I’ve had a pretty intense period at work which prevented me from really getting back into the established routine I would like. But, it is what it is. And its not going to change for at least five months so …. Eh, I will keep trying!
But I have continued to do lots of French stuff when I can and have definitely been noticing improvement in my listening comprehension. Spoken French is definitely a lot less incomprehensible stream of mush and more individual words strung together to create meaning! Who knew! However I can’t stop to think or I lose the thread entirely. I’m like Wile E Coyote walking off a cliff - he’s totally fine until he notices there’s nothing under him, then he starts to fall. But that’s an big improvement on a couple of months ago and I can only assume if I keep doing what I’m doing I’ll reach the next stage too.
I’ve noticed this improvement in listening to some of the French audiobooks I’ve accrued. I have even been able to basically follow what’s happening, although I’m not where I can listen to them for pleasure. However, for the first time being able to listen to an audiobook in French and understand it all seems doable.
I watched
this three hour documentary on the history of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic. OK, this is not everyone’s idea of a fun time but it’s very well done and accessible. I definitely understood it well enough to follow the history and the different arguments, although of course I missed details. But I got a lot out of it. The exception to this was Valéry Giscard d'Estaing who was around 90 when he was interviewed for it and, like many very old people, the quality of the voice was just so very gruff and mumbly and a lot harder to understand. But the rest were fine.
I also try to listen to at least the first part of the audio podcast version of the political panel show
C dans l’air most days and again I understand it well enough to follow most of the arguments in general.
Of course these are “controlled” inputs where people are generally speaking clearly (except you, VGE!) and more formally. It’s a long way from understanding spontaneous, everyday speech but understanding this level of stuff is on the road to being able to better understand that so overall I’m very pleased with my obvious improvement.
I don't plan to do the DELF B2 until sometime next year but I enrolled in the mock at the Alliance Francaise, unfortunately it was cancelled due to not enough people actually doing the exam signing up. However, I did go to a two hour thing on Zoom the AF did on the history of French comedy in films, its was all in French and very enjoyable so I'll try to do more of the 'cultural workshops' they do.
I’ve reached a quarter of the way through my 200 ‘films’ SuperChallenge. 200 might have been a bit ambitious but I’ll give it my best shot. The reading number lags a bit because I don’t count them until I’ve finished the whole book. My current one is a ~650 page biography of Charles Aznavour so that will be 12 ‘books’ when I’ve finished. But it may take me a while since, at a sentence level, its quite dense and packed with minutiae and I’m going through it pretty slowly, only a few percent in on the Kindle. At least I can say I am now extremely well briefed on birth certificate conventions in the Ottoman Empire, the opening and closing of various Armenian restaurants in 1920s Paris and the regional theatre circuit during WW2! I think by the end of November I should have read 5,000 pages in total and about 20 books in 2022.
Another major thing I did was tried LingoCulture for a month.
https://lingoculture.com/start-here/ I saw this
in a post by jackb on the Language deals thread. It’s basically a set fee each month for as many lessons as you want (Baselang does the same thing for Spanish). The introductory price is $99/month, supposed to go up to $149 or something at some point. So for a few weeks I was doing a conversation class every morning before work.
All the teachers were from Algeria or Lebanon and every one I had were really terrific. Interesting, accomplished women – a couple of them doing PhDs in various subjects and easy to talk to. On the other hand, the whole enterprise felt a bit flimsy. There only seem to be 10-13 teachers? At least that’s how many I was shown when I looked at the list. Also, the classes are advertised as 45 mins but on the free version of Zoom they use you only get 40 mins so that’s what they were. An unnerving countdown appears with 10 mins to go and then it just … stops abruptly. I personally didn’t mind the 40 mins (I feel a bit guilty about how little per hour this all costs me anyway) but the fact that the sole reason they were 40 mins was that’s what free Zoom accounts give you lends the whole thing an air of … fragility. There were several technical glitches with the website but to their credit I was always able to chat with a real person promptly (and in English) to get them fixed. I am not continuing just because of my schedule but it could be a good option if you really want a lot of talking practice, assuming they don’t just disappear one day which honestly wouldn’t surprise me. So five stars for the teachers and a bit of a question mark on the longevity of the rest.
) it was playing on the TV in the corner like a dark joke and I will never forget it. 
and I've been trying to think of one or two exercises I could do daily or almost in that time. What would be the most useful? 
I hope to impress them the same way one day .... Yes, that that of thing is exactly what I want too - a variety of things, bit of current affairs, bit of faits divers, maybe a long profile of someone, letters to the editor, science, sport.
