Jeffers- B1 French by June 2022

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jeffers
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Re: Jeffers- B1 French by June 2022

Postby jeffers » Wed Jul 21, 2021 10:27 pm

Today was my first day of summer holiday, I'm honestly not yet sure what effect it will have on my rate of study. Sure I won't be going to work, but on the other hand routine will be much more random. In any case, I'm still making good progress with my project.

I finished Guillaume Musso's La fille de Brooklyn yesterday. The story was engaging and the language was mostly accessible to me. A good book for a bit of a stretch and challenge. I then started Le Petit Nicolas s'amuse this morning, which is more of a comfortable and enjoyable read. Reading is going to be my main priority for the summer, and I'm making steady progress bringing down my super challenge deficit, which I want to bring back to "where I should be" by the end of the holidays. The good news is that my progress needle is now well into the yellow zone (see pic below), whereas when I decided on preparing for the B1 it was between red and yellow.

For listening I've been experimenting with several podcasts for intermediate students. I've started to write up a list of the podcasts I've found which I'll post soon(tm). Meanwhile, I finished Lupin yesterday. I enjoyed Lupin, but it had a lot of improbabilities and really wasn't as cleverly written as it should be for its genre. In addition, I've been watching the news on France 24 almost every day for the past week and finding that really good; I intend to make a daily habit of it at least for the holidays.

I've continued to work on Kwiziq daily. I had a few days where I felt like I was moving too fast on the A2 lessons and getting too many new topics at once, so I went back and reviewed the A0 and then A1 levels for a couple of days. My learning on Kwiziq has been really well supported by Linguno, which I use to drill the new verb forms introduced in Kwiziq. Thinking about goals, I'd like to have the A2 section over 90% and be well into the B1 section by the end of summer, intending to finish the year with both B1 and B2 in the 90s.

Kwiziq brainmap 2021-07-21.png


Kwiziq achievements 2021-07-21.png


SC dashboard 2021-07-21.png
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Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien (roughly, the perfect is the enemy of the good)

French SC Books: 0 / 5000 (0/5000 pp)
French SC Films: 0 / 9000 (0/9000 mins)

jeffers
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Re: Jeffers- B1 French by June 2022

Postby jeffers » Sun Jul 25, 2021 9:41 am

Days to go (to 1 June): 311

Reading
Finished Le Petit Nicolas s'amuse yesterday. As always it was a fun read. Sometimes I think Goscinny was writing for learners because when he uses a new word it will sometimes appear in the next story as well, and some stories seem to use a lot of particular structures. Je fais des course was one such story, which keeps using a variety of subjunctive form. And then in the same story, Nicolas has this advice: « C’est un bon truc de se répéter tout le temps des choses, pour ne pas les oublier. » If only it had worked for him!
s'amuse.jpg


I started Métronome: L'histoire de France au rythme du métro parisien by Laurant Deutsch a few days ago, and finished chapter 1 today. I'm finding it a bit tough going because Deutsch seems to prefer elongated descriptions rather than getting to the point, appearing to me to be a case of literary pretension favoured over clear narrative. Obviously this wouldn't be much of an issue if I had a broader vocabulary, and so I will press on for the time being and see how the next chapter goes.
metronome.jpg


Watching/listening
I started re-watching Au service de la France ("A Very Secret Service") with French subtitles, and I'm enjoying it as much as when I first watched it a few years ago. I wonder if there will be a third season? This is definitely watching for fun. I'm also watching the journal on France 24 most days, sometimes twice a day, to keep up with what's going on in the world and to practice what I suspect will be the type of audio on the B1 listening exam.
au service.jpg


Yesterday I listened to several episodes of the Mankai your French podcast, by Romain Sensei. There are two types of podcasts under the general title, first there are short (5-6 minute) podcasts on a specific topic, which are quite random, ranging from endometriosis, to the great fire of London, to black lives matter. These episodes are labelled "Mankai #1 <topic>", etc, and the host speaks very clearly and quite slowly, but manages to still be engaging. The second type of podcasts are labelled "Mankai island #1 - feat <guest>", which are longer podcasts in which the guest describes an imaginary island. Roman then asks them questions about the island, and gives them choices such as "the weather can be 5 degrees every day or 30 degrees every day" and the guest gives their choice and justifications. The Mankai Island podcasts are really quite interesting, and they often have quite a laugh when they discuss the island. I think these are one of the best intermediate French podcasts I have come across because they move between descriptive sections to conversation and are quite fun. The Island podcasts are spoken closer to regular conversational speed than the Mankai ones.
mankai.jpg


Language tools
I'm continuing to enjoy my grammar review with Kwiziq. A few topics feel totally new to me, but most topics are already familiar. In many cases I already have a sense of the best answer due to all the reading and watching I've done, coupled with things like Assimil and Pimsleur, which has given me a strong feeling for how things should be ordered. In other cases I just need to make more effort to learn the rules. I am concerned, however, that I'm building a house of cards and that what I was managing quite well two weeks ago will be forgotten the next time I test on them. The problem is that Kwiziq doesn't have a built in method of review. To get kwizzes from lower levels you have to switch to those levels, and there's no guidance or advice on how often one should do this. I even asked on the forum for advice, and the only answer I got was "as often as you want to". If I knew that, I wouldn't have asked the question! :roll: However, I think I've decided that returning to previous levels once a week or so will do the needful.

Meanwhile, Linguno and Memrise are doing their jobs of drilling basics of verbs and vocabulary that I really should know better by now. I wish I had Linguno years ago.
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Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien (roughly, the perfect is the enemy of the good)

French SC Books: 0 / 5000 (0/5000 pp)
French SC Films: 0 / 9000 (0/9000 mins)

DaveAgain
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Re: Jeffers- B1 French by June 2022

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Jul 25, 2021 9:56 am

jeffers wrote:
I started Métronome: L'histoire de France au rythme du métro parisien by Laurant Deutsch a few days ago, and finished chapter 1 today. I'm finding it a bit tough going because Deutsch seems to prefer elongated descriptions rather than getting to the point, appearing to me to be a case of literary pretension favoured over clear narrative. Obviously this wouldn't be much of an issue if I had a broader vocabulary, and so I will press on for the time being and see how the next chapter goes.
There's a TV series associated with the book, watching that might help with understanding.
3 x

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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Jeffers- B1 French by June 2022

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun Jul 25, 2021 5:17 pm

DaveAgain wrote:
jeffers wrote:
I started Métronome: L'histoire de France au rythme du métro parisien by Laurant Deutsch a few days ago, and finished chapter 1 today. I'm finding it a bit tough going because Deutsch seems to prefer elongated descriptions rather than getting to the point, appearing to me to be a case of literary pretension favoured over clear narrative. Obviously this wouldn't be much of an issue if I had a broader vocabulary, and so I will press on for the time being and see how the next chapter goes.
There's a TV series associated with the book, watching that might help with understanding.

Not having the book, I don't want to waste your time, but Youtube shows this . I watched only the first minute or two, which looks something like an Illustrated Classics version. Same content as the book?????? I find the narrator's rate of speech fast enough to be a good but hard challenge for me, so there's that.
5 x
Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

jeffers
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Learning: The above, plus French (A2-B1), German (A1), Ancient Greek (?), Sanskrit (beginner)
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Re: Jeffers- B1 French by June 2022

Postby jeffers » Sun Jul 25, 2021 7:16 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:
DaveAgain wrote:
jeffers wrote:
I started Métronome: L'histoire de France au rythme du métro parisien by Laurant Deutsch a few days ago, and finished chapter 1 today. I'm finding it a bit tough going because Deutsch seems to prefer elongated descriptions rather than getting to the point, appearing to me to be a case of literary pretension favoured over clear narrative. Obviously this wouldn't be much of an issue if I had a broader vocabulary, and so I will press on for the time being and see how the next chapter goes.
There's a TV series associated with the book, watching that might help with understanding.

Not having the book, I don't want to waste your time, but Youtube shows this . I watched only the first minute or two, which looks something like an Illustrated Classics version. Same content as the book?????? I find the narrator's rate of speech fast enough to be a good but hard challenge for me, so there's that.


I was aware of the series before I knew about the book, but I figured I'd try the book first. I went ahead and watched the first ten minutes and it was very similar to the book, and some of the narration was word for word from the book, althought it left a lot out. The battle reenactments were awful, and the gauls were fully dressed even though Deutsch said in the book that they fought naked from the waist up. The first episode covers up to the fifth century, so I'll probably watch it once I've gotten that far in the book.
4 x
Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien (roughly, the perfect is the enemy of the good)

French SC Books: 0 / 5000 (0/5000 pp)
French SC Films: 0 / 9000 (0/9000 mins)

jeffers
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Re: Jeffers- B1 French by June 2022

Postby jeffers » Tue Jul 27, 2021 4:42 pm

309 days to my goal, and I've hit an important related milestone before bed last night: I completed the total number of minutes needed to finish the film portion of my French Super Challenge. I'm now at 9009/9000 minutes. :D

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying Métronome far more than I felt I would while I was struggling through chapter 1. I've also watched episode 1 of the TV version on youtube, however the video quality is so bad I'm considering buying the DVD from amazon.fr (which also is supposed to have actual subtitles in Fr rather than the auto-generated ones on youtube, which are sometimes quite amusing!)
5 x
Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien (roughly, the perfect is the enemy of the good)

French SC Books: 0 / 5000 (0/5000 pp)
French SC Films: 0 / 9000 (0/9000 mins)

jeffers
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Location: UK
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Hindi (A2-B1)

Learning: The above, plus French (A2-B1), German (A1), Ancient Greek (?), Sanskrit (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=19785
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Re: Jeffers- B1 French by June 2022

Postby jeffers » Wed Jul 28, 2021 10:28 am

I've been thinking about output, and decided that I need to start small, and I hit upon a simple idea that will get me started writing but also help review my learning. When I make a mistake on Kwiziq, I will write out the correct sentence, and then write a few variations on the sentence. Too easy, perhaps, but the simplicity of the process should overcome any feeling of writer's block, and the repetition should help me assimilate the correct forms. The next step will be to take some of the words marked "difficult" by Memrise and write a few sample sentences for them.

I started doing this with a Kwiziq sentence using "du... au..." for dates, and the correction offered by Word amused me:
ms word correction.png
.
It's weird that Word offers auto-completion for the names of months but that the grammar checker doesn't know that they shouldn't be pluralized when following a number.

I also wrote in this thread (https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=9704&hilit=islands) another idea to keep it simple: find self-descriptions written by actual French people (rather than written for language learners), and simply adapt them to be about myself. The idea is that by rewriting native sefl-description I would be practicing self-description with more idiomatic language than what teachers want their students to do. Once I've found and re-written a decent number of self-descriptions, I would eventually write my own following the general patterns I find. Again, this is too easy, but as above is a good way to assimilate standard language and to overcome writer's block. In other words, doing the beginner stuff without sounding like a beginner. The problem is finding these descriptions, since my Google searches have just brought up lessons for beginners. Perhaps looking at profiles on some sort of social media? Does anyone have any suggestions?
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Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien (roughly, the perfect is the enemy of the good)

French SC Books: 0 / 5000 (0/5000 pp)
French SC Films: 0 / 9000 (0/9000 mins)

DaveAgain
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Re: Jeffers- B1 French by June 2022

Postby DaveAgain » Wed Jul 28, 2021 10:58 am

jeffers wrote:I also wrote in this thread (https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=9704&hilit=islands) another idea to keep it simple: find self-descriptions written by actual French people (rather than written for language learners), and simply adapt them to be about myself. The idea is that by rewriting native sefl-description I would be practicing self-description with more idiomatic language than what teachers want their students to do. Once I've found and re-written a decent number of self-descriptions, I would eventually write my own following the general patterns I find. Again, this is too easy, but as above is a good way to assimilate standard language and to overcome writer's block. In other words, doing the beginner stuff without sounding like a beginner. The problem is finding these descriptions, since my Google searches have just brought up lessons for beginners. Perhaps looking at profiles on some sort of social media? Does anyone have any suggestions?

Re: self-descriptions. You might want to look at the Easy french videos, and see if you could use some of those.
1 x

jeffers
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Re: Jeffers- B1 French by June 2022

Postby jeffers » Wed Jul 28, 2021 11:42 am

DaveAgain wrote:
jeffers wrote:I also wrote in this thread (https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=9704&hilit=islands) another idea to keep it simple: find self-descriptions written by actual French people (rather than written for language learners), and simply adapt them to be about myself. The idea is that by rewriting native sefl-description I would be practicing self-description with more idiomatic language than what teachers want their students to do. Once I've found and re-written a decent number of self-descriptions, I would eventually write my own following the general patterns I find. Again, this is too easy, but as above is a good way to assimilate standard language and to overcome writer's block. In other words, doing the beginner stuff without sounding like a beginner. The problem is finding these descriptions, since my Google searches have just brought up lessons for beginners. Perhaps looking at profiles on some sort of social media? Does anyone have any suggestions?

Re: self-descriptions. You might want to look at the Easy french videos, and see if you could use some of those.


A video from Easy French came up in my Google search, but as it is targeted at learners it doesn't quite meet my criterion.
1 x
Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien (roughly, the perfect is the enemy of the good)

French SC Books: 0 / 5000 (0/5000 pp)
French SC Films: 0 / 9000 (0/9000 mins)

Caromarlyse
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Re: Jeffers- B1 French by June 2022

Postby Caromarlyse » Thu Jul 29, 2021 6:54 am

Maybe look at examples of lettres de motivation, e.g. http://etudiant.aujourdhui.fr/etudiant/ ... ation.html? You'd need to adapt, and some stuff would be too formal for a light-hearted chat, but some examples at the link are more informal and include discussions of likes/hobbies as well as just the professional skills.
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