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

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mattf789
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Re: My three Month French Vocabulary Memrise Challenge.

Postby mattf789 » Tue May 19, 2020 10:45 pm

This official course is actually quite questionable! Why would anyone want or need to learn to say "il a été embauché tout de suite" or "il n'a pas dit ça, quand même?" this early in a language course? And the next unit is talking about your love life! "Tu mérites quelqu'un de mieux" indeed :lol:

I think I'll have to add in some other courses because I'm not learning how to synthesise anything. I have the old official French A1 course so I think I'll restart that. The old Spanish ones were great, much better pace and content to them. They felt more like a more interactive Michel Thomas course, slowly building block by block. I'm enjoying learning the 450 verbs though, that one actually feels useful.
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Re: My three Month French Vocabulary Memrise Challenge.

Postby lavengro » Wed May 20, 2020 4:07 am

Good luck with your studies. I really like the Memrise official course material I have engaged with (Italian and German).

mattf789 wrote: I do like the learning with locals feature. I listen to them over and over for longer sentences, because as you say, a native speaking a sentence is very different to what I hear when I'm reading it :)

The "Learning with Locals" feature is one of my favourite features of the Memrise official courses, as it exposes one to a variety of different native speakers in what seems to be a more natural speaking manner than the usual more carefully-enunciated voices supplied.

I also really like that (at least for the Italian and German courses), there is both male and female audio provided for each new word or sentence item for contrast, and also really like the Listening Skills units.
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Re: My three Month French Vocabulary Memrise Challenge.

Postby mattf789 » Wed May 20, 2020 7:49 am

lavengro wrote:Good luck with your studies. I really like the Memrise official course material I have engaged with (Italian and German).

mattf789 wrote: I do like the learning with locals feature. I listen to them over and over for longer sentences, because as you say, a native speaking a sentence is very different to what I hear when I'm reading it :)

The "Learning with Locals" feature is one of my favourite features of the Memrise official courses, as it exposes one to a variety of different native speakers in what seems to be a more natural speaking manner than the usual more carefully-enunciated voices supplied.

I also really like that (at least for the Italian and German courses), there is both male and female audio provided for each new word or sentence item for contrast, and also really like the Listening Skills units.


Yes, the official courses definitely aren't terrible, and I love memrise as a method. I'll keep going through the official courses but just hit a five minute a day target on them, spending more time on easier stuff. What other resources do you use for French?
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Re: My three Month French Vocabulary Memrise Challenge.

Postby jeffers » Wed May 20, 2020 8:28 am

mattf789 wrote:What other resources do you use for French?


Ha ha! You've asked the question that could result in 10 pages of answers! A lot of it really depends on your approach, level of commitment, how you like to learn, and most importantly what you want to gain. However, I'll list a few things that you might want to consider:

Assimil French: for many of us on this forum, Assimil is the crème de la crème of language courses. Averaging over £60 for a book plus CDs it looks expensive, but it is worth every penny. The version with the audio on an mp3 CD or memory stick is better, because the mp3 files have the text embedded so you can read it while you listen to the audio on a phone. For some reason, the version with mp3s is currently more expensive on Amazon.co.uk but it's much cheaper on Blackwells: £55.87 https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Assimil-French-by-Assimil-Nelis/9782700512892.
Assimil will not give you the simple "how much is this sweater?", "can we pay now?" type of A1 questions. It will, however, put you on the path to being able to understand spoken and written French. If you do decide to use Assimil, just ask and many of us will give advice about ways to use the course.

Pimsleur: Pimsleur audio courses are super expensive, but most libraries in the UK have some of them. They are quite good at teaching and repeating important phrases. Good for using while driving or going for a walk, but you really need to speak out loud for the course to be effective.

Michel Thomas: a nice audio course to train introductory French, mainly verbs. Definitely only worth using if you can get it from the library.

Duolingo: you could do well with 5-10 minutes a day. This is a course that promises everything and delivers a little bit, but as a part of a wider set of resources it is a very good way to practice producing those tricky forms. It's much better if you choose the option that makes you type the French rather than pick from tiles. For me, that means I have to do it mainly on my laptop.
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Re: My three Month French Vocabulary Memrise Challenge.

Postby Cavesa » Thu May 21, 2020 10:01 am

mattf789 wrote:This official course is actually quite questionable! Why would anyone want or need to learn to say "il a été embauché tout de suite" or "il n'a pas dit ça, quand même?" this early in a language course? And the next unit is talking about your love life! "Tu mérites quelqu'un de mieux" indeed :lol:

I think I'll have to add in some other courses because I'm not learning how to synthesise anything. I have the old official French A1 course so I think I'll restart that. The old Spanish ones were great, much better pace and content to them. They felt more like a more interactive Michel Thomas course, slowly building block by block. I'm enjoying learning the 450 verbs though, that one actually feels useful.


Yes, it is. Now you see. But it is more questionable than that. Memorising questions formed in the colloquial way, no difference tu/vous, and complete phrases you cannot construct from the basic blocks yourself, that is simply not too practical. :-D

I'd like to second the Assimil recommendation, and recommend the Progressives. If you want something digital, Kwiziq is great for grammar. And Speakly is probably the best at what Memrise official and similar tools are trying to do, which is SRSing a lot of vocab with some context, with audio, etc.

jeffers wrote:Duolingo: you could do well with 5-10 minutes a day. This is a course that promises everything and delivers a little bit, but as a part of a wider set of resources it is a very good way to practice producing those tricky forms. It's much better if you choose the option that makes you type the French rather than pick from tiles. For me, that means I have to do it mainly on my laptop.


I'd say 10 minutes a day are actually not a good way to use the contemporary Duolingo. I would have agreed a few years ago.

But the official Duolingo courses are so slow and tedious, that if you keep going at 10 minutes a day, it will take you many weeks just to get through the equivalent of the first few units of any normal coursebook. Also, the choice type/picking tiles has been removed from some A/B versions, and is much less relevant these days, as Duo has been including many more types of exercises, which are all even easier. So, you get fewer % of the actually worthwhile practice (=typing) out of the whole time you spend on Duo. And it was published by a few duo members on their forum, that if you get to the highest level and just practice, you get the exercises for the braindead again, not mostly the worthwhile ones.

The Duo is being dumbed down down a lot. If you can rush through it as a fast intro, sure (but it is harder and harder to do it fast, for example as one resource out of several, as some A/B versions are now without the test out options). But using it at the suggested pace is a wonderful way to help their business and marketing but a terrible way to actually learn the basics of the language :-(
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Re: My three Month French Vocabulary Memrise Challenge.

Postby mattf789 » Thu May 21, 2020 11:38 am

Cavesa wrote:
mattf789 wrote:This official course is actually quite questionable! Why would anyone want or need to learn to say "il a été embauché tout de suite" or "il n'a pas dit ça, quand même?" this early in a language course? And the next unit is talking about your love life! "Tu mérites quelqu'un de mieux" indeed :lol:

I think I'll have to add in some other courses because I'm not learning how to synthesise anything. I have the old official French A1 course so I think I'll restart that. The old Spanish ones were great, much better pace and content to them. They felt more like a more interactive Michel Thomas course, slowly building block by block. I'm enjoying learning the 450 verbs though, that one actually feels useful.


Yes, it is. Now you see. But it is more questionable than that. Memorising questions formed in the colloquial way, no difference tu/vous, and complete phrases you cannot construct from the basic blocks yourself, that is simply not too practical. :-D

I'd like to second the Assimil recommendation, and recommend the Progressives. If you want something digital, Kwiziq is great for grammar. And Speakly is probably the best at what Memrise official and similar tools are trying to do, which is SRSing a lot of vocab with some context, with audio, etc

I'd say 10 minutes a day are actually not a good way to use the contemporary Duolingo. I would have agreed a few years ago.

But the official Duolingo courses are so slow and tedious, that if you keep going at 10 minutes a day, it will take you many weeks just to get through the equivalent of the first few units of any normal coursebook. Also, the choice type/picking tiles has been removed from some A/B versions, and is much less relevant these days, as Duo has been including many more types of exercises, which are all even easier. So, you get fewer % of the actually worthwhile practice (=typing) out of the whole time you spend on Duo. And it was published by a few duo members on their forum, that if you get to the highest level and just practice, you get the exercises for the braindead again, not mostly the worthwhile ones.

The Duo is being dumbed down down a lot. If you can rush through it as a fast intro, sure (but it is harder and harder to do it fast, for example as one resource out of several, as some A/B versions are now without the test out options). But using it at the suggested pace is a wonderful way to help their business and marketing but a terrible way to actually learn the basics of the language :-(


I tried Duolingo when I was learning Spanish and didn't like it. I seem to remember learning bizarre sentences that are even more worthless than the memrise colloquilisms I'm dealing with now. There is definitely some value in these memrise courses so I'm going to keep going at them (I have to as it's the core of the challenge ha ha).

I've tracked down a cheap copy of Assimil. I do like Assimil, I used it when I dabbled in Russian. I don't normally pick up content from books too well but Assimil is different, I can still remember some of the Russian phrases years on. I need to check out some optimal study methods as I found it really slow. Maybe just doing more than one lesson a day would be good.

I found some great content on Twitch last night. I can listen to the streamer and follow the chat at the same time. I am picking out some of the verbs I've been learning and in fairness, some stuff from memrise is cropping up, just little things like "c'est fous" and "bien sûr".

Thanks for the tips @Cavesa!
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Re: My three Month French Vocabulary Memrise Challenge.

Postby jeffers » Fri May 22, 2020 9:56 am

Many forum members, myself included, use Duolingo regularly and find it to be quite useful. What Cavesa wrote about how the lessons work is perhaps true of the app, but not of the web version. As an example, 9/10 of the lessons I had this morning were typing exercises. Either typing the French for English, typing the French after hearing the French, or typing the English translation of the French. The two exercises which weren't typing exercises were a brilliant recent addition to the French course in which they give a sound and you have to click on the tile that represents the sound (picture below).

Why do I think a bit of Duolingo is a good idea? Because it gives you practice with correct endings for verbs which sound the same, e.g. is it "tu va" or "tu vas"? Also, I don't find the sentences on the French course to be too bizarre, although even with the odd ones it's more about learning the structures than memorizing phrases you might use.


click what you hear.JPG
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Re: My three Month French Vocabulary Memrise Challenge.

Postby kanewai » Fri May 22, 2020 11:38 pm

mattf789 wrote:I am starting this challenge because I struggle to hold myself accountable and easily lose motivation. My motivation for learning French is to be able to go on holiday there next year and be comfortable ordering in restaurants, perhaps talking to locals about the area and just generally absorbing some more of the culture than being a typical linguistically challenged English tourist affords.

The only resource I will be using for the next three months (today - 17th August) is Memrise. Specifically, the official Memrise courses 1-7, and "The 450 Most Common French Verbs". These will be my starting point and I will add more as and when I complete these. .
I was genuinely curious how you would fare. There's a lot I like about Memrise, and a lot that drives me crazy. I've started similar challenges, and usually quit in frustration. And that would be frustration with the Memrise official courses, not with the language.

It is excellent for helping with motivation! It's nice seeing the goals get completed each day, getting awards, and watching the flowers grow; something in our psyches must respond to that.

All the advice you've already received is excellent. Going back to your original post, I only have a few things to add:

Motivation: Keep your eyes open for the 6 Week Challenges on the forum. The next one starts August 1. The idea is to take one language, and blast it for six weeks. They usually set of a twitter bot for you to track your hours, so it does turn into a competition. I've always found this to be a highly motivating, but only when the timing is right for me and I can focus on one language.

Travel: I love studying languages ahead of trips; for me it's become part of the vacation itself. If this is your main goal I would modify some of the previous recommendations. For me, the best combination for travel-languages has been 1) a general overview course, 2) an audio speaking-oriented course, and 3) a grammar course. As much as I love Assimil (and I've done part or all of about ten Assimil courses), I find it more useful for long-term studying.

My specific recommendations would vary depending on your budget (or what's in your local library), but for French I'd go with:

General Overview: Language Transfer French. Free. All audio. Michel Thomas covers similar material, but is expensive. Do this if you are new to French, or if it's been awhile. Otherwise skip this step.

Speaking: Pimsleur I and II. Expensive. These courses are, far and away, the best for learning to speak automatically, without thinking or stumbling through your basic phrases. I don't know what else comes close. But they are expensive, and I find that I really need two full levels for them to be effective. The most affordable way I've found them is to get a membership at audible, and use credits to buy them (it brings the cost down to about $60 US per level).

Grammar: You have a wealth of choices for French here. Pick one! You'll want this to supplement the audio courses.

CLE International (Progressive Series): See this post from Cavesa. I started with these at the intermediate level, but I suspect they would be excellent at any level. The main drawback is having to order the books and workbooks separate. I bought hard copies, but I think there are on-line options. I would recommend anyone serious about French to start here.

Living Language French (Complete Edition): There are a lot of problems with this course (starts slow, formatting is awful, books waste a lot of paper with large blank spaces), but it comes with a lot of audio that's of good quality, and it's rare to find that at this price. Ignore that the three levels are called beginner / intermediate / advanced - these are purely beginner's courses. The best budget choice that I know of.

Great Courses Learning French: Video courses taught by college professors. I suppose this would match up with one American university semester. This is a conditional recommendation, based upon what I've seen of the Greek and German courses. You get thirty video lessons, but also enough homework to last you one or two extra days per lesson. So far I really really like it - but I just started last week. And I don't understand the pricing. Currently the French course is over $300, but sometimes it's on sale for $60. At the low price: I highly recommend it!

There are of course plenty of other choices; these are just the ones I'm familiar with.

For me, the online courses (my favorites are Speakly and Kwiziq) are good, but not what I turn to when I want to actively study.
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Re: My three Month French Vocabulary Memrise Challenge.

Postby Miss_French_2020 » Sat May 23, 2020 1:57 am

kanewai wrote:Speaking: Pimsleur I and II. Expensive. These courses are, far and away, the best for learning to speak automatically, without thinking or stumbling through your basic phrases. I don't know what else comes close. But they are expensive, and I find that I really need two full levels for them to be effective. The most affordable way I've found them is to get a membership at audible, and use credits to buy them (it brings the cost down to about $60 US per level).

There is also an app for Pimsleur with a subscription model. It costs about 17 USD a month.
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Re: My three Month French Vocabulary Memrise Challenge.

Postby mattf789 » Sat May 23, 2020 9:52 am

kanewai wrote:
mattf789 wrote:I am starting this challenge because I struggle to hold myself accountable and easily lose motivation. My motivation for learning French is to be able to go on holiday there next year and be comfortable ordering in restaurants, perhaps talking to locals about the area and just generally absorbing some more of the culture than being a typical linguistically challenged English tourist affords.

The only resource I will be using for the next three months (today - 17th August) is Memrise. Specifically, the official Memrise courses 1-7, and "The 450 Most Common French Verbs". These will be my starting point and I will add more as and when I complete these. .
I was genuinely curious how you would fare. There's a lot I like about Memrise, and a lot that drives me crazy. I've started similar challenges, and usually quit in frustration. And that would be frustration with the Memrise official courses, not with the language.

It is excellent for helping with motivation! It's nice seeing the goals get completed each day, getting awards, and watching the flowers grow; something in our psyches must respond to that.

All the advice you've already received is excellent. Going back to your original post, I only have a few things to add:

Motivation: Keep your eyes open for the 6 Week Challenges on the forum. The next one starts August 1. The idea is to take one language, and blast it for six weeks. They usually set of a twitter bot for you to track your hours, so it does turn into a competition. I've always found this to be a highly motivating, but only when the timing is right for me and I can focus on one language.

Travel: I love studying languages ahead of trips; for me it's become part of the vacation itself. If this is your main goal I would modify some of the previous recommendations. For me, the best combination for travel-languages has been 1) a general overview course, 2) an audio speaking-oriented course, and 3) a grammar course. As much as I love Assimil (and I've done part or all of about ten Assimil courses), I find it more useful for long-term studying.

My specific recommendations would vary depending on your budget (or what's in your local library), but for French I'd go with:

General Overview: Language Transfer French. Free. All audio. Michel Thomas covers similar material, but is expensive. Do this if you are new to French, or if it's been awhile. Otherwise skip this step.

Speaking: Pimsleur I and II. Expensive. These courses are, far and away, the best for learning to speak automatically, without thinking or stumbling through your basic phrases. I don't know what else comes close. But they are expensive, and I find that I really need two full levels for them to be effective. The most affordable way I've found them is to get a membership at audible, and use credits to buy them (it brings the cost down to about $60 US per level).

Grammar: You have a wealth of choices for French here. Pick one! You'll want this to supplement the audio courses.

CLE International (Progressive Series): See this post from Cavesa. I started with these at the intermediate level, but I suspect they would be excellent at any level. The main drawback is having to order the books and workbooks separate. I bought hard copies, but I think there are on-line options. I would recommend anyone serious about French to start here.

Living Language French (Complete Edition): There are a lot of problems with this course (starts slow, formatting is awful, books waste a lot of paper with large blank spaces), but it comes with a lot of audio that's of good quality, and it's rare to find that at this price. Ignore that the three levels are called beginner / intermediate / advanced - these are purely beginner's courses. The best budget choice that I know of.

Great Courses Learning French: Video courses taught by college professors. I suppose this would match up with one American university semester. This is a conditional recommendation, based upon what I've seen of the Greek and German courses. You get thirty video lessons, but also enough homework to last you one or two extra days per lesson. So far I really really like it - but I just started last week. And I don't understand the pricing. Currently the French course is over $300, but sometimes it's on sale for $60. At the low price: I highly recommend it!

There are of course plenty of other choices; these are just the ones I'm familiar with.

For me, the online courses (my favorites are Speakly and Kwiziq) are good, but not what I turn to when I want to actively study.


Thank you so much! Lots of resources there that I have never heard of before. I am familiar with Pimsleur as I used it when I started learning Spanish. It was excellent for pronunciation but as Spanish is so easy to pronounce I soon dropped it, plus it is quite slow and I was learning similar content in Memrise much more quickly. I will definitely come back to your post when I want to add resources to Memrise.

That six week challenge sounds like a lot of fun. My rationale for using one resource was that I have had major problems with burnout before. Not slowly losing interest in a language, just one day suddenly dropping all language learning for months or years. It is part character defect and part just purely drowning myself in resources and then punishing myself for not attaining unrealistic goals. So I figured by just setting a very achievable goal of consuming each memrise course at least five minutes a day, I can get to August and assess what I have learnt, and then set some more realistic and not too lofty goals.

That said, I am really, really enjoying studying French. I'm struggling to not instantly go and find all those resources you mentioned and start chipping away at them :lol: I'm waking up with French words and phrases bouncing around my head, and my internal French voice is babbling nonsense during the day.
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Official Memrise French 1-7: 3100 / 3100
Assimil French: 11 / 113
Overall French Memrise Progress: 3323 / 6000


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