Calbow's log (FR)

[Calbow]

Hi everyone,

To introduce myself, I started learning French in school about 6 years ago and occasionally lurked the old HTLAL forum which I always found immensely interesting and useful. Since graduating however, I've sadly neglected the language for extended periods of time, with a couple of brief but highly-motivated bursts of study in between. Having re-commenced the journey again recently, I think it's a great time to start a log as a form of accountability and simple means of recording my progress over time.

A conservative estimate of my current level of competency would be:
- Speaking/writing: A2
- Listening/reading: B1
Essentially what one might expect after several years of high school classes with decent marks but minimal outside study, followed by a couple of years of basic maintenance.

My goal for the next year or so is to reach a B2 level in both production and comprehension, but my more immediate goal is to get into a habit of consistent study. Oftentimes the reason I've lost motivation has been that the way I was studying was unnecessarily tedious, so in this initial period I'm going to focus on finding a handful of methods that are simple and enjoyable enough that they'll make me look forward to studying each day.

Here's a brief overview of the tools/methods I've tried/looked at thus far:

Tools/methods that I've found haven't suited me well:
- Duolingo: Fun as a way to introduce myself to the language, but too basic at this stage of my learning.
- FSI French basic course: Thorough, but too much preparation needed (lots of files to manage) and involves too much drilling.
- Memrise: Has lots of fun decks, but less customizability than Anki
- Word lists: Was effective, but lacking the portability and automaticity of Anki.
- YouTube videos: Some very interesting channels, but too easy to get distracted and not much native content with subtitles.

Tools/methods that I've found useful but might need to refine:
- Anki: I've found ~20 new words a day manageable, but I need to choose/structure cards carefully so as not to get bogged down.
- Intensive reading: Great way to find lots of new vocabulary/structures, but I need to choose texts that are not too literary.
- Lang-8: Fantastic feedback. Hardest part is thinking of what to write about, so finding a list of writing prompts would be useful.
- Subtitled TV shows online: Only just started watching these (using a VPN), lots to explore here!
- "Teach Yourself French" (1972): Great little book that carried me through my schooling years, would love to finally finish it.

Tools/methods that I'd like to try:
- Extensive reading/L-R: I've already got a nice collection of parallel texts to do this with so I just need to get audio for them.
- "Grammaire progressive du français" or similar: Would be nice to get a pdf version so I could copy exercises directly into Anki.
- Language exchange: Probably the only free way to get conversation practice near me, so will have to build up the confidence to try it.
- Shadowing: Seems like a great way to work on my pronunciation/intonation

Anyway, that's all for this first post, I hope it marks the start of a lot of progress.