Thursday I had a lovely day out on my own, devoting the day to my other
Reading
I'm 43% of the way through Métronome, and I have mixed feelings about it. It is supposed to be a book about the history of Paris, with each chapter using a métro station as its starting point. However, the connection is rather tenuous much of the time. First of all, while each chapter is about a particular century, and the chapters do begin by describing some of the history of the area around the station, this section jumps all over history. Then the rest of the chapter centres on the century named. The second issue that bothers me is a more serious problem: although the book is about Paris, for the most part it is a history of kings and of the church, so a very traditional type of history book. I was expecting there to be a lot more detail about what Paris was like and what life was like for the people of Paris, but so far I feel like the books has been 70% oriented towards the men in charge. Still, it's interesting enough so I will continue with it.
Due to my day out Thursday, and family things yesterday, I haven't read as much this week as I would have liked to, but I'm determined to complete my French Super Challenge. Currently I'm 47% of the way to being finished, which means I need to read an average of 17.26 pages per day to finish.
Listening
I mentioned that I've found a bunch of podcasts for intermediate learners. This week I've spent a lot of time listening to Mankai your French, Mankai Islands, The French Instinct, Paris O'Clock, Sooo French and Fluidité. Of these I've really enjoyed Mankai, Sooo French and Fuidité, although there aren't many episodes of Makai and Sooo French and I've now listened to all of them!
Watching
It's been a bit random. Most days I'm still watching at least one Journal on France 24. Today I watched two episodes of Peppa Pig in French. I think I would have really benefitted from Peppa Pig a few years ago, but now it's a bit too easy. The children's voices are a bit awkward to understand, but I could understand [almost] every word if I really focused, so the benefit is that I really concentrated on it. The only unknown word that came up was pastèque, watermelon. Still, I think it will be beneficial to watch episodes from time to time.
Grammar work
My subscription to Kwiziq ran out today, and coincidentally they pissed me off by being unwilling to answer questions about using the website in their Q&A forum, which is apparently only for questions about language and culture. Some of the "method" is quite opaque, so why on earth wouldn't they want people to discuss the best ways to use their website? I had been planning to subscribe for either 3 months or a full year, and yesterday I was leaning towards the full year, but now I'm too annoyed to give them money.
So where does that leave me? Actually, it gives me an opportunity to work on other things I've been meaning to "at some point". Reading Luke's log gave me FSI envy, and as mentioned above I worked on unit 4 Thursday. The great thing about FSI is that it really gives your speaking muscles a workout, and many of the drills really make you think. You'll be doing one drill where they basically give you the answer and you start to get smug, but then the next drill is a lot harder. The problem with FSI for French is that it is basically an oral course, and what I liked about Kwiziq is that it has been improving my spelling as well as grammar. However, I have other options to help with that: my copy of Grammaire progressive du français (niveau intermédiaire) is sitting on the table right next to me, so I plan on starting work on that this evening. In addition, I've found Linguno to be really good for verb drills, and it's free (while it's on beta), so I'll start using it a lot more. Those two will together form the new cornerstone of my grammar studies, replacing Kwiziq. I'll probably still do the 10 free quizzes per month (so basically one quiz every three days or so).