Once more into the fray... again // Robbie's Log (FR)

[robbierobbie2]

Can't remember which email address I used to log onto my old account, so robbierobbie2 has been born.

Here's a link to my old log with my old account : https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17391

Unfortunately, I basically haven't made any progress since then. I'm not exactly sure what happened. I think my priorities just shifted, and other hobbies took the space that languages left behind. I'm now approaching my bi-yearly period of annoyance where I realize another year is going by without me being fluent in any language other than English. I'm known amongst my friends as "the language learner", but I don't really have much to show for it other than the fact that I'm able to stutter through a conversation in French and German.

Between the start and the end of that last log, I had logged 111 hours of French listening. Since then, I'm up to 137 hours, which means I've done roughly 26 hours of French listening over the last 6 months, whereas I was previously doing that same amount of time each week.

I'm headed back to university in early-2023, and my current job contract ends at the end of August. I've decided that, instead of seeking out short-term employment, I'm going to live off savings for 5 months and make it my sole priority to reach C1 in French. I'd love to reach a well-rounded C1 level, but I don't mind settling for a passive-C1, considering I don't seek out ways to practice writing and, even less so, speaking. It's been 6 years since I started studying French, but most of my progress was made in months 6 - 24 where I was the most dedicated. I passed the B2 exam in 2018, but it's been downhill from there, and after many futile attempts at maintaining my level, I feel more at ease calling myself a strong-B1. During my periods of heightened motivation, I'm often flirting with a strong B2-level, but it always slips away during my subsequent periods of apathy.

To give you an idea on my current level, last night I searched "anime VF" on YouTube, and clicked the first unknown show that popped up. It was a show called Owari No Seraph, and I'm able to comfortably watch it without subtitles. I'll copy the words that I had to check or double-check.

Nous allons prendre sous notre tutelle tous les enfants de ce secteur.
Toi, tu devrais arrêter de leur obéir au doigt et à l'œil.
Je ne suis pas leur garde-manger.
Le fauteur de trouble veut-il venir aussi ?
Tu dépasse les bornes, frérot.
Dorénavant, tu as une grande famille.
Il faut que j’aille faire la tambouille.
Tâche de perdre ta mauvaise humeur en chemin. (Knew the word but wasn't familiar with the construction).
Tu peux pas continuer à porter ce fardeau tout seul.
Ça va aller comme sur des roulettes.
Tout est déjà planifiée.
Je vous attendais mon pauvre petit agneau.
Je me suis régalé.
Dépêche-toi de partir, abruti.
... du moment que ça me permet d'anéantir ces vampires jusqu'au dernier.

I'd say most of these words I was able to get from context, but I checked them anyway because I feel like my understanding of French will remain fuzzy until I solidify these words that I "partially-know".

I'd say the only words that I definitely haven't heard before are,

Dorénavant - from now on. The only way I know to say this is "à partir de maintenant", so it's a useful synonym.
La tambouille - grub, food
se régaler - to feast

The Way Forward

Anyway, I'm still working 9-to-5 for next 4 - 5 weeks, but I'm going to try to approach 15 - 20 hours of French a week, with about 10% of that being intensive reading and the rest of it being a mixture of extensive reading and intensive & extensive listening.

[robbierobbie2]

Hasn't been exactly a week since I jumped back into French, but I want to get back into the habit of updating my log on Monday mornings.

Tuesday, July 26th - Sunday, July 31st
The Numbers

Listened to the first 20 lessons of Le Français Par La Méthode Nature on the Ayan Academy YouTube channel. Total: 3 hours, 17 minutes.
Watched French TV for 10 hours, 55 minutes.

So just over 14 hours in total, which is good since my goal was 15 - 20 hours and I'm stopping the count after 6 days as opposed to 7. I definitely would've hit the goal if I chose to count today as well, but it's just easier to think of it in terms of Monday - Sunday than Tuesday - Monday. I already did two-and-a-half hours of intensive reading today, but that'll go towards next week's count.

If we include the Nature Method hours, it means I've hit 150 hours of French listening practice since November, 2021 (10 months ago). I've debated whether or not I want to publicly sign up for something like the Super Challenge, especially if I'm going to be working on French full-time starting in September, but what stops me is the reading component. The fact that I hit 150 hours in 10 months (with a near-6 month break in between) means I could probably finish the audio Double Challenge, but then I'd need to hit 10K pages in reading as well I could probably do that if I was fully reading extensively, but I really feel like my French needs to fine-tuned through hours and hours of intensive reading. We'll see.

So anyway, I went through the first 20 lessons of Le Français Par La Méthode Nature simply because I was interested in how the method worked and didn't want to tempt myself by using the method in another language (Italian, Spanish, Latin, etc.) Nevertheless, it was useful. It was much too slow for my level, but I tried to imagine I was going through the course with somebody else, teaching the basics of French to them. It helped revitalize my knowledge of the very basics, which will probably be a good thing going forward. All in all, I'm pretty impressed with the course and although I'm not going to continue watching the rest of the videos, I'll definitely recommend it to others if a friend ever mentions they want to start learning another language.

With regards to TV, I've basically only been watching French dubbed anime. I don't really watch anime in my day-to-day life, but I always find myself drawn to anime during my periods of language learning, simply because there's so much available, and it gives me an excuse to revisit my youth (I say this as somebody in their early 20s, lol). For example, I often watch Dragon Ball Z, and spent a lot of time this week watching Yu-Gi-Oh GX, which I haven't seen since I was about 12 or 13. I see it a bit like killing two birds with one stone. I get to bask in nostalgia, and my French improves.

Didn't do any intensive reading this week, but started some this morning. Which brings us to...

The Way Forward

This morning, I had a 2.5 hour intensive reading session with À la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust. I read about 27% of it (in French) in 2018, and I recently read Swann's Way in English, so I have those memories to lean on. Nonetheless, it's still pretty challenging, but I enjoyed the session. I'll continue reading it as long as I'm enjoying wrestling with it. I might opt for short, intensive sessions with Proust and extensive reading sessions with something like Percy Jackson or Harry Potter. We'll see.

With regards to overall time goals for this upcoming week, I'm aiming for 20+ hours again.

Anime and Proust let's go!

[robbierobbie2]

Monday, August 1st - Sunday, August 7th
The Numbers

French TV for 20 hours, 53 minutes.
Intensive reading + Anki for 17 hours, 36 minutes.

Total for the week: 38 hours, 29 minutes.

So, in short, I completely blasted past my goal of 20 hours of input. I'm very pleased with this number, especially considering I'm still working 9-5 until the end of August, and my personal challenge of "five months of full-time French studying" only starts in September.

Of course, this doesn't mean I did 40 hours of work and nearly 40 hours of studying. There was quite a bit of overlap (i.e. moments where I'm not busy at work and can read a few pages of a French novel, or whip out my phone and watch the final few minutes of a French Netflix show, or finish my Anki cards for the day, etc.).

I definitely won't be studying French for 80 hours a week when my job contract is over, lol. I'll likely stick to a goal of 40 hours a week, even though I'll have those hours from 9am to 5pm "freed up". This is because the only reason I'm able to hit 38 hours of French in a week is because I live in the countryside, in a village of 600 people. Once my job contract is over, I'm moving back to the city where my friends and family live. At the moment, I only see them on weekends (I have to take a bus), so my social life from Monday to Friday is basically nonexistent. When I'm back in the city, this won't be the case, especially since I'll be living with 2 room-mates. Thus, 40 hours a week is the maximum goal I'm aiming for, with a rough goal of about 1000 hours by the end of this full-time study challenge.

In terms of French TV, I had a good mix of animated and live-action shows this week, with about 12 hours, 49 minutes being live-action, and the rest being animated or anime. Within live-action, some of it was dubbed (about 3 hours, 39 minutes, which I watched without subtitles), and the rest was native French TV (which I watched with French subtitles, unless it wasn't the first time I was watching the show / movie). The animated content, by definition, was also dubbed in French, and without subtitles.

In terms of comprehension, a conservative estimate is that I'm able to understand 90 - 95% or more of slice-of-life anime, and about 80 - 85% of more complicated genres (sci-fi, crime, etc.). I can understand dubbed live-action without subtitles at about 80 - 85%, and native French live-action at about 80% with subtitles (at first glance, since I look up every unknown word), and probably as low as 70% without subtitles (if it's my first time seeing the show).

In terms of intensive reading and Anki, I read about 30 pages of À la recherche du temps perdu, and 150 pages of Harry Potter et le Prince de Sang-Mêlé. The rest of the time was spent sentence mining, making Anki sentence cards with 1 unknown word per card (and usually audio of that word, found on Forvo), and then actually doing the Anki cards. I did 10 new cards per day, but I think I'm going to increase it this week. It doesn't feel like an equal distribution of mental energy if I'm doing 5 - 7 hours of French a day, with less than 20 minutes of Anki. Also, I've started realizing that my main issue right now is a lack of vocabulary, so I should be making more of an effort to add words to my lexicon. I can look at a random page of Harry Potter and find 2 - 4 unknown words, but a page of Proust is closer to 10 - 15.

With regards to intensive reading, I did intensive reading, and I also did INTENSIVE reading. What I'm trying to say is, reading Harry Potter felt rather extensive, because although I look up every unknown word, I didn't note them down and I didn't usually add them to Anki. The Kindle is so efficient that looking up every word didn't take me out of the "flow" at all, and it keeps track of highlighted words for me, so later I'd go through some of them and add some of them to Anki at an extremely leisurely pace. When I was reading Proust, by contrast, not only did I look up every unknown word, but I also wrote them down, added them to Anki, and even revised grammar found in the sentences. The Proust activity felt significantly more intensive than Harry Potter.

My study schedule was basically like this. I ate the frog in the morning by finishing my Anki reps for the day. Then I moved on to intensive reading of Proust. When I was tired, I made my Anki cards for the next day. When I was finished, I started intensively reading Harry Potter. When I was tired with that, I moved on to more extensive reading (still looking up every unknown word, but not worrying too much about whether or not I thought I was going to retain the new vocabulary). When I was tired with that, I moved onto French original live-action, sometimes sentence mining, sometimes not. When I was tired with that, I moved onto anime, purely extensive.

TL;DR
1) Anki
2) Proust (intensive)
3) Sentence mining
4) Harry Potter (intensive)
5) Harry Potter (intensive-ish)
6) French originals
7) Dubbed content

I also listened to French music while walking to work in the morning, and while at the gym, but I don't track music. My favourite album of the week was Ninho - Jefe.

If this post seems disjointed, it's because my studying this week was disjointed. I basically went by feel a lot of the time, just trying to fill my dead moments in the day with French.

The Way Forward

Going to aim for another 30+ hour week. I'll increase this to 40+ hours in September.

I'm going to try to learn 30 words a day with Anki. If this proves to be too much, I'll bring it down next week.

I'm going to focus a bit more on Harry Potter than Proust this week, because I'm probably in over my head with Proust right now.

Most importantly, I'm going to keep enjoying French.

À plus tard!

[MorkTheFiddle]

Anime and Proust let's go!

Or in a way both, maybe. This points to an bande dessinee version of Proust's Du cote de chez Swann sold by the French firm FNAC. Other versions and sources and illustrators exist, too. Bonne lecture.