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

[jeffers]

Welcome to the Super Challenge! It sounds like a huge amount, but actually it is only 8.5 pages reading per day and 7.5 minutes watching per day!

When you get to Buffy, are you aware that there are fan-made French transcripts of the whole show? Several French learners have worked through the whole thing and said it did wonders for their comprehension. If I liked Buffy (sorry, not a fan) I would likely try watching and then reading each episode, and then it would count for the reading half of the challenge as well!

Also, since listening is allowed for the movie half, you could continue to use Inner French.


Edit: now that I've suggested the Buffy transcripts to you, I'm considering watching it myself! It's on Prime, I have Prime. Hmmm..... Edit again: Never mind, Prime only has English!

[jackb]

I know about the fan made transcripts. I'll take a closer look when I get there. The deeper I get into this language learning thing, the more I find out that I have a pretty high tolerance for....I'm not sure what to call it. It's the thing where you listen and don't get a whole lot of the words. I tend to be happy with what I get and keep on truckin'. Besides, I've already seen all of the episodes at least once so I'll know what is going on anyway.

I'm sure I'll work in a couple of hours of Inner French, but recently it has been a little boring. I'm not a huge fan of podcasts in general so I'm leaning toward actually watching shows.

I'll probably do a lot more watching of actual movies so I can spend some more time with my wife. She is good with French audio and English subtitles, at least that's what she says now.

10 pages and 10 minutes a day.....I can do this.

[jackb]

So I read the first 10 pages of La Ligne Verte. It was a bit of a struggle. At this point I think my problem is going to be vocabulary and not grammar. That's a good thing. I figure learning vocabulary is a life long journey with the steep learning curve at the beginning (like everything else). I'm confident it will get better. I need to figure out my preferred way of doing flash cards for new words.

Kwiziq is 75% on b1. I had a harder time getting to this point in the A2 material. It's weird. I'm to mostly fill in the blank questions where I make stupid errors.

[jackb]

I watched 4 episodes, which ends up being one movie. Each episode ends up being 22-25 minutes.

Clone Wars:
Episodes Season episodes 1-4 (90 minutes)

That was hard. The different voices, background noise, talking through communicators and of course.....Yoda. Piled on top of each other, it felt like a mish mash of sound. Listening to General Grievous was like listening to Bane from the Christian Bale Batman movies. I spent the whole time thinking.....”I know he’s talking, but what language is he speaking?”

I think I’m super tolerant to ambiguity in what I’m listening to or reading, because I didn’t stop or get frustrated. If I do, I’ll just pick up something else and start over. I like that this is a significant departure from language learning podcasts. Going from clear, cool Hugo of InnerFrench to mumbly, agnsty Anakin is a bit of a shock.

I’ve been reading 10 pages a day of La Ligne Verte and it’s pretty good. I read and underlined the words I don’t know (and can’t figure out). When I’m finished, I go through and look them up. Some of them I add to my flash cards, and some I don’t. Basically, the more important the word is to the sentence, but more likely it is to get added as a flash card.

Not sure how to use the bot, but I guess I’ll figure it out once it’s is up and running.

[jackb]

I've listened to 4 more episodes (5-8) of the Clone Wars and it's more of the same. It's a pretty good show and I'll stick with it. I've since finished 'Into the Night'. This was my first experience with listening to the original language with English subtitles. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but this is something I want to do more of so I can watch movies/shows with my wife.

The reading is moving along. Most of La Ligne Verte is in the past tense so more passé simple than I've ever seen. I'm really happy just to be reading more. I have about 100 pages read (2 'books'!!) I'm adding more and more to the flashcards. The vast majority of my cards were grammar sentences, but the vocabulary is creeping up. I've starting added pronunciation and pictures to the cards that make sense. I feel like I'm making way more verb cards than anything else. Who knows.

With kwiziq, I'm almost to 95% of b1 material. When my inability to spell 'cinquième' correctly starts killing my score, I'll move to the b2 stuff. I think adding the flashcards has really helped.

[todoslinguas]

Hi Jack,

I'm currently on a mission to be C1 by December. Fingers crossed. I read your log and you have some really good tips. I will check out the audiobooks with Le petit Nicolas. I'm also doing the Assimil series and I really like it. Its short format is easy to review several times a day when I'm not busy.

Do you happen to know of any native French podcasts or radio stations that include transcripts? I want to practice listening to people speak fast with slang or everyday language? Thanks. And good luck with your journey.

[jackb]

Hi todos,

Wow C1 is quite a goal for the end of the year.

The only native podcasts I know of with transcripts are La Journal Français Facile and Grand Reportage, both from RFI (Radio France International). They are also the ones with more formal language and not much slang, if at all. Since podcasts are so specific to your interests, I think the best thing to do is search for them on you favorite podcast site. Be sure to search in french, though.

I know you didn't ask, but I find it easier to find good content on youtube, then find the associated podcasts/blogs. Basically the 'rabbit hole' of youtube is more effective for content discovery than sites. Depending on your subscriptions, you may be able to download the video and only listen to the audio w/closed captions printed out.

There is French resource thread with loads of good stuff on it. I don't have it handy, but a quick search should find it.

Thanks for reading and good luck!

[jackb]

I’m going to change some things up in my language learning. I couldn’t ‘find the time’ to continue with La Ligne Verte this week. Looking back on it, I actually did have the time but I was choosing other things. The combination of the difficulty and the subject matter was putting me off. The continuous description of murders and death row isn’t so good. On the plus side, my french must be in a decent place because I am picking up subtleties.

My phone randomly started playing an Assimil lesson. It was cool to hear it and understand it without any work. I wasn’t so cool that the same words tripped me up at normal speed when speaking. I think there will be some benefit review Assimil for specific skills. Just don’t have the time for now.

I’m still watching the Clone Wars, almost daily. I’m 12 episodes in and my brain is getting use to hearing the voices, but I still can’t understand some of them, Grievous in particular. It don’t think it’s the french that is bothering me, but the gravel voice/echo aspect of it. The show is without french subtitles. I’m not sure if that is a good or bad thing yet.

Kwiziq is still there. I’m at the annoying high 90’s percent where little things knock you back more help, so I’m going to start B2 material today. Putting the questions I get wrong into flash cards had really helped. I feel like the ‘get’ the grammar more than before. I’m also adding any vocab I lookup to flash cards. It might turn into overkill, but I realize that I’m seriously lacking in the vocab department.

Here’s how I’m changing up my routine. I’m dropping La Ligne Verte in favor of Le Petit Nicolas (thx @jeffers). It’ll be my first experience with kindle books. I’m going to continue with Clone Wars, miscellaneous movies/short series as available. And my constant companion Kwiziq.

Wow. That seems like a lot.

[jackb]

I read my first Le Petit Nicolas story and it was fun. It looks like I can read one story a night or so. There were a couple of words I didn't recognize, but weird thing was the pronouns. Direct and indirect pronouns are all over the place. There is tons of que/qui usage too. It will do nicely.

I stumbled on a show called Déparages on Netflix. It's a French based show. I got kinda kicked in the face with the speed. The subtitles/cc didn't help much either, at least they're accurate. I think I'm going add this as a weekly watch. There are only 6 episodes. My plan at the moment is to work with the subtitles until I thoroughly understand it then watch it again. I figured out how to download the subtitles from Netflix and convert them in a usable format. Let's see how this goes.

It might be too much, and if it is, I'll just drop it.

[jeffers]

I stumbled on a show called Déparages on Netflix. It's a French based show. I got kinda kicked in the face with the speed. The subtitles/cc didn't help much either, at least they're accurate. I think I'm going add this as a weekly watch. There are only 6 episodes. My plan at the moment is to work with the subtitles until I thoroughly understand it then watch it again. I figured out how to download the subtitles from Netflix and convert them in a usable format. Let's see how this goes.

Thanks for bringing this show to my attention. It looks good so I've added it to my list. The difficulty was finding it since Netflix (in the UK anyway) no longer shows the original names of most foreign shows. It is listed under the name "Inhuman Resources".