Another Wednesday and another iTalki lesson. Again it was an informal session just speaking practice. This time it was a lady from Switzerland. This particular young lady speaks six languages, and she is only 21. You know that thing where 80% of drivers think they are better than average, which means 30% of them are wrong. Well, I'm definitely in the bottom 10% of language learners, and I'm not fooling myself! However, obviously, I am in the top10% of drivers.
This time I spoke more than I wanted to. I'm undecided about the best way to use these sessions. Should I be speaking all the time, and getting corrections, or should I be trying to get them to talk more to help with my comprehension? I waver back and forth, but if I spent a bit more time on intensive listening, and extensive listening it might help.
One problem I had with this particular session was she wanted to do the whole thing "audio only", because she didn't have make-up on or something. I couldn't care less about that, but what I did notice during this lesson was it was harder for me to understand her. The missing visual clues really made my comprehension suffer more than in the previous two lessons. I might need to split test this somehow, doing some lessons with video and some without. I didn't think it would make that much difference, but I did notice it. In fact today was the first time and broke down and asked for something to be repeated in English, I just couldn't get what she was saying. It was then I realised if she had written it I would have understood, so from that point of the lesson onward there was no English, but if I didn't understand then she had to write in the messenger part. It is a lot easier for me to read French than listen to it.
I have another local tutoring session tonight, but this time face-to-face with my neighbour. I've done a lot of lessons with her, and I never have a problem understanding her. I think this is because she used "teacher talk". She speaks distinctly, and at a slower pace.
I haven't been watching much French TV, mostly because I'm sort of burned out on all the stuff available to me, and I can't be arsed. One thing I have been doing recently is getting back into MUD's. I joined a French MUD - Vancia, and I've been playing a little while each day. The commands are in French, but it doesn't take long to learn them. Although finding listing of what I have took ages to figure out. But I found a command list, so now I'm away. I've mostly ignored people who are trying to talk to me, they can see I'm a beginner so they give up as soon as they work out I'm can't / won't talk to them. I'm hoping that if I keep playing then I'll be able to start outputting more, e.g. typing, while having some fun doing it.
I'm seriously considering doing a talk in French at the Polyglot Gathering (if they'll have me) about using free (gratis) software to help you learn a language. This includes games like the MUD's, as well as things I use like the freeware corpus analysis program, the IPA generator, etc. I could easily have 3-4 hours worth of content if I went into detail about all of these things. I'm collecting a list up, and I might start a thread to get more suggestions.
On a separate note, I wanted to plug my fiction book which is free 1st & 2nd of November on Amazon. So if you want to download for free it is here:
African Extrication. An honest Amazon review would be much appreciated.