scivola wrote:For example, if there is a sentence like "It is a very interesting game", I can usually say "C'est un jeu très intéressant", no problem. But I sometimes have difficulty recalling whether that last word has two Rs and one S or vice-versa, which way the accent goes on the E, that kind of thing. Nothing that a couple of reviews hasn't been able to fix.
Ah, cool. So it sounds like these cards aren't turning into leeches at the moment. Keep an eye on them, though—once you get near the three month mark, you may find that you've forgotten the context of a particular lesson, or that you know two or three ways to say something and you can't remember which one to use on this particular card. If this happens, don't beat yourself up for not being able to answer these cards. You can always suspend them or convert them to an easier format. Like Rapp said, cards are disposable.
scivola wrote:And on the topic of Buffy, I guess I could look at the process of picking out easy sentences to study as kind of the inverse of your "delete ruthlessly" method. I effectively pre-delete them by not including them in my filtered deck in the first place. And if my process actually succeeds in teaching me some French , I should find that the sentences I find easy should gradually get more and more complicated as time goes by. So maybe just soldiering on with more episodes is the way to go, rather than trying to squeeze every last drop out of each one before moving on. It is more likely to keep things interesting, too.
Yeah, I would definitely be inclined to move onto newer episodes. Buffy has this thing where certain characters (especially Xander) will suddenly start talking very quickly, usually while trying to say something clever and witty. The "difficulty level" of Buffy is very uneven, basically, even within a single scene. You're better off cherry-picking the easier and more useful parts of the dialog and blowing off the rest.
scivola wrote:So I read a book that was artificially easy for me to understand to the best of my current ability, but made a point of trying to not get hung up on the hard parts.
An excellent strategy.
scivola wrote:This is probably the most speculative part of this experiment. I know it is somewhat ludicrous to try to use full-speed native audio at this point, but there are a couple of reasons to believe I can succeed.
First, it seems to be common for people's reading comprehension to exceed their listening comprehension ability. Given that Buffy has very accurate transcripts available, I figured that could be a big advantage that other series wouldn't necessarily have. If I can read a line of dialog in the transcript, I should eventually be able to understand the audio. That essentially what Assimil has you do, just in a much more gradual process.
Honestly, I think it's totally reasonable to be working with Buffy (via subs2srs), especially if you're cherry-picking the cards. I mean, my Spanish is probably weaker than your French, and I'm having a great time with Avatar, and I could probably tackle subs2srs-ing an easy movie soon if I wanted. Like you say, it works just like Assimil does, except that it's full-speed native audio with all the reductions and other challenges you'd find in real conversation. It's awesome having good listening comprehension from the beginning, and you're right that subs2srs forces you to confront all sorts of details.
I'll be following your log, and don't hesitate to ping me if you ever reach a point where things seem frustrating or unproductive. It sounds like you're having a lot of fun right now, and making good progress. But I feel some responsibility towards people who try experiments based on the ideas in my log. Good luck with your very cool project!