spelling and has made me more prepared for my iTalki lesson on Saturday, but I definitely need to do more listening and reading as well. I also think I should continue doing Practice Makes Perfect: Complete French Grammer. It's probably about time I learned the subjunctive!

[philomath]

Yesterday my French tutor cancelled our lesson because he wasn't feeling well. Instead, I watched an episode of The Circle: France with my roommates. One of them took four or five years of French in school and enjoyed getting to review her French knowledge. The others did not understand a word of what was happening but put up with us translating the dialogue for them for an episode.

I enjoyed having a little break from French, but lately it's started bothering me that my progress has slowed down. So it's time for a big goals reset! It's been a while since I made monthly goals, but I think that's what I need to do. Weekly goals can be hard to achieve depending on how busy I am at work or on the weekend, and failing to achieve my goals can make me less motivated. With monthly goals, however, it's less of a letdown I'm not productive one week.

I'm actually going to do five-week goals though, because five is a nice number. So here are my goals for June 22 through July 26:

[ ] Do 12 hours of listening: InnerFrench, Netflix, YouTube videos, etc.
[ ] Practice speaking for 4 hours. (I have 4 45-minute iTalki lessons scheduled, plus I can practice speaking by myself.)
[ ] Practice conjugating verbs in the present tense, passé composé, imparfait, futur simple, plus-que-parfait, present conditional, past conditional, present subjunctive, past subjunctive, and imperative. (I'm not sure how to quantify this goal...I have no idea how many hours I should spend studying these conjugations, just that I want to have a good grasp on them by the end of the five weeks!)
[ ] Make 250 new Anki flashcards and keep up with reviewing them.
[ ] Read for 5 hours. (I'm used to making my reading goals about pages, so we'll see how a time-based goal works out!)
[ ] Write 2,500 words.

I'm going to take a break from Spanish. I hadn't really been reading in Spanish lately anyway. I feel pretty confident that I can refresh my Spanish knowledge when I need it, but right now I want to focus on French.

[philomath]

Today I felt very inspired to learn French. First I watched 30 minutes of YouTube videos from the channel Christelle Lebailly Auteur. She's a writer and makes videos about her writing process, her advice for new writers, etc. I find these videos very enjoyable since I like creative writing. I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos about writing lately (...I'm procrastinating on actually writing ), so it would be great if I could make that activity more French! Next, I read part of an article from Slate France. I've always wondered why many French books have very plain covers compared to English books, and the article gave a history of the publishing industry in France and explained why. I didn't understand all of the article, but I still felt accomplished for being able to read part of it. Afterward I wrote a couple of paragraphs about the topic:

Cette semaine je veux commencer à étudier plus le français, donc ce soir j'ai essayé de lire un article en français. Quand j'étais étudiante à l'université, j'aimais aller à une librairie qui s'appelle Schoenhof's Foreign Books. Cette librairie était la plus grande librairie des langues étrangères aux États-Unis. C'était magnifique ! Je pourrais passer beaucoup d'heures la-bàs à regarder toutes les livres. Il y avait des livres de cours pour apprendre les langues et des livres de fiction. Je n'ai pas passé beaucoup de temps à regarder des livres en français parce que je n'avais pas commencé à apprendre la langue, mais j'ai toujours remarqué que les livres en français avaient l'air diffèrent que les livres en anglais. Les livres en français avaient des couvertures plutôt simples, sans couleur ou images. En revanche, les livres en anglais avaient des couvertures avec des grands dessins ou photographies. Quand je cherche un livre en anglais, j'aime regarder les couvertures tout d'abord. Quand je trouve une couverture que me semble intéressante, je lis la description à l'arrière du livre et les premières pages pour décider si je veux l'acheter. Donc je me demande comment les lecteurs français choisissent un livre quand toutes les couvertures se ressemblent.

Bien, comme j'ai dit, ce soir j'ai décidé de lire un article en français. Je me suis souvenue de cette question des couvertures des livres français et j'ai trouvé un article de ce sujet. J'ai eu du mal à comprendre tout l'article parce que j'ai encore un niveau débutant en français, mais l'article était très intéressant. Il a expliqué l'histoire de publication des livres en français et pourquoi les couvertures simples sont préférées. Je suis contente que j'aie trouvé la réponse de ma question et j'ai hâte d'atteindre un niveau plus élevé de français pour pouvoir lire la littérature française.

Overall, I felt very productive with French today. If I can keep studying like this every day, I think I'll make a lot of progress!