My journey in French: An enjoyable ride (full of frustrations!)

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thelazyoxymoron
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My journey in French: An enjoyable ride (full of frustrations!)

Postby thelazyoxymoron » Sun May 02, 2021 9:31 am

Hello everyone!

After browsing this forum (and HTLAL) for quite some time now, I've finally decided to take the plunge and write systematically about my journey in learning languages (As of April 2021, it's French), in part because I've been quite frustrated with my journey and progress so far. I'm sure quite a few folks would agree with me when I say that this journey is full of ebb and flows. Few days you feel like conquering the world and do 5 hour marathons studying and learning, and on other days all you do is gloat around and wonder why did you take up this hobby in the first place.

It's frustrating.

While the plethora of resources available online is certainly a blessing, it also comes with a choice paralysis. I pick up a course, stick with it for a few days, and then come across a shiny new resource which seems quite attractive and I jump the ship - and the loop continues. This log is my attempt to stick to a schedule and follow through on my commitments.

My journey so far:

I started getting interested in learning languages during my 2nd year of college. I chose French in large part due to the beautiful sound of the language - it felt so flowery and soothing! I was also attracted by that wonderful feeling of comprehension you get when you understand something which previously used to be unintelligible. Started with Duolingo (this was back in 2014-15) and religiously did it for 30 minutes to 1 hour every day - for 15 days. Then I'd hit a slump when the beginner's charm would fade away and I no longer had the motivation to continue with the drill. This went on for a couple of years and needless to say, I didn't make any progress at all. I was stuck in the so-called "false beginner" stage. Life chugged along and I kept repeating this loop.

It's ironic that I only got seriously interested in French once I had much less amount of free-time - when I started working. I started browsing through the /r/languagelearning community and getting to know about the wonderful resources out there, and one fine day I came across HTLAL during one of the discussions - and I was obsessed! I couldn't believe that there was such a brilliant forum where serious language learners used to hang out and help each other - it felt like joining an underground club. I religiously browsed and noted down tips and started forming a coherent strategy on how to kick-start my language learning.

All of this was about two years ago. I came across Busuu and decided to jump start with that, and I loved it. I knew that I would have to consciously carve out time to study languages, so I followed the age-old advice of making some time right after I wake up. This allowed me to be somewhat consistent with my routine. Busuu's engaging content also helped.

My goals:

Although I haven't tested formally, I'd rate myself to be on ~A2 level. My long-term goal is to consume native content comfortably, mostly films and books and be able to converse with natives fluently, but I realize that production would be much more difficult than consumption, so currently I'd be focusing on improving my listening/reading skills. Right now, I'm not targeting any formal level, but that may change in future.

My resources:

I live in India and there's close to zero exposure to the language in my day-to-day life, so I need to follow something akin to the Mass Immersion Approach (now https://refold.la/) for my studies. What makes the task difficult is that I have a lot of other hobbies and I'm horrible at prioritizing stuffs. Although I'm a software engineer by profession, Art and Literature has always been my passion. I love to read books, have an interest in photography, draw stuff from time to time and occasionally play the guitar (Sidenote: Here's my GR profile in case anyone's interested: https://www.goodreads.com/thelazyoxymoron). All of these hobbies demand significant time contribution and the sensible approach would be to cut down and focus on any one or two of them, at max. Unfortunately, I've never had the heart to stop anything cold turkey and so, I'm always jumping around anxiously from one to the other. This problem definitely needs a solution, something that I intend to tackle in a distant future.

Anyway, coming back to the list of resources, here's a list of them that I'd be working with for the time being:


The more language logs I read here, the more I find my schedule to be difficult to maintain. I'm hopeful though that posting my weekly progress here would keep me from slacking off and push me to persevere.

If you guys have any suggestions/comments, I'd be delighted to get some feedback!

Happy learning! :)
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golyplot
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Re: My journey in French: An enjoyable ride (full of frustrations!)

Postby golyplot » Sun May 02, 2021 1:49 pm

Back when I was first starting French, I watched all the Joueur du grenier videos. I didn't understand much of the dialog at first, but they were still pretty funny anyway.

Another idea is to try listening to French podcasts or French music in the background while you're doing other things like going for a walk.
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thelazyoxymoron
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Re: My journey in French: An enjoyable ride (full of frustrations!)

Postby thelazyoxymoron » Sun May 02, 2021 2:08 pm

golyplot wrote:Back when I was first starting French, I watched all the Joueur du grenier videos. I didn't understand much of the dialog at first, but they were still pretty funny anyway.

Another idea is to try listening to French podcasts or French music in the background while you're doing other things like going for a walk.


Thank you golyplot for that link, will be sure to check it out.

Yes, I've been occasionally listening to InnerFrench's episodes and doing few lyricstraining drills here and there. Any particular French artist that you'd recommend?
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Re: My journey in French: An enjoyable ride (full of frustrations!)

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun May 02, 2021 6:17 pm

Don't forget the resource list here on LLORG French resource list.
Good luck with French!
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Re: My journey in French: An enjoyable ride (full of frustrations!)

Postby Le Baron » Sun May 02, 2021 9:59 pm

thelazyoxymoron wrote:Any particular French artist that you'd recommend?


There are of course others, but for starters a lot of Diane Tell's songs are uploaded to YouTube (by Diane herself!) with the lyrics in the video.

She's Canadian French and became well-known from her third album in 1980 En flèche. Here's her most famous song from that album, Si J'étais Un Homme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PlTlHjg_P4
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thelazyoxymoron
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Re: My journey in French: An enjoyable ride (full of frustrations!)

Postby thelazyoxymoron » Mon May 03, 2021 4:30 am

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Don't forget the resource list here on LLORG French resource list.
Good luck with French!

Thank you MorkTheFiddle. This and iguanamon's Multi-track approach posts are already in my bookmarks. Such a treasure trove!

Le Baron wrote:There are of course others, but for starters a lot of Diane Tell's songs are uploaded to YouTube (by Diane herself!) with the lyrics in the video.

She's Canadian French and became well-known from her third album in 1980 En flèche. Here's her most famous song from that album, Si J'étais Un Homme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PlTlHjg_P4

Ah, thank you for that lovely recommendation. I'd never heard of Diane, will definitely check out her works :)
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thelazyoxymoron
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Re: My journey in French: An enjoyable ride (full of frustrations!)

Postby thelazyoxymoron » Tue May 04, 2021 4:04 pm

To take a cue from other members here, I wanted to do a self-assessment before I dived right into the thick of it. Dialang came highly recommended, so I blocked out some time to complete the test.

Here are the results:

Vocabulary: A2
Reading: B2
Listening: A2

Although I wouldn't take this result at face value, this is the closest one can get to self-assessment, short of sitting in the actual exam. I was honestly surprised to get B2 in reading, and that too when the vocabulary section returned A2 (isn't that bizarre?)

But at least this gives me some idea on what to prioritize currently. I'm doing hardly 10-15 minutes of focused listening nowadays, so need to bump those numbers. I had switched to listening to Audiobooks in English because my brain kept nagging me when I wasn't able to devote much time to reading books (and audiobooks were a consolation somehow), but now I'll drop that and focus on French podcasts (resuming InnerFrench) until I'm comfortable with the speech to dive more into native content.

I'm looking at WorkAudioBook or Ear2Memory to aid with listening drills.
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Re: My journey in French: An enjoyable ride (full of frustrations!)

Postby lusan » Wed May 05, 2021 4:58 pm

thelazyoxymoron wrote:But at least this gives me some idea on what to prioritize currently. I'm doing hardly 10-15 minutes of focused listening nowadays, so need to bump those numbers. I had switched to listening to Audiobooks in English because my brain kept nagging me when I wasn't able to devote much time to reading books (and audiobooks were a consolation somehow), but now I'll drop that and focus on French podcasts (resuming InnerFrench) until I'm comfortable with the speech to dive more into native content.

I'm looking at WorkAudioBook or Ear2Memory to aid with listening drills.


InnerFreench is a stepping stone... he speaks very slowly and calmly... this is not how people talk....

Try a daily dose of Ballades. Excellent for A2 listening skills. She is/was more natural and at an interesting level. Not running anymore but the podcasts could be found at:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2hmza3ye9rwm ... 6kn1a?dl=0

What I did to address A2>B1/B2 listening skills:

Ballades > Le Journal en français facile > Dubbed serials (Buffy the vampires killer) > .....

After JF facile, 2 episodes/day of a dubbed serial will get you there in one year! 15 min is a drop in the sea. I know it is a lot of work. I did and I found myself able to understand over 90 % of almost any listening material.

good luck.
Last edited by lusan on Wed May 05, 2021 8:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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thelazyoxymoron
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Re: My journey in French: An enjoyable ride (full of frustrations!)

Postby thelazyoxymoron » Wed May 05, 2021 7:00 pm

lusan wrote:What I did to address A2>B1/B2 listening skills:

Ballades > Le Journal en français facile > Dubbed serials (Buffy the vampires killer) > .....

After JF facile, 2 episodes/day of a dubbed serial will get you there in one year!. 15 min is a drop in the sea. I know it is a lot of work. I did and I found myself able to understand over 90 % of almost any listening material.

good luck.


Thank you lusan for sharing this. I agree with your point about InnerFrench being a stepping stone - I just listened to one of his episodes today and I was able to understand >90% of the content. I will look into Ballades :)
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Re: My journey in French: An enjoyable ride (full of frustrations!)

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Wed May 05, 2021 10:09 pm

lusan wrote:Try a daily dose of Ballades. Excellent for A2 listening skills. She is/was more natural and at an interesting level. Not running anymore but the podcasts could be found at:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2hmza3ye9rwm ... 6kn1a?dl=0

Mille bises for the link to all the very-much-missed Ballades!
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