Bylan's French Beginnings

[Arnaud]

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[Bylan]

Je continue étudier le français. J'écoute le français dans ma voiture. J'écoute le Pimsleur. C'est très bien. Je peux comprendre beaucoup. Je veux écrire en français ici parce que je crois que c'est très bien pour moi. Ce n'est pas facile, non! Mais je crois que ce n'est pas très bien écrire en anglais. Alors je vais continuer écrire en français.

...

I'm going to keep writing in French in every post to force myself to use the language. Right now I don't really have any French friends where I live, Sharedtalk was closed down, and I don't deem myself prepared enough to join the French meetup yet. However, these things will evolve (except for Sharedtalk, what a shame), and as they do I will continue to write in French. Because it's a language log!

I'm almost done with Pimsleur 1. I'm very ready to move onto more challenging material in Pimsleur 2, and I'm still working FIA. I've decided to kind of skip the workbook for now, though I can see it could be very useful. I just enjoy watching the video and following along, and then reworking the text afterward. Between FIA and Pimsleur, I will amass a great amount of exposure for when I start Linguaphone, which I expect to be the real teaching manual for me (though I am peeking at some of the grammatical exercises in FIA). I'm waiting to start disc 6 of Michel Thomas until I finish Pimsleur or cannot stand it anymore. Assimil will come once the audio-only courses are finished.

My progress (completed):

Pimsleur 1 - Lessson 28
Michel Thomas - Disc 6
French In Action - Lesson 7
Assimil - Lesson 2
Linguaphone - Lesson 2

Oh and thank you to Pir and Arnaud for the corrections on my writing. Very helpful! You're welcome to continue correcting my writing, it's much appreciated!

[Arnaud]

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[rlnv]

Is it also correct to say the following? J'écoute le français dans ma voiture. J'en peux comprendre beaucoup.

[Mohave]

Bonjour Bylan!

I just wanted to drop by and say good luck on your French journey. I too started out using French In Action, Pimsleur, and Assimil (French Without Toil). I had good luck with all three, and I hope you will to!

Bonne chance!
Mohave

[PeterMollenburg]

Je continue d'étudier le français. J'écoute le français dans ma voiture. J'écoute le Pimsleur. C'est très bien. Je peux comprendre beaucoup. Je veux écrire en français ici parce que je crois que c'est très bien pour moi. Ce n'est pas facile, non ! Mais je crois que ce n'est pas très bien d'écrire en anglais. Alors je vais continuer d'écrire en français.

- Continuer de faire qqch (to continue to do smth). You can also hear "continuer à" in conversations (the choice is intuitive, it depends how it sounds)
- No article before Pimsleur: not sure why, perhaps because it's a name...
- Ponctuation: when a sign is composed of 2 parts (like ! ? ; ) you put a space after the word. If the sign is composed of one part like a point or comma, there is no space. Exemple : C'est toi ? Oui, c'est moi.
- C'est bien de / ce n'est pas bien de + infinitive verb: you need the preposition "de".

Interesting. I never knew about continuer de only continuer à I would not intuitively write "de" in any of the above examples. I've not seen it in any of my course books, but that's not to say I'm right as I'm far from advanced

[pir]

Interesting. I never knew about continuer de only continuer à I would not intuitively write "de" in any of the above examples. I've not seen it in any of my course books, but that's not to say I'm right as I'm far from advanced

Me neither. But I found supporting evidence:

http://french.about.com/library/preposi ... vs_de2.htm
http://dictionary.reverso.net/french-en ... inuer%20de

[Mohave]

Interesting. I never knew about continuer de only continuer à I would not intuitively write "de" in any of the above examples. I've not seen it in any of my course books, but that's not to say I'm right as I'm far from advanced

Me neither. But I found supporting evidence:

http://french.about.com/library/preposi ... vs_de2.htm
http://dictionary.reverso.net/french-en ... inuer%20de

pir

That is a very helpful article.

Thanks!

[Arnaud]

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[PeterMollenburg]

Interesting. I never knew about continuer de only continuer à I would not intuitively write "de" in any of the above examples. I've not seen it in any of my course books, but that's not to say I'm right as I'm far from advanced

Me neither. But I found supporting evidence:

http://french.about.com/library/preposi ... vs_de2.htm
http://dictionary.reverso.net/french-en ... inuer%20de

I agree Mohave, this is helpful information via the provided links thanks pir. I'm not about to try and take it all in though, as I've learned from the past not to memorise too much info trying to distinguish tricky things like prepositions... with time it will fall into place. Still it's indeed useful to refer to and backup Arnaud's statement. Cheers guys