The Frenchification of Mademoiselle R

[Ani]

As to the accent, are you shadowing the audio with assimil ? If not, you should. The more you a attempt to form the French sounds with that instant feedback is heading toward vs the audio the better it will get. Not that you should add more courses right now but the FSI French basic course has also really helped my pronunciation of whole phrases.

No, I haven't done any shadowing of Assimil (or anything else). It definitely sounds like something which could be helpful in terms of accent. Thanks for the tip - I will look into that, for sure!

FSI Basic is also on my plan for when I am finished with Assimil. I've heard such good things about it.

Oops. Swype and I don't get along. Part of that post is totally unintelligible. Sorry. Hope you got the point. Instant feedback of your voice vs. the audio

[rlnv]

Vocabulary/SRS
Now, I have a bit of a dilemma when it comes to vocabulary retention. So far, I have been using Anki for this and have been adding all my cards individually by typing them out, as I come across new vocab in courses, book, podcasts, etc. I use the Awesome TTS add-on with the Manon voice, which I think is pretty realistic, and it's great to have the sound of the words reinforced as I do the reps. However, I am now finding Anki incredibly boring and time consuming and I honestly can't see myself continuing with this method long-term. It's not so much the reps I don't like - it's purely the creation of cards that is starting to become torturous. I am aware there are lots of shared Anki decks available that I could download, but I really don't see the point of adding thousands of new cards at once that I have never seen in context and trying to learn them. Am I missing something on this point? Is there value in adding a shared deck and just ploughing on through it and learning words in advance of coming across them in courses, native material etc.? Does everyone find Anki boring and should I just stop whining, suck it up and get on with it as a necessary evil?

Anki can be evil and is well known to turn into a torture machine very quickly. The trick is to turn it into a friendly lap dog, man’s best friend and all.

I've used it on and off during my studies, and found the best way to tame it is to not use it for "studying". That means cards with unknown words, phrases, etc., are not added. It seems my brain does not react well to brute force memorization, well-spaced out by SRS, or not. What does seem to work very well for me is to use Anki to reinforce what I already know, or kind-of-sort-of-know.

I've seen that over time there is a lot of repeating going on. The same words, phrases, and grammar keep showing up time and again, maybe with slight variations. This happens with course content, books, and shows, anywhere I have encountered the French language. The more encounters the better I become at recognizing it, and becoming familiar with it so that it gets retained. This has a multiplying affect. It's a slow natural progression and it will/must occur with steady contact with the language.

That brings into play frequency. Some things occur more frequently than others. So now that I've discovered firsthand how my brain acquires French, I use Anki to help it along. I put stuff in Anki that is already known to some degree but I need to see it more often to increase my recollection of it. For example, I'm reading a page in a book and enjoying the story when I encounter a word or phrase that I know I've seen before, but it takes a moment to think about it, or maybe even a dictionary lookup to recall it. That make a prime Anki card! And the trick it to not overdo it. In the beginning there are many more potential candidates, and selectivity is important. I fight the urge to put lots of stuff in Anki knowing it's turned into a beast real quick in the past. Occasionally I will add stuff that I've never seen before, but the card must have really good context so that it's very apparent what the answer is, like a sentence that re-enforces the unknown word very strongly.

When I add cards that are already on the edge of my knowledge, or extremely good context, for repetitions that don't occur often naturally, it helps the speed at which I recall the word the next time I randomly encounter it. The benefits of doing this for me have included understand dialog in Buffy when I've never heard the word before, but having read it a few times, and seen it a few more in Anki. Plus the cards don't burn me out because they are much easier to answer without that brute force. If I keep missing answering a card correctly, its gone.

Other things that work well in Anki for me are things that I encounter that are just plain interesting and I want to memorize them. These type of cards are also easier to recall when they come up in Anki because the are interesting.

To add a point regarding pre-made Anki decks. There is one out there based on the 5000 most frequent words in French. If you load it with the default settings, it will present cards in order of frequency. So you don't need to get bogged down in, say, word 3467 when you may really be wanting to look at the first few hundred words for example. I'm just throwing this out there if it may help now or in the future evaluate if that pre-made deck is right for you or not.

[Rebecca]

To add a point regarding pre-made Anki decks. There is one out there based on the 5000 most frequent words in French. If you load it with the default settings, it will present cards in order of frequency. So you don't need to get bogged down in, say, word 3467 when you may really be wanting to look at the first few hundred words for example. I'm just throwing this out there if it may help now or in the future evaluate if that pre-made deck is right for you or not.

Thank you for that thoughtful post, rlnv. Your advice echoes all the other pieces of info I have read from experienced learners regarding the use of Anki. I really think selectivity is key, although I still get the urge to add *all* the things to my deck.

I now know that I will not continue with making cards individually by typing them all out. It is far too time consuming and I suspect the time could be better used on another activity. I checked out the shared deck of 5,000 frequency words which you helpfully mentioned, and I'm considering just powering through it to bootstrap the first few thousand words. Another option is Memrise, where I discovered the same deck of 5,000 words available as a course with audio.

Either way, I don't think SRS will be a long term part of my language learning. I can't see myself as one of those learners who are still doing their reps, 3, 4 or 5 years later. The thought makes me a little sick, to be honest. If I choose to continue with either Anki or Memrise, I will be using it as a means to an end, and most likely using one the 5,000 word decks as a kick-start to my vocabulary and the fastest access route into native materials.

Or I may just abandon SRS altogether and take my chances with a good old notebook.

[PeterMollenburg]

Nice log Rebecca- not sure why I hadn't checked it out earlier. I'm tagging along for the journey now How did you find FSI Phonology btw, out of curiosity?

[Rebecca]

Nice log Rebecca- not sure why I hadn't checked it out earlier. I'm tagging along for the journey now How did you find FSI Phonology btw, out of curiosity?

Hey, thanks, Peter! Nice to have you along!

I have mixed feelings about the FSI French Phonology course. I estimate that I spent about 25-30 hours on completing it, and I feel I covered it reasonably thoroughly (although I have no idea how long people ususally spend on it). I'm glad I did it, and I feel like it did me some good regarding recognising phonemes, but purely looking at it in terms of how it improved my accent, then I have to say I was a bit disappointed with its results. I don't feel like it has made a difference to my bad accent, which is primarily what I was hoping to get out of it.

I should qualify this by stating that I did the course right at the beginning of my French learning and I am extremely bad at imitating accents even in English. Perhaps I would have benefitted from it more a little further along in my studies. I have been considering running through it again in a second pass in a few months from now, to see if I get more out of it. However, I'm really not sure that someone at your level would benefit from this course very much. It seems a little basic for someone who already has a good level of French and a great accent.

Perhaps you could try auditing a couple of units to see if you take away anything new from it?

[garyb]

I did FSI French Phonology a few years ago and I was also a bit disappointed. I found it repetitive yet not very comprehensive, and many of the things it explained were things I already knew (dental Ds and Ts, not aspirating voiceless plosives, etc.). I did pick up a few tips but overall I also feel that it didn't improve my bad accent very much. It could be a useful course for someone quite new to the language (which is the intention: it's supposed to be a precursor to the main FSI course) or someone whose accent is extremely bad and wants to move it to not as bad, but even at that there are surely better resources out there.

I'm not sure what these better resources are though. "La prononciation française pour de vrai" is decent, as it focuses on prosody as well as individual sounds. It didn't make my accent perfect, but it did give me a better foundation. I've heard good things about "D'accord" and "Pronounce it perfectly" but I've not used either.

[Rebecca]

A quick update:

Well, the last couple of months have been extremely difficult. A sudden and unexpected death in the family has ensured all French activity has gone completely out of the window. I'm now trying my best to get back to 'normal' and re-start my French study, but with the stress of recent months I feel like my brain has just dumped out whatever knowledge I had already acquired. It's strange but it really feels like years since I did any French, rather than a couple of months. I almost feel like I'm starting from scratch. I suppose I will need to go back and try to review the material I had already covered and see what I remember.

My health is not great at the moment either as recent events have caused a flare up of my auto-immune condition.

I really don't like to write 'woe is me' posts, but I promised myself I would keep up with this log as a motivational aid, so I wanted to give an update on why I have not been around lately.

Anyway, the recent situation has really impressed upon me that life is short. Often much too short. And I have lots of things I want to achieve, so... on y va.

[MamaPata]

I am really sorry to hear that - my condolences to you and your family.

I am sure that it will come back to you once you get back into the rhythm of it, especially because you have such a positive attitude towards it all. But also, don't push yourself too hard - your health needs to be your priority! I will look forward to hearing how it all goes.

[Rebecca]

End of Year Reflections and Progress Report

It's certainly been quite a year, and as 2016 is almost at its end, it's time to look back on my progress over the last 12 months and see where I am at with my French learning project.

I started the year as a blank slate; a complete beginner who could not even formulate a basic sentence. On January 1st 2016, I posted some goals I wanted to achieve this year:

My goals for the year are:

Approximately B1 Level
5,000 word passive vocabulary
Ability to hold a simple conversation

Did I achieve my goals this year?

Well, all I can rightfully say is

Oh, and a little

And not forgetting quite a bit of

Honestly, if this forum had a 'rolling around on the floor in slightly hysterical laughter regarding my New Year optimism' emoji, I would add a bit of that too.

Oh, poor, poor naive me.

In short - no, I in no way achieved my goals.

To be fair to myself, this has been an utterly terrible year for me and one which I consider a complete write off. If I could I would press rewind and jump straight to 2017. There have been numerous issues to deal with: my ongoing chronic illness which has not been playing nicely at all and has been extremely unpredictable this year; a new inflammatory eye problem (related to my main health problem) which has felt like my eyes have been burning two holes through my head for the better part of six months; the constant back and forth between hospitals, doctors and specialists; and to top it all off, the death of a loved one.

The available time and energy for learning French in the spaces between dealing with these issues has been much less than I would have liked.

But did I make some progress this year? Do I know more French now than I did back in January?

Undoubtedly, yes.

I started as complete beginner and now I would estimate my French skills as roughly A1. My reading level is perhaps slightly higher than that, but my speaking would be a shaky A1, I imagine.

Much more importantly, I feel I have learned some valuable things about how I like to learn, what kind of resources I enjoy and what I find most effective. I probably wasted some time this year figuring all these things out. But that is a necessary part of the language learning game, I guess.

I have also noticed that I have a tendency to put too much pressure on myself to attain certain goals in a short space of time. I have always had this perfectionist element to my personality and it can sometimes be a hindrance. You would think that after almost 20 years of having a chronic illness I would have learned how to pace myself and to know my limitations, but no. I find I still frequently over-estimate what I can do with the mental and physical energy available to me. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing: either it shows my optimism remains undimmed or I have a monumental lack of self-awareness.

I have realised I also need to stop comparing myself to other language learners, particularly those who may have better health than me or much more energy. The amazing success stories we can read on this forum and others of language learners reaching dizzying heights of attainment in impossibly short time frames can be a double-edged sword: they can be hugely inspiring but also can induce feelings of stress and disappointment when, ineveitably, we cannot emulate them.

Goals for 2017

My goal for the coming year is - ironically - not to make any new goals.

I just want to Do. Some. French.

I want to take things at my own pace and see where I end up at the end of the year. I aim to try to be the tortoise and not the hare this year. Hopefully I will know more French in December 2017 than I do now and that is really all I can plan for.

I will carry on logging films and books for the Super Challenge and carry on where I left off with Assimil and other resources.

Thank you to everyone who has read or commented in my log this year - I truly appreciate it when people pop in to give me words of advice and encouragement!

Bring on 2017. I am so ready for a fresh start.

[Teango]

Congratulations on levelling up in French this year, R! Considering the year you've had, you can consider your A1 an honorary B1. Suffering a serious autoimmune illness myself for about the same amount of time, I completely get how hard it can be to deal with flare-ups and bad news days, not alone master Mollière. Stick with it and don't let that perfectionist part of you beat yourself up too much about what other people do, and slowly but surely, you'll reach your goal real soon. Bonne et heureuse année!