Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

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MorkTheFiddle
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Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Tue Feb 23, 2021 5:52 pm

jackb wrote:I realized that I don't have a French voice in my head. Not sure if that makes sense, but I'm going to give real shadowing a try.
Yes, this makes very good sense, actually. I've never tried shadowing, but that seems to be a good choice to try.
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Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

jackb
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby jackb » Mon Apr 12, 2021 1:14 am

I'm a little late on my March update. I always mean to do it, it just never works out.

I've been going after listening pretty hard. I finished Chasseurs de Trolls (52 episodes) and I'm 3/4 through Star Wars: Rebels (59/75). Rebels is easier listening than Clone Wars. There aren't nearly as many droid voice modulators. I finished HP 5 on audio book and finished 38 lessons of Using French.

I'm done with good ole 'Arry. It never was my favorite series. The last book is my least favorite of the bunch. I chose it because of availability and I won't do it again if I can help it.

I'm going through Assimil based on the quality of listening. Once I can hear and recognize all of the words, I can move on. My original intent was to shadow all of it, but that isn't really working out. I'm partially shadowing the easy stuff. Every so often there's a slow lesson that I can shadow right off the bat so I do. When I finish the last lesson, I plan an really shadowing.

All of this listening seems to be having the desired effect. Part of my goal in all of this is to create a french voice in my head to make reading and eventually speaking easier. Reading Wikipedia articles are already noticeably easier and listening comprehension is better. I don't quite have my own voice yet. The listening onslaught will continue for at least another month.

I stumbled on a fantasy series from the mid 90s, The Assassins Apprentice by Robin Hobb. It's right down my alley, still not sure how I missed it back then. I got the english hard copy and the french audio book. Lets see how this goes. I'm also going to continue with Assimil.
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jackb
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby jackb » Fri Oct 08, 2021 12:37 pm

Wow, its' been a long time since I posted an entry here. I come up with things to post, then I don't post them. I've been doing something with the language almost every day over the summer and into the fall. I've finished several books, audiobooks, and series. Most of the series have been dubbed on and streamed on Netflix.

My favorite is Mortel. I rewatched the first season and watched the second season shortly after it dropped. I missed a fair bit of the French because of the casual nature of the language used in it. I'll probably rewatch all of it before the 3rd season come out, if there is one.

My last post refers to the Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb. I forgot I even read it. The whole thing was kind of 'meh' and I won't be reading the rest of the series. Hobb is a good writer, but not a great storyteller.

My son was starving for some books, so I recommended him Dragons of Autumn Twilight. The first Dragonlance books were the ones that got me started reading when I was a kid. I picked up the English for him and the French for me. We are kind of reading and discussing them together. Even if he is humoring me, I'll take. It's been awesome.

I've been reading it with Readlang. It's a competitor of LingQ, but it offers no gamification, a simple interface and straightforward flash cards. One of the cool things about the flash cards is that they always take frequency into account. The cards with more frequent words are always reviewed first. I think I have enough vocab to not worry about the frequency stuff, but it's nice.

A few weeks ago, another user mentioned watching Stargate Atlantis in French. I got all excited and went to Netflix to see if they had the French version available for streaming. Like all of the other cool Sci Fi shows, they don't. In my search I found 'dvd.com', which is the original Netflix dvd service (dvd.netlix.com). They have the dvd and it has the French dub!!! They also have a bunch of other show I'd watch or rewatch, Battle Star Galactica, Law and Order, Warehouse13, Stargate SGI to name a few. Unfortunately, Discovery is the only Star Trek available. At this point I'll take what I can get. BTW, they also have forum favorites Buffy and Angel.

Here's to not waiting another 6 months to post again!
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jackb
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby jackb » Tue Oct 12, 2021 1:57 am

I think I’m going to try to post once a week. I’m hoping it will help push me and I’ll use it to track my progress a little better.

I’ve been using Readlang for a week and it’s a keeper. I use it on my iPad the most and so far it’s the best digital experience so far. It’s actually the best reading experience period. I’m about 40% through Dragons of Autumn Twilight. I’m very happy with my reading pace. I end up doing the flash cards about between 30-45 minutes throughout the day. I do it on my phone whenever I have a few minutes throughout the day. It’s very low pressure because there is nothing that in ‘due’ today.

I also watched the first 3 episodes of Stargate SG-1. The first episode was a 90 minutes and the other 2 were normal 40 minute episodes. It’s pretty good, but it was were because them seam to talk kind of slow. I watched 3 episodes of Candice Renoir earlier in the week and there was a pretty stark contrast.

I’ve been thinking about how reading effects listening. My listening is getting better, but there are still times when I know and recognize all the words, but I am processing them too slowly to keep up. This is the most frustrating thing for me at the moment. Reading is essentially processing words at my pace. If I work on reading to the point that I can read as fast as native speakers talk, how will that change my listening comprehension? I think this will address my current frustration. We’ll see.

My plan is to keep reading and listening everyday. Along with the flashcards, it ends up being 2 hours a day.
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jackb
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby jackb » Mon Oct 18, 2021 12:13 am

This week, I didn’t get to read as much as the week before. I’m up to to about 55% complete with the book by Readlang’s measurements. I’m still using the flashcards on the looked up words. I think I’ve found my preferred method of flashcarding. I don’t enjoy it, but I am recognizing the words as they pop up again in the book.

Unknown words fluctuate from 0 to 10 per page. Sometimes I’ll go a couple of pages with no unknown words, then hit a page with a bunch. This kills reading spread and comprehension. When those sentences get put into flashcards, I end up reviewing them which increases my comprehension of those sections. It’s pretty cool.

I also watched 6 episodes of the Good Place and Candace Renoir. Acorn only has the first 2 seasons, but there are 6 more. I may end up getting the DVDs. I need a long French series. and the Netflix ones are pretty short.

One thing I’ve been trying to do differently when reading books or watching shows, is to comment about the show in French rather than English. So comments like ‘wait, who is this guy’ would be ‘attends, il est qui’ or ‘I thought she hated that’ becomes ‘je pensais qu’elle déstait ça’. It’s a slow start to output, but it feels right. I’m going to try to keep it up.
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jackb
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby jackb » Tue Oct 26, 2021 1:10 am

I got some good reading in this week. I’m up to about 85%, mostly because I’ve been reading consistently. I’ve noticed that I start off reading very slow. The longer I read without interruption, the smoother and faster I get until I’m interrupted. When I startup again, I’m back at a snail’s pace and I have to build back up. I get to cruising speed much faster if I let it happen and not try to take in the words faster. I need to just let it happen.

I finished Candice Renoir, have paused the Good Place. I really like Renoir, but I’m going to hold off on any dvd purchases. I’m not sure it’s worth the effort. I’ve been watching Les cent lieux qu’il fast voir or Note Bene when I get a chance. They’re very different and entertaining for different reasons. There’s another podcast I stumbled on that I’m really enjoying. It’s called Oui Hustle hosted by LeChairman. It’s on normal podcast locations and youtube. The host has a lisp and the guests are from all over the world, so the language is interesting as well as the content.

My internal comments while watching/listening is really interesting. The words are coming a little bit easier. My next step will be adding in a little ‘life play-by-play’. Basically describing the things I see/experience as they happen. It should be pretty straight forward, mostly because it will be in present tense for the most part. I guess I’m working towards what Iverson means by thinking in the target language. I bet his thoughts aren’t as goofy as mine.

I have been thinking about my process and how it will change for language #2. I can already see that there will be much less wasted time. I’m probably a year out from starting, so I have time for that later.
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jackb
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby jackb » Mon Nov 08, 2021 2:06 am

I’ve been thinking a lot more about how I’m doing this learning language thing. I’m learning more and more, but I think Ive been learning the most about what NOT to do. I periodically do ‘deep dives’ on some of the more prominent members to see what they have done with previous languages. It’s cool to see how or if people’s methods has changed over time. Earlier this week something hit me.

From what I can tell there are 3 domains (Pronunciation, Grammar and Vocab ) and 4 skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) to language learning. The domains are things to learn and the skills are things to practice. The skills put the domains to use. I knew this, but I didn’t quite ‘get it’.

I’ve learned that I can’t have too much going on in my language learning. What that really means is that I can’t try to learn too much vocab while trying to read. Or too much grammar while trying to work on my listening. Work on one thing at a time to keep it simple.

So my learning should go something like this: Learn pronunciation, learn some grammar, and learn some vocab. Then practice the skills by using the pronunciation, grammar, and vocab I already know. It’s easier to isolate reading if I already know the words, how they are pronounced, and the grammar in the reading. The idea is to practice reading, not learn the other stuff. It’s kind of like homework in school. Homework is only meant to practice and reinforce what you have learned.

I have no idea how or if this will work, but I’ve already making some changes. I found a grammar book and stared working through it. It cleared some things up in the first 5 lessons. It’s an old style grammar translation book from the 60‘s. It’s tough, but thorough and concise. I’m reading all of the example sentence and translation exercises aloud in addition to writing them out. So far it’s about an hour a day of work. I’m going to keep going and try to finish.

I finished Dragon d’un crepiscule d’automne and I’m about 20% through the second. The readlang vocab counter had it at 1200 unknown words for the first book. The second book is coming along much better. I’m also reading the vocab words aloud. I feel like it’s much more helpful. I can hear the words sometimes. I may start writing them out.

I also watched 5 episodes of Stargate and finished season 1 of the Good Place. The good thing about watching a series with a big following like Stargate is that they have good episode guides in multiple languages. I’ve been debating going through the subtitles before each episode to get a handle on it before I watch.

Well that was long and rambly.
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jackb
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby jackb » Wed Nov 17, 2021 1:59 pm

It looks like I almost let this week get by without an update. I'm at 50% of Dragons d'une nuit d'hiver. The reading seemed to have gotten easier over the last week. It might be the % of known vocab has gone up or that the grammar is doing something. It might also be that I crossed over some (not so) magical threshold.

The book I'm using is called Read Write and Speak French by Mendor Brunetti. If this is what grammar translation is, I like it. I gives a good straightforward overview. The rule -> exercise pattern makes it really easy to work on very specific things. In my reading, I've noticed that 2 things slow me down; 1) demonstrative pronouns and 2) imparfait/conditionnel verb confusion. I found the lessons about those, worked through them and took a little extra time to read sentences that had those elements. It really worked for the pronouns and also pointed me to a pronunciation issue with ceux . Even though I keep finding issues that need work, I feel like my process is getting better.

The verb confusion seems to be a bigger issue involving more tenses and adding to my hesitance/inability/lack of confidence in talking. The more I worked and thought about it, the more it appeared to me that verb conjugation is like multiplication tables. When you are doing math, you can't get hung up on the arithmetic; save the brain power for the hard stuff. I'm spending too much time in the weeds of pourrions/pouvons and there is a whole story/conversation happening. I'm still not sure how to go about addressing it. FSI/DLI is an option, but there is other baggage there. Besides, I want something laser focused on my problem and simpler. Physical flashcards might be the answer. Maybe I'll just make up some cards of the top 10 verbs with the problem tenses and hammer them daily for a week or two. Then I can let the reading reinforce them from there.
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jackb
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby jackb » Mon Nov 22, 2021 1:10 pm

I've been thinking a lot about what means to know a word/grammar structure and fluency. I'm talking about the ability to use the things you learn, not the holy grail of native-like language usage. This is something I didn't really understand in the beginning, let alone know how to practice it. It's dawning on me that I should have been working to attain fluency with all the stuff in my head as it was going in, not at some point in the future. When I learn something, read, write and say it until I have it.

This means that I need to got back and do some easy stuff. I'm not going back to re-do everything though. I'm going to address my weakest points as they become the weakest. Right now that happens to be verb conjugation. I'm doing some verbal and written drills. They are hard, but not soul crushing which seems to be the sweet spot. This is all stuff I know, so something like Anki doesn't help. Simple recall isn't enough.

The embarrassing part is this is all stuff that I know and apply to other things I've learned. Basically, practice the way you want to play. If you want to play a song at a fast tempo, practicing it slow isn't going to help. Oh well, I'm aware of it so I can change my strategy from here on out.

I'm still reading, watching, listening, and grammar-ing.
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Re: Who's on First? (Jack's French Log)

Postby Herodotean » Mon Nov 22, 2021 5:47 pm

jackb wrote: The book I'm using is called Read Write and Speak French by Mendor Brunetti. If this is what grammar translation is, I like it. I gives a good straightforward overview. The rule -> exercise pattern makes it really easy to work on very specific things. In my reading, I've noticed that 2 things slow me down; 1) demonstrative pronouns and 2) imparfait/conditionnel verb confusion. I found the lessons about those, worked through them and took a little extra time to read sentences that had those elements. It really worked for the pronouns and also pointed me to a pronunciation issue with ceux . Even though I keep finding issues that need work, I feel like my process is getting better.


I usually hear people talk about "grammar-translation" with regard to classical (or "dead," if you prefer) language pedagogy. In that context, it means 1. study grammar rules, 2. memorize vocabulary, 3. translate sentences (usually from L2 to L1, less often from L1 to L2). There is no speaking or listening, and the texts read are usually far too short and far too hard (due to fetishizing "authentic" texts, written by native speakers for native speakers, that are inappropriate for beginners). The problem isn't that studying grammar and then practicing it via translation is bad; the problem is that in grammar-translation, that is all one does. It seems, though, that you're using Brunetti while also practicing other skills, so you won't experience the drawbacks that, say, students of Latin or ancient Greek usually do. In my third-semester Latin class some years ago, we read 45 lines of poetry (Ovid, one of the easier Latin poets) per week, and most of my classmates found it extremely difficult. They came to class unable to produce an accurate translation without help from the instructor.
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