Rdearman 2016-24 You Can't Have Your Kate and Edith Too.

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rdearman
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby rdearman » Sat Oct 14, 2017 8:59 pm

Damn! I really need to do more stuff. Not really anything to report. My French is still poor. For some unknown reason, everyone in Italy seems to want to talk to me know that I'm focusing on French. I am getting messages from all directions about Italian. Going by what Tarvos and others have said you're not likely to back-slide so much if your language level is higher. I haven't done anything with Italian for a couple of months now, and it still flows freely. So I figure my Italian is at least intermediate, maybe B2. I can't be arsed to test that theory now, just happy to keep some Italian activity going.

The French is still awful and I'm just watching TV, doing anki cards and reading the Dark Tower. I'm almost halfway through the book now, and I'm getting back into the flow of reading French. When I stopped the last super challenge after reading the a ton of French it was getting close to about 1/2 the speed at which I read English (I read fast in English) and it felt comfortable. Back then I was at the point where I could get into the story, without worrying too much about the unknown words.

On another note I've found an excellent grammar checking website: https://www.scribens.fr/

I often use the English site (https://www.scribens.com) to correct my grammar, so it is a good thing for me to find the French version because I want to start doing some more output. I've collected up some essay topics, so I figure I could start with those. Use the grammar checker to look up errors, and more importantly get explanations why they are wrong, before posting them on lang-8 or having my tutor look at them.

I'm also determined to use up the fifty bucks worth of iTalki credits which have been languishing in my account and not used.

BTW anyone ever seen this guy, SQUEEZIE? Bloody hell he nuff talk fast!

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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby rdearman » Wed Oct 18, 2017 3:53 pm

OK, well finally something to report that isn't just "nerd, nerd, nerd, anki." Today I had my first iTalki tutor session. I've had money in the iTalki account for awhile now but never really did anything with it. At the moment I have more time on my hands, so I decided to burn my way through the money. I only want speaking and listening practice, so I picked the cheapest tutor I could find. Working on the theory, since all I want them to do is listen and correct me, there was no need to pay the higher prices for a professional.

Either by luck or happen stance I managed to pick a really good guy who was very patient and instructive. We managed to conduct the entire hour session in French with only 3-4 "comment dit-on en français ..." where I had either forgotten or didn't know the word. At the end of the lesson, he gave me a summary of the problems I need to over come, and a list of errors which I'd made while speaking. This summary was also in French, and I admit that I did miss some of it, but since he'd written it down in a shared document (in French) I figured it out afterwards.

It would appear my main issues are:
  • Listening Comprehension (He talked really quickly)
  • Passé composé
  • Imparfait
  • Aller + faire (informal future when you speak)

My present tense is fine, as you'd sort of expect, but need to work on past & future. With this in mind I plan to load a tonne of verbs into anki with Passé composé and Imparfait verbs and sentences. I'm also going to try to keep up a steady dialogue of self-talk about the past. I've booked another session with this tutor, and two other sessions with some different people. It would seem that my French isn't as Tarzan like as I thought, and he said it was acceptable.

I'm pleased I managed an entire hour where I mostly talked. Probably about 80% of the time I was talking and he managed to understand it all. Only once did I need to repeat myself in a different way. The problem it turns out was my pronunciation, so when I rephrased with a different word then he understood me. It wasn't easy, and the .... got real when I tried to describe gambling and "Les jeux de hasard". The only major trouble I had in understanding in the conversation was when he switched topics on me. I wasn't prepared for a change in topic and got really confused trying to reconcile the question which was something like "Where do you work?" with the previous topic which was about surfing in Cornwall.

It seems, I can yak, yak, yak in French, but comprehension is still a problem. I find it odd, perhaps because I'm comparing apples and oranges, but when I speak to Italians there isn't this much problem with understanding when I'm being spoken to. I don't remember having so many problems with comprehension even in the every early days of learning Italian.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby tarvos » Wed Oct 18, 2017 10:28 pm

French comprehension is more difficult because of the phonetic liaisons between words. Give it some time.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby Elenia » Wed Oct 18, 2017 10:51 pm

To add to what Tarvos is saying, listen to a wide variety of things. Masses and masses of different types of audio.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby rdearman » Thu Oct 19, 2017 9:01 am

Elenia wrote:To add to what Tarvos is saying, listen to a wide variety of things. Masses and masses of different types of audio.

I'm guessing you're not talking about listening to The One Show? :lol:

Yeah, very good advice. I'm also going to try and spend a few minutes per day doing some intensive listening / transcription work.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby rdearman » Fri Oct 20, 2017 5:42 pm

I am soooooooooo glad this is a two-way street!!! I especially like FOCUS. :lol:

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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby tarvos » Fri Oct 20, 2017 7:39 pm

It always is.

Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English - it means they speak one more language than you.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby rdearman » Wed Oct 25, 2017 2:24 pm

Another iTalki lesson today. I call it a lesson, but I'm just using it for speaking and listening practice. It was a different community tutor this time. This particular fellow specialises in beginners and children. It showed because he used more English than I did. It was easier to understand him than the last tutor, because he either speaks slowly on purpose, or naturally speaks slower. Regardless of the reason it was easier for me to understand. Also it might be that the previous person assumed my comprehension was better than it really is because my speech is OK.

We spoke for an hour, and it wasn't a problem, I only asked a couple of times "how do you say", but this was more because of being unsure of the structure of the sentence in French. This was things like: "I've just made myself a cup of tea while I was waiting." or similar. The assessment at the end of the lesson was that my "house has a good structure, but it needs a lot of decoration". An interesting analogy, by which he meant that my grammar is good, word order is good and for the most part I have no problem with vocabulary, but I often have to pause to think of the correct word because it isn't coming rapidly enough into my mind to have a seamless conversation. This isn't all the time, but frequent enough that it is a problem. Of course the only cure for this problem is to speak more, and to have the need of the words.

I've been burning my way through my fifty bucks and gave some thought to being a community English tutor in order to recoup the costs of my own lessons, however if I do a search for tutors under $10 per hour for French there are 16, for English there are 260 !! So that is a waste of time really. Pity I don't know some other language like Czech you have to pay at least $10 per hour for a Czech tutor, and there are only 2 of them. Oh well, just have to bite the bullet and put in more money I guess.

I've gone ahead and scheduled more lessons, but all with different people. I've only repeated one tutor which is the first one I booked. I'm basically doing them in rotation in order to get more time speaking with different people. I considered spending all my time with one tutor, but I don't like the idea that I might not be getting enough exposure. I've booked tutors from France, Belguim, Morroco, etc., because I feel I'll get a broader coverage of accents, speed of talking. This of course might just be me being silly, but the price is the same and I speak to different people, so why not?

Other than the iTalki thing, I'm not really doing much new. I've slowed down a considerable amount on watching videos, almost to the point of stopping. I'm reading sporadically in French and I really need to dedicate some time to it, I'm 60% of the way through my Stephen King novel, but really I should have been done with it by now. Still trucking away with the anki decks, because that is now just a habit and it freaks me out to not do it when I go walking the dog.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby DaveBee » Wed Oct 25, 2017 2:48 pm

rdearman wrote:if I do a search for tutors under $10 per hour for French there are 16, for English there are 260 !!
I was reading about one-to-one language exchange earlier. One point that struck home was that it can be cheaper to hire a internet-video talking partner, than pay for transport and coffee to meet a volunteer in person.
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Re: Rdearman (FR, IT, ZH) 2016/17 - The way of the lazy fist.

Postby rdearman » Wed Oct 25, 2017 3:37 pm

DaveBee wrote:I was reading about one-to-one language exchange earlier. One point that struck home was that it can be cheaper to hire a internet-video talking partner, than pay for transport and coffee to meet a volunteer in person.

I am finding that for me paying for an hour to have someone to speak to is better than doing a free language exchange. This is mostly because I'm very good at pulling out of thing I don't want to do. Typically, I have great intentions and I really want to do some practice, so I organise something, but then the shine wears off; and when the time comes I cancel or make an excuse. In other words I'm a terrible exchange partner, the kind everyone hates. Even if I do want to do it something always seems to come up. But paying for an hour session is brilliant, because it really hits me in the "loss aversion" part of my brain. I do it, because I have forked out money, so in that way it is much better than a language exchange.

In addition, the session is always in French, because I insist that it is in French. Because you're paying this person, they allow you the time to think and correct you when you want to be corrected. I always ask to be corrected at the end, not in mid-sentence which distracts me too much. I can normally find someone who isn't charging much, because I'm not asking to be taught, only to have a conversation with them in their native language, so it is money for old rope to them.
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