My three Month French Vocabulary Memrise Challenge (now with added input)....

[mattf789]

Week one done. Not much to report really as I knew what to expect, just lots of memrise. I've resisted temptation to wander off in to other resources, although my usual time watching Twitch has been spent on French streamers. Furl3x and Chaab stream a game I like to play and watch, and they talk clearly, and a lot. Some streamers barely speak. I can follow chat at the same time so this gives me listening and reading practice. Something I've noticed here is that the French seem to have much more respect for their language than Anglophones. The English used in Twitch chats is a mess in comparison! I picked up "mdr" which is the French equivalent of "LOL"..."Mort de rire": so much more poetic than the English. I was watching another streamer and thought "this guy's accent is weird"...It turned out he is French Canadian. Sounds completely different to French French!

I was getting pretty frustrated with the content in French 2, but I'm glad I pushed through with it as French 3 returned to more practical content. I can see they are introducing grammatical concepts bit by bit, so I'm not going to judge the content in future just take it as part of the process. I'm trying to take care to keep on top of reviewing the courses as this feels as important, if not more so, than the learning phase. There's a strong chance I'll cut the challenge short after completing French 1-7 as I'll be desperate to move on to other resources. When I do, I'll be concentrating on input and leave speaking til later.

[mattf789]

So try as I may, I have to be realistic and admit there's no way I'm going to be able to limit myself to just memrise for three months. Since I'm furloughed until July at the earliest, I have to take this opportunity to make the most of the time available, as I'll probsbly never have a whole month to dedicate to a language ever again.

The last couple of days I've been reading posts here, and watching a lot of youtube videos, about input vs output. AJATT, Matt vs Japan, Stephen Krashen etc, etc. The idea of mass immersion and memorisation with initially extremely limited output actually seems quite logical, and Matt and other's who've used that methodology have shown amazing results. The question seems to be how urgent your need to use the language is. If you've moved to a country and need to learn and use the language immediately, then output seems as important, if not moreso, than input. For someone like myself, learning a language without needing to produce output until I go to France next year, I feel an input biased approach will be beneficial. Especially as listening has always been my weakest skill. Plus I've never focused on listening and reading before so it will help me learn how I learn best.

So with all this time on my hands, I created a new youtube account exclusively for French. I generally watch about 20 hours of youtube a week, so I'll try and make as much of that French as possible. I've started by watching French food programmes. This is a subject I can happily watch hours and hours of without understanding what's being said. Incidentally, the French make really beautiful cooking films. I'd like in a few months time to be able to go back and watch this film about Régis Marcon and understand "everything". I also watched the first episode of "The Chateau" on Netflix. I first watched it with French subtitles, and then later on watched with my girlfriend with the English subtitles. I had very little idea what was going on (even missing that there's 20 year flashbacks involved throughout, yikes), but I recognised some words and phrases. I'm not a big series watcher but I think it will hold my interest.

I'll still just be using memrise for memorisation. Once I've finished French 7 I'll probably move over to Anki and start making my own decks, while still reviewing daily the memrise courses I've completed. I'm estimating I'll have finished the official courses in about two weeks time. I'm not going too hard on them as I have to guard against burnout. However I think I've made decent progress: 1041 "words" this week, not including the 476 from French 1 I did before starting this challenge last Monday. I guess I shouldn't really call it a challenge anymore as I've modified it so much, but it will still be interesting to use the three month point to gauge my learning.

[jeffers]

Ha! We knew you'd crack! But seriously, it makes more sense, especially with all of the spare time most of us have right now.

If you want to try some listening that's all in French but a lot easier to follow, you could try the InnerFrench podcast and YouTube channel. I prefer the podcast as I like listening while on walks or driving. Hugo speaks clearly and at an even pace, but he doesn't sound like he's dumbing it down. The pace gets a bit faster as you get to his more recent podcasts, and he said on one of the recent ones that he is now speaking like he does in real life. The choice of topics is varied and interesting, and I think the most useful thing is that he is talking about a single topic for a good 20-30 minutes. Sometimes he talks bollocks because he is researching topics that he knew nothing about before he planned the episode. The only truly bad part is that he usually has a few minutes of talking from some listener who sent him a clip with a terrible accent, about which he invariably says that he is amazed at how well they are doing and that he can barely detect their accent.

Thanks to a link of Kwiziq I discovered Français Immersion on YouTube. It was cool that it was a lesson on how to conjugate and use prendre, so it was for beginners, but it was entirely in French. Another good YouTube channel is Easy French because a lot of it is based on asking questions of people on the street. So while the hosts talk clearly, the people they talk to don't always and you get exposed to a lot of different voices.

InnerFrench podcasts: https://innerfrench.com/
InnerFrench Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI4xp8qHD1MDErkqxb1dPbA
Français Immersion: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGzA2nGCGvvxz2WRwoEoegg
Easy French: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoUWq2QawqdC3-nRXKk-JUw/videos

[mattf789]

Ha! We knew you'd crack! But seriously, it makes more sense, especially with all of the spare time most of us have right now.

If you want to try some listening that's all in French but a lot easier to follow, you could try the InnerFrench podcast and YouTube channel. I prefer the podcast as I like listening while on walks or driving. Hugo speaks clearly and at an even pace, but he doesn't sound like he's dumbing it down. The pace gets a bit faster as you get to his more recent podcasts, and he said on one of the recent ones that he is now speaking like he does in real life. The choice of topics is varied and interesting, and I think the most useful thing is that he is talking about a single topic for a good 20-30 minutes. Sometimes he talks bollocks because he is researching topics that he knew nothing about before he planned the episode. The only truly bad part is that he usually has a few minutes of talking from some listener who sent him a clip with a terrible accent, about which he invariably says that he is amazed at how well they are doing and that he can barely detect their accent.

Thanks to a link of Kwiziq I discovered Français Immersion on YouTube. It was cool that it was a lesson on how to conjugate and use prendre, so it was for beginners, but it was entirely in French. Another good YouTube channel is Easy French because a lot of it is based on asking questions of people on the street. So while the hosts talk clearly, the people they talk to don't always and you get exposed to a lot of different voices.

InnerFrench podcasts: https://innerfrench.com/
InnerFrench Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI4xp8qHD1MDErkqxb1dPbA
Français Immersion: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGzA2nGCGvvxz2WRwoEoegg
Easy French: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoUWq2QawqdC3-nRXKk-JUw/videos

Thanks Jeffers! I'm already familiar with Easy French, those ladies are great. I'll check out those other channels too

[nagoyana]

I second the Inner French recommendation - it was already easy enough to understand at about half of Assimil (maybe even earlier, I would have to check) and the topic variation keeps it interesting.
Oh, and it comes with transcripts, but if I remember correctly you have to be a registered user to access these.

Jeffers is right though that the guest recordings can be a bit annoying

I am looking forward to reading more about your experience with input!
(And I find 1000+ words in Memrise quite impressive, especially since learning vocabulary is about the worst punishment one could inflict on me... )

[mattf789]

I second the Inner French recommendation - it was already easy enough to understand at about half of Assimil (maybe even earlier, I would have to check) and the topic variation keeps it interesting.
Oh, and it comes with transcripts, but if I remember correctly you have to be a registered user to access these.

Jeffers is right though that the guest recordings can be a bit annoying

I am looking forward to reading more about your experience with input!
(And I find 1000+ words in Memrise quite impressive, especially since learning vocabulary is about the worst punishment one could inflict on me... )

I have to say I absolutely love memrise! Probably bordering on fanboy. I just click with it and really enjoy memorising vocab. I'm resisting the urge to start clozemaster too but I don't know how long I can hold out... hopefully I can wait til I'm done with French 7. Clozemaster, anki and lots of listening seems the way forward post memrise. How do you go about learning vocabulary? I can't imagine doing it without a nice SRS app.

I've done so much listening today it felt weird when I just took my headphones off and heard the Simpsons on TV, which can only be a good thing I guess . I've definitely heard at least ten times more French than English today.

[Tomas]

I've definitely heard at least ten times more French than English today.

Finding ways to get massive input really seems to be the key ingredient for my own progress. I can sometimes notice an increase in my comprehension skills after just a couple of days like that. Well done!

[jeffers]

Clozemaster, anki and lots of listening seems the way forward post memrise. How do you go about learning vocabulary? I can't imagine doing it without a nice SRS app.

You don't have to stop using Memrise going forward. Cavesa mentioned decks made by someone named eunoia, and this user has made a load of decks based on vocabulary type and frequency. For example, their deck Nouns 1 contains all of the nouns from frequency 1-4099. But there are 5 noun decks, so if you ever get there, you'd know over 20,000 nouns alone!

Memrise is funny about user-created decks these days, so I believe you can't find them on the app but have to search on the website.

[mattf789]

You don't have to stop using Memrise going forward. Cavesa mentioned decks made by someone named eunoia, and this user has made a load of decks based on vocabulary type and frequency. For example, their deck Nouns 1 contains all of the nouns from frequency 1-4099. But there are 5 noun decks, so if you ever get there, you'd know over 20,000 nouns alone!

Memrise is funny about user-created decks these days, so I believe you can't find them on the app but have to search on the website.

That's true. I will at the least keep using it to review all the courses I've finished. The reason I was thinking anki is as you said, it's a lot easier to make your own decks than it is with memrise.

[mattf789]

I've made it to half way through the seven official courses now, sitting at 1571/3100 words. I've looked at some A1 French assessment materials and I'm pretty confident with some focused revision I could pass. The key is the "focused revision" though. I think I've superficially learnt so many words that they haven't really deeply settled in to my memory. A week with a deck of specific A1 centred vocabulary, listening to A1 listening materials and practicing orally would probably do it. It feels like the information is all in my brain, but it's not easy to access it. Anyway, I'm not focusing on a CEFR goal, just enjoying the process and seeing where it leads, trying to learn to play the long game. But I feel really positive about how it's gone thus far. I have to keep reminding myself I'm in a lockdown bubble and will need to make major adjustments when I go back to work, but until then I'll keep going hard at it.

I think tomorrow's memrise time will be spent just reviewing. It's easy to steam forward trying to complete the courses but the real goal is trying to firmly imprint these words in to my memory. I think I will do this once a week. Reviewing is much less interesting for me than learning new vocab, so historically I've only really reviewed to clear the queues. A couple of hours of solid reviewing in a day can only be beneficial.

I haven't found anything I don't like about French yet. I really like the subtle differences between some of the vowels. The nasal sounds are fun. Input has been about one hour of French YouTube videos today, which is lower than yesterday because I got distracted by computer games.