French via shopping-themed reality television

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Re: French via shopping-themed reality television

Postby Gwendolyn » Mon Jan 25, 2021 11:34 am

This is an incredibly cool idea! I’ve been trying to teach French to myself for a while, but my listening comprehension is definitely the biggest problem - I can only pronounce things the Duolingo owl showed me. :D
So if you don’t mind, I’ll try this approach too, it sounds really convincing, thank you so much for this idea!
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Re: French via shopping-themed reality television

Postby jeffers » Thu Jan 28, 2021 4:05 pm

Bah! I thought I'd give it a go, but after creating an account it says that the show is not available in my region (I'm in the UK).

Edit: UK Netflix has Nailed it France, a French version of the cooking show in which amateurs have to make a cake that looks like one made by a professional. Thinking about it, it will have the same useful features as Les Reines du Shopping (regularly repeated themes and vocabulary, a fixed format, everyday non-scripted speech, etc), but I think I will find the show more funny. Also, Netflix has French subtitles for their French shows, which will suit me well.
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Re: French via shopping-themed reality television

Postby Kraut » Thu Jan 28, 2021 5:29 pm

I have just watched two minutes of "Les Reines du Shopping" (French subtitled)on the M6 channel. You can access it for free at the TV satellite that beams down from 5 degrees west, together with other French channels that normally are scrambled.
What is more interesting for me is the Scott brothers' reality show renovating houses:
https://www.toutelatele.com/total-renov ... ott-114006
This is also on the same satellite
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Re: French via shopping-themed reality television

Postby tangleweeds » Thu Jan 28, 2021 5:57 pm

I can't even begin to tell how much I've been loving this, having grown up with a French-speaking mom in the fashion industry here in the States. I'm going to have to find some way to see that here in the US, as my own French has gotten extremely rusty. And Jeffers, the baking show totally strikes my fancy too--I was a professional baker for the majority of my working life, so I should be able to pick up a lot.

I've been thinking for a long time that I should probably also check out Youtube knitting/crochet/lacemaking/stitchery/etc videos, since I kinda early-internet-famous :lol: in certain needlework niches until my neuro problems made it too hard to focus on. That was maybe 4 years ago :( , but this could be vicarious participation :) .

My French is still good enough to read titles (& mostly grasp descriptions) on my own, but my JSL-based Japanese illiteracy will mean I'll need to pester my brother into looking stuff up for me in our next video chat (though suggestions for sources available in the US are welcome in either language, and feel free to PM!).
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Re: French via shopping-themed reality television

Postby Gwendolyn » Thu Jan 28, 2021 7:08 pm

Netflix has various versions of Nailed It! I just watched the first episode of the Spanish one and really liked it (there are also subtitles available) - and I think I also saw a German one, though I’m I’m Germany, so I’m not a 100% certain the Spanish and the German version are on Netflix in other countries. Anyways, thanks for the recommendation, Jeffers!

As for Les Reines du Shopping: I made it through two episodes so far, so I can’t say too much yet, but I’m curious to see whether it will do as much for my listening comprehension as it’s doing for yours!
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Re: French via shopping-themed reality television

Postby lingua » Thu Jan 28, 2021 9:41 pm

Nailed It! France, Germany, Spain & Mexico are available on US Netflix.
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Re: French via shopping-themed reality television

Postby improbablediscussion » Thu Jan 28, 2021 10:01 pm

jeffers wrote:Bah! I thought I'd give it a go, but after creating an account it says that the show is not available in my region (I'm in the UK).

Edit: UK Netflix has Nailed it France, a French version of the cooking show in which amateurs have to make a cake that looks like one made by a professional. Thinking about it, it will have the same useful features as Les Reines du Shopping (regularly repeated themes and vocabulary, a fixed format, everyday non-scripted speech, etc), but I think I will find the show more funny. Also, Netflix has French subtitles for their French shows, which will suit me well.


Ugh, geoblocking sucks! If you still want to check it out, a good chunk of episodes do seem to have ended up on Youtube as well. The people who own Les Reines du Shopping seem less inclined to actively taking stuff down than their German counterparts.

Nailed It sounds like it would work pretty well, though! Cooking competitions do have a lot of the same format advantages, and a focus on the visual aspects of the outcome is especially helpful.

Kraut wrote:What is more interesting for me is the Scott brothers' reality show renovating houses:
https://www.toutelatele.com/total-renov ... ott-114006


Shows like this (renovation, decoration, or just property buying) are also pretty good. People are constantly doing things like walking into the kitchen and saying "So, this is the kitchen..."

tangleweeds wrote:I've been thinking for a long time that I should probably also check out Youtube knitting/crochet/lacemaking/stitchery/etc videos, since I kinda early-internet-famous :lol: in certain needlework niches until my neuro problems made it too hard to focus on..


Instructional or hobby videos can work really well, especially if you already know the hobby and concepts being talked about. Continuous speech isn't guaranteed, though, so you (or your brother) might have to do a little sifting to eliminate the occasional totally silent instructional videos people sometimes make.

Gwendolyn wrote:Netflix has various versions of Nailed It! I just watched the first episode of the Spanish one and really liked it (there are also subtitles available) - and I think I also saw a German one, though I’m I’m Germany, so I’m not a 100% certain the Spanish and the German version are on Netflix in other countries. Anyways, thanks for the recommendation, Jeffers!

As for Les Reines du Shopping: I made it through two episodes so far, so I can’t say too much yet, but I’m curious to see whether it will do as much for my listening comprehension as it’s doing for yours!


If nothing else, you'll be getting a lot of number practice! I would definitely be curious to see how this goes for other people.
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Re: French via shopping-themed reality television

Postby improbablediscussion » Tue Feb 09, 2021 8:42 am

Update: 80 hours

I've now watched 80 hours of Les Reines du Shopping. According to various charts of instruction time for reaching different CEFR levels, 80 hours is the expected lower bound for reaching the A1 level in French (for an English speaker). Obviously, what I am doing isn't the same as taking a class, and even those estimates are just meant to be of the actual instruction time involved. Originally, I didn't think I'd learn enough to actually compare much to a class, but by now I'm certain I've picked up enough to do a sort of compare and contrast when I reach the end of my 100 hour goal.

I'm starting to feel like I've reached a sort of intermediate level -- not like on an actual language scale, but specifically on a "comprehension of Les Reines du Shopping" scale. Some things did happen though:

- Finally learned the word crammed in the middle of decimal numbers like "10,75". Not sure if it literally means "comma", but the word in that place. In general, I can understand these numbers now.

The episodes I watched this time had a bunch of social media talk in them (about likes and subscriber counts and all that), so I got a little practice with numbers in the thousands and higher. I learned that the word for "billion" is roughly the same as in German.

- I figured out that the other way of telling someone to go faster actually does mean "fast". I also learned the actual word for "hurry".

- I've been picking up more verbs now that I can hear them. After all this time, I finally know a verb for wearing and/or putting on clothes!

- I normally give the show my full attention when I watch, pausing it whenever I need to leave the room to do something. However, at one point during this block, I actually forgot to pause it when I was going to the kitchen and continued listening through my wireless headphones. Surprisingly, I still understood what was being spoken about, even though it was the makeup section of the show (one of my weaker areas).

I don't think I'm anywhere near the point where I could (or should) switch to pure audio input of any kind, but it's nice to know that my understanding is no longer completely dependent on visual context.

- I started really registering connectors midway through this block. I only figured out the actual meaning of one of them ("but"), but for some reason the basic function of the others became really noticeable all of a sudden. In general, I feel like I have a much better feeling for where sentences begin and end even when they aren't ones I understand.

- While my ability to separate sentences is a lot better, my ability to tell when words begin and end is still pretty hazy. I realized recently that certain unknown words I perceived as beginning with consonants are actually words that begin with vowels following words with secret usually invisible consonants at the end. As in, I'd think I was hearing something like:

Vous + (word beginning with a Z)

When it was actually:

Vous + (magic hidden Z) + (word beginning with a vowel)

Weirdly, after I noticed this, I realized that I already technically knew plenty of situations where this happened, I just... hadn't thought about it, because I knew what the words were. Like, I could have told you within the first 10 hours of starting this that there's a Z-sound in the middle of "les enveloppes" but not the "Les Reines" of "Les Reines du Shopping". I also knew that the phrase "two hours" is pronounced with a Z in the middle despite that not being the case for "two minutes".

So, if you'd asked me to say the phrase "two hours" at the end of my first 20-hour block, I'd have said it with a Z and just... not really thought about why that was correct. Or that it was weird for it to be there. Now that I'm actually thinking about it, I'm wondering how I never got "two" mixed up with "twelve" in these instances. Maybe the clock was on display too much for that to happen.

In any event, once I noticed this happening in unknown words, it became clear that this is some kind of actual pronunciation rule, even if I'm not 100% sure about the specifics. I'm on to you, French! You won't fool me with your secret invisible consonants anymore!

- The reason I actually noticed I was off about where/how words were beginning and ending was that I've been reading a little more of the text that appears on screen and seeing how things are spelled.

Previously, I'd been largely avoiding the stuff that gets printed on screen, with the exceptions of numbers, contestant information, the theme of the week, and the list of purchased items that appears at the end of the episode. Basically, I tried not to look at anything that wasn't actually being directly said by anyone, because I didn't want to accidentally start practicing words in my head separated from their actual spoken sound.

I've heard enough that I think I can relax a little, though. Even in a situation like this whole hidden consonant thing, the spoken sound of the language is still getting priority for me. As in, when I read those phrases with "vous (word starting with a vowel)", I still hear it as "vous (Z-word)".

The fact that I'm hearing French when I read French words is a good sign to me, because I'm pretty sure one of the issues with my overall German level not improving via reading was because I simply hadn't heard enough spoken German for the written words I read to have a strong link with sound. I ended up frequently practicing a sort of visual-only German that I was able to read quickly and comprehend well, but that had little impact on my ability to understand spoken German. I only started hearing German while reading after watching loads of television. Avoiding this issue was one of the things I was aiming for when I started this, so I'm pretty happy that it's working.

- Part of the reason I've relaxed my reading stance is that I've run into a little problem. Through this whole thing, I've been going through a pattern of noticing I was hearing a word or phrase over and over again, wondering what it meant, and then usually eventually working it out. I've kept myself from getting too annoyed or impatient by promising myself that if I still don't know what (insert phrase here) means by 100 hours, I'll just look it up.

In fact, while my original plan was to probably start some kind of structured course after my 100 hours (like FSI or something), my current plan is to actively look up all the stuff that's been bugging me and go from there. I figure that if I've already been noticing it, I'm primed to learn it.

This plan has one major flaw, however -- namely, that I have no idea how to spell most of the stuff that I want to look up!

Fortunately, I'm pretty sure most of the stuff on my list is really common, frequently used words and phrases (not specific to a fashion context). I've been thinking about the best way to pair these spoken phrases that I recognize with their written counterparts, and I've decided that doing something that pairs audio with written text is probably the quickest way to manage this. I know that this is a popular thing to do with audiobooks paired with text (listening-reading), but I don't like the idea of giving up visual context entirely at my current level, so I've decided to go with an adventure game instead.

I looked through my Steam library to see if any of the adventure games I already own have French audio and subtitles, and found that the ABC Murders has both. I played the game in English only a few months ago, and it wasn't especially difficult. I think with my existing knowledge of the game, I could probably get through it in French. So, I figure that after I reach my 100-hour goal, I'll just go through the game and start noting down all the super-common words and phrases that I've been wanting to look up. It'll also help me learn some of that train station vocabulary that's unlikely to pop up on reality TV.

- I should be done with my 100 hours in the next couple of weeks or so. At that point, I'll go back to the first episode I ever watched and see how it looks to me now. I've also decided that I'm going to take the dialang listening test. I had previously thought that I wouldn't know enough for it to be worth trying at all, but I've recently been getting a little curious about where I'd rank on an actual standardized scale.

So, that's where things are right now. The next report will cover the final section of the experiment!
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Re: French via shopping-themed reality television

Postby improbablediscussion » Fri Feb 26, 2021 6:12 am

Update: 100 hours

I've watched my 100th hour (and 118th episode) of Les Reines du Shopping! The basic experiment is now finished. Not that many notable things happened during the last 20 hours, other than generally learning more vocabulary. However, there were a few notable things:

- I started hearing ordinal numbers. Or maybe the ending on ordinal numbers, to think of it another way. In any event, I randomly noticed the word for "second" was being used in a specific sentence in one episode, and I've been noticing it appearing all over the place ever since. I've also heard the numbers "third" through "fifth" used, largely in the opening.

Since I'm finished with my experiment, I'm probably just going to look up a guide to ordinal numbers and see if there's anything irregular/complicated I need to know. I feel like I'm basically familiar with numbers, so I should just tie up whatever loose ends are left.

- I've finally started hearing the days of the week. Earlier episodes of the show printed the words "Monday", "Tuesday", etc. on screen at the beginning of the episodes, so I ended up partially learning those when I started reading, but I didn't actually hear them when they were being said. I can hear them now, though.

However, the show only goes from Monday to Friday, so haven't actually learned the words for Saturday or Sunday. Another thing to look up.

- I learned three of the four seasons via a contestant who's into color analysis. Only "spring" to go!

- I'm still not noticing accents in general, but I watched a few episodes with much older women in them and they did actually sound different. So I can possibly hear accents in, like, 70-year-olds. But not their 20-year-old granddaughters, even when they're from the same place. So, this could possibly be more of a young vs old sort of thing.

Results

I learned a lot more than I was expecting to learn. I was largely expecting to get familiar with the sound of French while learning a lot of clothing words and maybe how to express like/dislike for things. I ended up with a surprising amount of basic vocabulary about other things, some of them actually pretty abstract. Most of this is down to the abundance of cognates. I've definitely gotten used to the sound of French -- it sounds perfectly normal to me even when I have absolutely no idea what's being said.

Continuing forward, I've decided to do another 100 hours, but this time including both Les Reines du Shopping and other French TV shows. I've really been looking forward to being able to watch something other than Les Reines du Shopping, even if it does obviously mean an initial drop in comprehension. I'm going to start with cooking competitions and see how understandable they are at my level.

I will also be going forward with the video game plan mentioned in the previous update.

I feel like my listening comprehension is probably at a high beginner level for French in general, low intermediate for Les Reines du Shopping in particular. I'll be taking the Dialang listening test soon for some kind of actual score. Also, tomorrow I'm going to go back to the first episode I ever watched to see how my understanding has changed.

I should be posting both the results of the test and the rewatch pretty soon.
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Re: French via shopping-themed reality television

Postby improbablediscussion » Sun Feb 28, 2021 3:52 am

Dialang results

I took the Dialang listening test yesterday, and then I went ahead and took the reading test as well, just for the hell of it. I got a B1 on both of them, but I think both those scores are each overinflated by roughly a level, for different reasons.

The reason I think the listening test overinflated my abilities is that I was able to correctly answer a bunch of questions I didn't understand simply because I was able to pick out the fact that one of the possible answers was said in the dialogue. Sure, that may indicate a pretty good ability to pick out words, but it doesn't really say much for my listening comprehension.

I think this may be partly an issue with how the CEFR scale frames things in general, since the listening comprehension scale doesn't separate the range or complexity of speech understood from the speed of speech understood. It ends up not technically having a a rank for someone who knows barely anything, but can do that barely anything at normal speed.

On the other hand, I may be pretty close to a B1 level based on the actual description:

Your test result suggests that you are at level B1 in listening on the Council of Europe scale. At this level, people can understand the main points of clear "standard" speech on familiar matters connected with work, school, leisure etc. In TV and radio current-affair programmes or programmes of personal or professional interest, they can understand the main points provided the speech is relatively slow and clear.


If you take the "familiar matters" and "programmes of personal ... interest" as fashion and shopping, then that's not necessarily far off. It kind of fits with my personal assessment of being an intermediate at Les Reines du Shopping and a beginner at everything else. I'm not sure how I'd fare at a random current affairs program, though I did understand some of the news-style dialogues in the test.

I also apparently assessed myself as a B1 at listening based on the checklist of what I can and can't do.

So, uh. I don't quite know what to think of this one. I definitely got more questions right than I actually understood, but the description is not necessarily that far off. I think it would be more appropriate to go with "high A2" or "A2/B1" than "B1", especially given some of the weird gaps in my beginner knowledge.

As for the reading test, I'm even more ambivalent about how to interpret my score, because I actually did understand the questions I answered correctly as well as the answers I was choosing. It just took me several million years to manage it!

If I'd been taking an actual timed test of this type I wouldn't have gotten a B1, because I would not have been able to answer all of the questions. Anything longer than a sentence or two took several rereads to understand. I learned a bunch of new vocabulary during the test itself, some cognates, some not. Many of them took multiple readings to get even a hint of what they meant. If French weren't as heavy on the cognates as it is, I wouldn't have been able to figure out most of the texts at all. (For example, there was one text where I was only able to figure out the word for "August" because the word for "July" was also in the text and is an obvious cognate.)

So, I don't think I can reasonably say that I have a B1 reading level. However, I do think that the results suggest that B1 texts would be a good place to start if I wanted to jump into reading.

That's it for my Dialang results. I'll cover my first episode rewatch in my next post.
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