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

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

Postby kanewai » Fri May 29, 2020 12:54 am

mattf789 wrote: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.
Wow, congrats! How much time does that take you each day??? It usually takes me a month or two (usually two) just to finish one level of Memrise. Whenever I try to rush it feels like I get overwhelmed after a day or two by massive numbers of cards that pop up to review, and all my progress slows to a crawl.

mattf789 wrote: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.
Oh. I agree that it's boring, but you're not skipping this part, are you? One of the points of spaced repetition is that you'll get a word after a day, then three days, then ten days, etc (although the times vary).
Last edited by kanewai on Fri May 29, 2020 6:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: My three Month French Vocabulary Memrise Challenge (now with added input)....

Postby kanewai » Fri May 29, 2020 6:18 am

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

Postby mattf789 » Fri May 29, 2020 8:11 am

kanewai wrote:Wow, congrats! How much time does that take you each day??? It usually takes me a month or two (usually two) just to finish one level of Memrise. Whenever I try to rush it feels like I get overwhelmed after a day or two by massive numbers of cards that pop up to review, and all my progress slows to a crawl.


I think I've spent roughly an hour and a half to two hours per day on Memrise. It's hard to say though as I break it up through the day, rather than doing one long session, so it may be more or less. I've just woken up and I have 84 words to review across the official courses I've done. I think if I left reviewing until this evening it would probably be at least double that. So I'll chill out for a bit then review all of these, and then just catch up with them as they pop up for review during the day. It's not normally like this since I'd usually be at work by 6am, but I'm furloughed. So previously I would come home to an avalanche of reviewing to do, which can be disheartening.

kanewai wrote:Oh. I agree that it's boring, but you're not skipping this part, are you? One of the points of spaced repetition is that you'll get a word after a day, then three days, then ten days, etc (although the times vary).


No I'm not skipping it, I've just never solely dedicated time to reviewing. I would just do the cards that need reviewing, then go straight in to learning new ones, and then whack-a-mole any that pop up. So today I'm just going to review. Classic review for ones that need reviewing and speed review the various courses in chunks through the day. I imagine it's a case of diminishing returns if you review too much, but some words are definitely "more learnt" than others, so it should be valuable for those weaker ones.
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Re: My three Month French Vocabulary Memrise Challenge (now with added input)....

Postby mattf789 » Sat May 30, 2020 8:38 am

I was just reading Brun Ugle's Peppa Pig Project. Watching Peppa Pig makes so much more sense to me than programmes where I can only understand about 2% of the content.
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Re: My three Month French Vocabulary Memrise Challenge (now with added input)....

Postby Adrianslont » Sat May 30, 2020 12:06 pm

mattf789 wrote:I was just reading Brun Ugle's Peppa Pig Project. Watching Peppa Pig makes so much more sense to me than programmes where I can only understand about 2% of the content.

Yes, I don’t know how anyone can stand watching stuff where they only understand such a small amount. And I don’t think you learn much that way, unless you have a LOT of time to do it.

So, if Peppa Pig is to your taste, go for it! I think the Simpsons is way too hard for a beginner. I have used Thomas and Friends and then moved onto Tintin for two languages - I enjoy both and find them useful and the voices are not as heavily “stylised” as many other cartoons. Peppa is pretty stylised but is a nice lower level.

Earlier in this thread Jeffers recommended the Inner French Podcasts and YouTube videos - I’ll second that. Hugo’s delivery is nice and slow, topics varied and there are transcripts. Transcripts are gold. You can do “desk study” reading them and looking up words you don’t know or just listen to the podcast in your armchair, while walking or cooking etc.

You have to sign up to get the transcripts but that’s free and Hugo doesn’t spam you or otherwise abuse your email address.

I find Inner French a bit slow these days but I still listen to new episodes if I am interested in the content. And it’s a great way to combine a walk with listening. I generally like podcasts because I don’t like sitting in front of a screen watching stuff so much.
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Re: My three Month French Vocabulary Memrise Challenge (now with added input)....

Postby mattf789 » Sat May 30, 2020 12:36 pm

Adrianslont wrote:Yes, I don’t know how anyone can stand watching stuff where they only understand such a small amount. And I don’t think you learn much that way, unless you have a LOT of time to do it.

So, if Peppa Pig is to your taste, go for it! I think the Simpsons is way too hard for a beginner. I have used Thomas and Friends and then moved onto Tintin for two languages - I enjoy both and find them useful and the voices are not as heavily “stylised” as many other cartoons. Peppa is pretty stylised but is a nice lower level.

Earlier in this thread Jeffers recommended the Inner French Podcasts and YouTube videos - I’ll second that. Hugo’s delivery is nice and slow, topics varied and there are transcripts. Transcripts are gold. You can do “desk study” reading them and looking up words you don’t know or just listen to the podcast in your armchair, while walking or cooking etc.

You have to sign up to get the transcripts but that’s free and Hugo doesn’t spam you or otherwise abuse your email address.

I find Inner French a bit slow these days but I still listen to new episodes if I am interested in the content. And it’s a great way to combine a walk with listening. I generally like podcasts because I don’t like sitting in front of a screen watching stuff so much.


Thank you! I still haven't got round to checking out Inner French but it's on my to-do list. I'll try Thomas and friends as well. As a childless 36 year old man, I definitely welcome (need) suggestions for kids TV programmes!

I think there is some value in watching advanced content, and I only watch stuff that has really interesting subject matter to me, but there is undoubtedly more to be learnt at my current stage from lower level stuff.
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Re: My three Month French Vocabulary Memrise Challenge (now with added input)....

Postby Miss_French_2020 » Sat May 30, 2020 12:50 pm

mattf789 wrote:Thank you! I still haven't got round to checking out Inner French but it's on my to-do list. I'll try Thomas and friends as well. As a childless 36 year old man, I definitely welcome (need) suggestions for kids TV programmes!

I think there is some value in watching advanced content, and I only watch stuff that has really interesting subject matter to me, but there is undoubtedly more to be learnt at my current stage from lower level stuff.

I thought I'd add my 2 cents as well :D I agree, I think it's best to gradually work your way up to native level content for adults.
I'm a little bit further along with French than you and I started with Peppa Pig but I could only tolerate a couple of episodes. Then I moved on to Miraculous Ladybug which is made for primary school age kids. It is a French show and they speak really fast but it's easier to understand than shows for adults. Now I'm watching "Les filles d'a cote" on youtube which is a sitcom from the early 90's and seems like it was made for tweens or teenagers.
I also recommend Inner French. It is the best podcast I have found for learners. I will say it took me more than 30 episodes before I started to feel like I was understanding more, so don't be discouraged if it still seems too difficult to begin with, just stick with it. It now feels too slow for me and I've moved on to native podcasts.
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Re: My three Month French Vocabulary Memrise Challenge (now with added input)....

Postby mattf789 » Mon Jun 01, 2020 4:49 pm

Week two in the bag, and still feeling very motivated. I'm having slower days like today just because we went for a walk and then I had a nap, but still managed to get some memrise and YouTube done this morning, and I'll do more this evening. If I'm feeling less motivation one day, I like to go and watch videos of English speakers speaking foreign languages well; that usually does the trick.

I've ordered a book of short stories in French by Richards and Simcott which will arrive tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to getting in to that. I've watched 13 hours and 24 minutes of French YouTube content over the past week, and approximately 4 hours of French Netflix content. I've moved over to more Peppa Pig and Thomas et ses amis than anything, but still can't resist the cooking and travel documentaries! I've also listened to the first Inner French podcast. I finished The Chalet on Netflix and last night we started another French series, "The Frozen Dead", which looks promising.

This week I will start using Anki. I've just been reading about the subs2srs add-on which looks like an amazing tool, so I'm excited to learn how to use that.
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Re: My three Month French Vocabulary Memrise Challenge (now with added input)....

Postby mattf789 » Tue Jun 02, 2020 4:42 pm

I received "Short Stories in French for Beginners" today by Olly Richards. It's graded A2-B1, but I understood about 90 - 95% of the first story. This feels like a massive achievement. All the structures were familiar. There were only a few words I didn't know, and I could figure most of them out through context. Buzzing! :D
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Re: My three Month French Vocabulary Memrise Challenge (now with added input)....

Postby mattf789 » Mon Jun 08, 2020 12:30 pm

Only ten hours YouTube/netflix this week, mainly because I've been reading more. A couple of positives regarding reading: the A2/B1 book I bought has been very rewarding in that I could understand almost all of it. And I've been able to read and largely understand reviews and descriptions of potential holiday destinations for next year. I've listened to a couple more Inner French podcasts, which are quite comprehensible. I found a chrome addon that lets you slow video down to exactly the speed you want, but it doesn't work in the app so I have to sit at the computer to use it which has been an issue as I injured my back at the weekend, and can't sit for too long.

I'm on unit 6 of 7 in the memrise French course. It's felt like a bit of a grind at times but I've made sure to at least review everything every day. I'm really trying to form an unbreakable daily habit of study, even if it's only 15 minutes. Experience tells me even one day off can easily turn in to 6 months. I'm still feeling very motivated overall though.

I think I'm at the stage now with French where I previously dropped Spanish. I need to really attack the past tenses and not give up just because it's difficult. I find it interesting (and awkward) that the French generally write in a different past tense then they speak, so I'll have to track down resources that aren't written in the passé simple (another good thing about the book I got is that it intentionally doesn't use the passé simple). Right now, I don't want to be getting a lot of input in a tense I won't be using or hearing in speech.

Goals this week are to get through unit 6 and start number 7, finish my book and go back and start intensively reading it, and practice listening for at least an hour a day.
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