Van's French Log

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
Van
White Belt
Posts: 24
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2021 8:08 am
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N)
French (low intermediate B1)
German (beginner A2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17374
x 124

Van's French Log

Postby Van » Fri Oct 29, 2021 3:20 am

Hi everyone!

I started learning French about 2 years ago and was quite consistent for a solid year. I was studying most days, took regular italki lessons and got to a B1 level. Then I got busy and I just stopped and it's been about a year since I last touched French.

I'm wanting to restart my studies and thought that I will keep a weekly log to help keep myself accountable.
Since I think I've forgotten everything, my plan is to just focus on listening for a couple of weeks to reacquaint myself with the language.
12 x

Van
White Belt
Posts: 24
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2021 8:08 am
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N)
French (low intermediate B1)
German (beginner A2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17374
x 124

Re: Van's French Log

Postby Van » Thu Nov 04, 2021 8:51 am

This week I started listening to the audiobook of Deep Work (Translated) by Cal Newport and am about halfway through. My comprehension is quite low (less than 50%) though I'm happy to find that I didn't forget as much as I thought over the past year. I'm not looking up words or anything so the listening is just to train to ears. I'm probably going to continue with just this passive listening until I clear a few projects off my plate in a couple of weeks since it's easy enough to fit into my day even when I'm busy. After that, I'll have to think about a plan of attack to level up my French.

Week 1 = 4.3 hours
Listening = 4.3 hours

Total = 4.3 hours
Listening = 4.3 hours
5 x

Van
White Belt
Posts: 24
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2021 8:08 am
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N)
French (low intermediate B1)
German (beginner A2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17374
x 124

Re: Van's French Log

Postby Van » Tue Nov 09, 2021 10:33 pm

This week, I finished listening to the audiobook of Deep Work. I would estimate my comprehension to be 50% which might be too low for me to get much out of it, so next week, I'll try some easier stuff instead - I have a couple of graded reader aimed at A1-A2 that I bought last year and never used, so I'll go through those.

I also listened to an episode of the Parlons Péloches podcast, and started listening to the audiobook of La Peste by Camus. My comprehension of La Peste is super low, less than 20%, but I actually don't mind since the reader has such a beautiful, relaxing voice that it's helping me get to sleep easier :D

Week 2 = 7.2 hours
Listening = 7.2 hours

Total = 11.5 hours
Listening = 11.5 hours
5 x

Van
White Belt
Posts: 24
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2021 8:08 am
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N)
French (low intermediate B1)
German (beginner A2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17374
x 124

Re: Van's French Log

Postby Van » Mon Nov 15, 2021 11:56 pm

Week 3 update: Lots of listening. I got through couple of audiobooks aimed at beginner learners or young children. They were definitely the right level for me but so boring.

    - Audiobook: Le Pendentif: Short stories in Easy French by Sylvie Laine (comprehension ~90%)
    - Audiobook: Voyage en France: A short novel in Easy French by Sylvie Laine (90%)
    - Audiobook: Histories a lire le soir 1 by Marc Thil (70%)
    - Watched about 10 mins of Peppa Pig each day (95%)
    - Watched "You" Season 2 (50-70%).
    - Started 1 week free trial of Speakly and tested into the Intermediate III level. So far it seems useful and I'm thinking I might get a 3 month subscription.

I also tried reading but there were too many words and phrases that I didn't know so was pretty painful. I think Speakly might be useful to ease into reading. I also found I was not confident at all with pronunciation. I think more listening should help as well as listening and reading along but I'm doubtful that listening alone will be enough to develop confidence with pronunciation, so I may need to do some specific pronunciation practice. I don't want to be pronouncing incorrectly in my head when reading and get bad habits. I won't be able to take italki lessons until probably the second half of next year so won't be able to get my pronunciation corrected so need to make sure I'm paying attention to it myself.

I've set myself a few goals:
: 23 / 200 200 300 hours of listening
: 0 / 100 100 hours of listening with text
: 0 / 500 500 exercices de phonetique (A1/A2)
: 0 / 500 500 exercices de phonetique (B1/B2)
Last edited by Van on Tue Nov 30, 2021 8:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
2 x
French Super Challenge 2022/2023:
: 18 / 100 Books
: 13 / 100 Films

Van
White Belt
Posts: 24
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2021 8:08 am
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N)
French (low intermediate B1)
German (beginner A2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17374
x 124

Re: Van's French Log

Postby Van » Tue Nov 23, 2021 4:57 am

Week 4 update: Work's been very busy but I did manage about 15 minutes of Speakly everyday. Today I started reading Dune - Tome 1 by Frank Herbert with the audiobook. It's a bit of a stretch for my level so I need to look up lots of unknown words.
5 x
French Super Challenge 2022/2023:
: 18 / 100 Books
: 13 / 100 Films

Van
White Belt
Posts: 24
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2021 8:08 am
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N)
French (low intermediate B1)
German (beginner A2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17374
x 124

Re: Van's French Log

Postby Van » Tue Nov 30, 2021 8:36 am

Week 5 update: A little bit of reading this week. Not as much as I'd like as work's been really busy.

Continued reading Dune. I got to around 7% and was feeling a bit lost so have restarted and it's clearer the second time through. I was trying to read and listen to the audiobook at the same time thinking it would help me connect the written words to the pronunciation but I found I can't multitask well - I was neither listening nor reading properly. I'm now doing the reading and listening separately.
I've started reading L'Anomalie and so far so good. Easier than Dune but I'm still missing a lot so will do some re-reading of it too.
Also started a fairly generic chick lit book which is easier again. I think this type of book may be the best for me from a language learning perspective as it's a simple story with everyday scenarios and can read it quite fluently and can mostly guess the unknown words from context, but it's just less interesting to me and I'm not sure if I will finish it.

I'm liking having a few books with different difficulties on the go so I've got options depending on how tired I am.

: 7 / 100 Dune - Frank Herbert
: 5 / 100 L'Anomalie - Hervé Le Tellier
: 7 / 100 La vie révée des chaussettes orphelines - Marie Vareille
7 x
French Super Challenge 2022/2023:
: 18 / 100 Books
: 13 / 100 Films

Van
White Belt
Posts: 24
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2021 8:08 am
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N)
French (low intermediate B1)
German (beginner A2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17374
x 124

Re: Van's French Log

Postby Van » Mon Dec 06, 2021 8:41 am

Week 6 update: Some reading this week. I haven't been following my plan to be doing mostly listening but I'm just happy I'm doing anything at all since I've been a bit stressed with work lately. When I start holidays in a weeks time, I'll make sure to have more balanced studies.

: 7 / 100 Dune - Frank Herbert
: 5 / 100 L'Anomalie - Hervé Le Tellier
: 22 / 100 La vie révée des chaussettes orphelines - Marie Vareille
: 15 / 100 Ne le dis a personne - Harlan Coben

I also took the Kwiziq placement test this week and my recommended level is B1:
20211205_104105.jpg
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
4 x
French Super Challenge 2022/2023:
: 18 / 100 Books
: 13 / 100 Films

Van
White Belt
Posts: 24
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2021 8:08 am
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N)
French (low intermediate B1)
German (beginner A2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17374
x 124

Re: Van's French Log

Postby Van » Sat Dec 11, 2021 8:08 am

I've been continuing with reading and audiobooks but hardly anything. I really need to work on not letting the crunch times at work completely derail everything else in my life :cry: One thing I've noticed is that when I'm tired I tend to try to skim-read so skip over words or sometimes reading words out of order. I need to watch myself to not do that!
I'll have another couple of very busy days at work and then I'm on holidays which I'm planning to use make some progress with French.

2022 Goals
I like tracking and checklists - they usually keeps me motived, so I'm giving myself some goals for 2022 (starting now) to track. I was tracking hours/pages but to make things simpler, I'm just going to track whole books and Tv series etc. instead. These goals will be a challenge for me (especially the reading) but I'd like to see how close I can get.

: 0 / 26 Read 26 books (books over 500pg count as 2)
: 0 / 12 Listen to 12 audiobooks
: 0 / 26 Watch 26 seasons of TV
: 0 / 12 Watch 12 films
: 0 / 52 Grammaire Progressive du francais - niveau intermediaire
: 0 / 500 500 exercices de phonetique (A1/A2)
: 0 / 500 500 exercices de phonetique (B1/B2)

On top of the main goals, I want to set myself a focus point or mini-goal from time to time for shorter time periods (1 week to 1 month) if there's something I want to work on or just to shake up my routine. For the 3 weeks from 18th Dec to 9th Jan, my focus will be pronunciation because I feel I need to work on it. I will need to do at least one of the following every day. The bar will be super low so 1 song or shadowing 1 sentence will count.

    - Phonetic exercises from "500 exercices de phonetique (A1/A2)". I've already been through these exercises when I first started 2 years ago and found them very useful at the time but I could use a refresher.
    - Singing songs
    - Reading aloud/Repeating/Shadowing audiobook. For this, I wanted a book with short chapters, no passe simple, female main characters and female voice actress (because I'm female), written in the first person and no unusual vocabulary. I found "Il est grand temps de rallumer les etoiles" which fits the bill. **

** I've recorded myself reading the blurb for this book so I have a starting point to compare back to. My ear is not good enough to tell what exactly is wrong with my pronunciation but I can tell it needs work.

5 x
French Super Challenge 2022/2023:
: 18 / 100 Books
: 13 / 100 Films

Van
White Belt
Posts: 24
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2021 8:08 am
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N)
French (low intermediate B1)
German (beginner A2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17374
x 124

Re: Van's French Log

Postby Van » Sat Apr 30, 2022 11:13 am

For the first 3 months of this year, I did zero French study. I had lost all motivation for French with recovering from some pretty bad work/lockdown burnout I had last year and then readjusting back to normal life. In April, I started reintroducing French very slowly, mostly using Speakly, and the past week or so, I've also started listening to an audiobook, did the first couple of chapters of Grammaire Progressive (Intermediare), and watched a couple of episodes of dubbed The Good Place. I've refound my motivation and to capitalise off that, I've signed up for both the Super Challenge and the 6 Week Challenge! I also plan to take a trip to France next year so that's helping :D

I also want to take the B1 exam possibly this year or next. Purely to have a goal to work towards and to have something to show for the effort. The next sessions in Sydney are in November, but I have a bunch of plans up in the air so I have to see whether that will work for me. In any case, I want to aim to be B1 exam ready by November.

6 Week Challenge
I think my starting point is: Speaking and Writing - A1, Reading - A2, Listening - A2/B1.
In addition to the books and films/tv for the super challenge, I have these resources:
- Speakly (I'll aim to use 5x a week, on weekdays)
- Grammaire progressive du francais - niveau intermediare (1 chapter on the weekends)
- Les 500 exercices de phonetique A1-A2 (1 chapter on the weekends)
- Edito B1 (probably won't use yet)
- Audiobooks
- Podcasts
9 x
French Super Challenge 2022/2023:
: 18 / 100 Books
: 13 / 100 Films

Van
White Belt
Posts: 24
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2021 8:08 am
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N)
French (low intermediate B1)
German (beginner A2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17374
x 124

Re: Van's French Log

Postby Van » Sat May 07, 2022 7:16 am

Week 1 of the 6WC and SC is done and I'm very happy with what I got done this week! The tracking and competition aspect definitely has motivated me. I'm going to aim for at least a double pace when I do have the time and motivation because inevitably there will be periods when I don't.

This week, I got through: 5.1 “book units” and 5.4 “film units”.
And for the 6WC, I did an additional 5h47m consisting of:
- 152 min of audiobooks (I decided to not count audiobooks as super challenge films)
- 95 min of grammar. I’m now up to Chapter 7 of Grammaire Progressive - Niveau intermediare
- 45 mins of Speakly
- 38 min of L-R (listening while reading along - I’m also not counting this in the super challenge)
- 18 minutes of “500 Exercices de Phonetique (A1/A2)

Initially reading was really painful, but after the first 100 pages, I noticed the first little jump of improvement where I could read a bit more fluidly. I seem to have an aversion to looking up unknown words so haven't been and just powering through. I probably should though since my vocabulary is currently my biggest issue for my reading. I've started "Tout le bleu du ciel" which I'm enjoying so far and I can understand everything that's happening (just a few words here and there), and I'm nearing the end of "Ne le dis a personne" which is pretty blurry at this point, I've definitely missed some threads but am still able to follow the main plot line (only just!).

Finished this week:
Books
1. Oscar et la dame rose, Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt. 81 pages. Loved this book! Wasn't too difficult to read. There were quite a few words I didn't know but didn't look them up and didn't really miss much.
TV
1. The Good Place S01
2. The Good Place S02. My comprehension ~ 75%.
Films
1. Bigbug (2022). Wacky film. My comprehension wasn't very good but still enjoyed the film as it was very visual.

Progress on my 2022 goals:
Slow start to the year but I think I still have a good shot at completing these.
: 1 / 26 Read 26 books (books over 500pg count as 2)
: 0 / 12 Listen to 12 audiobooks
: 2 / 26 Watch 26 seasons of TV
: 1 / 12 Watch 12 films
: 7 / 52 Grammaire Progressive du francais - niveau intermediaire
: 16 / 461 500 exercices de phonetique (A1/A2)
: 0 / 500 500 exercices de phonetique (B1/B2)
6 x
French Super Challenge 2022/2023:
: 18 / 100 Books
: 13 / 100 Films


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: wynnsam and 2 guests