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

[reineke]

They say that you should not be afraid to make mistakes because that's how we learn. You, my friend, are fearless.

"Cet clavier"
"La clavier"
"La claviers"...

That writing sample was awful. You scored high in reading. Congratulations. Now replace those books with audiobooks.

Regarding English... I have no doubt that you are a literate native speaker of English. I also have reasons to believe that you are somewhat forgetful and easily distracted. Don't get discouraged.

[rdearman]

I have no doubt that you are a literate native speaker of English. I also have reasons to believe that you are somewhat forgetful and easily distracted. Don't get discouraged.

I don't know if that is a good assessment of .... oh! Squirrel !

[reineke]

I don't know if my study methods are one sided. The only thing I really leave out is grammar books, and I recently bought 3 grammar books in Italian to rectify that. Still arguably a lot of the reason for the poor showing in Italian vocabulary is simply not enough reading and the same for French I feel. Speaking hasn't been a challenge for me, because I have been very lackadaisical about this. Conversations with tutors and friends rarely goes outside of my comfort zone of vocabulary. I haven't had any iTalki tutor or language exchange partner want to talk about microprocessors, boolean logic, distributed ledger and blockchain technology, Alexander the Great, or Hannibal and the Numidians. It is always where I live, children, blah, blah. So perhaps I need to set myself some more challenging goals here.

Also my results on the tests are slightly skewed because I don't practice writing. Which means I don't practice spelling. All of the dialang tests required some keyboard input of correctly spelt words. So although I know the word, and I can say it, I may not know how to spell it.

You can start by deciding on a language or languages you wish to study and then sticking to your decision. You need to adjust your attitude and expectations. The first foreign language is often the hardest to acquire. Book some lessons with that tutor of yours. She can tutor you in both languages. Your writing sample was "très strange". It's good that you are not intimidated by Italian but your results indicate that you need to spend more time with that language as well.

Yes, I would concur with this statement. Could you please explain why it was strange? A focus on French didn't achieve the effect I'd wished for and not using Italian didn't help me either. I was hoping you'd expand a bit on the methods you use.

Wanna watch cartoons all day?



---

For myself I've thought about this. My thoughts are this:

• No point in stopping French because it will just deteriorate and then I'll be back to square one. But I'm not going to focus on French to the exclusion of all else.
• I need to work more on written language in order to get better at spelling and grammar.
• I need to work on expanding my vocabulary so I'll not stop using anki, but increase the amount of it which I use.
• Book more conversations with natives, but direct the discussions outside of my comfort zone by setting a topic in advance.
• Read more, watch more TV.

"Est très strange"

Anglo-Italian influence? You didn't forget your Italian!. Scratch "read more" from your plans and if you're going to book anything it should be a tutoring session. Anyway, try to have some fun with these languages.

[smallwhite]

Why is he still not happy?

I'm not unhappy, ...

That prompted me to take the Dialang English reading test. I got C2 so it must be your writing

[smallwhite]

Btw, do your flashcards have gender information? "Femme" or "la femme" or "femme (f)"?

... Most of my cards are sentence cards, so I the gender information is already encoded in the sentence.

So are you assimilating the gender information from your sentence cards? If you ran an extract-words-from-corpus magic on your cards and tested yourself on the genders of the nouns, how well do you think you'd do?

[tarvos]

I don't know if my study methods are one sided. The only thing I really leave out is grammar books, and I recently bought 3 grammar books in Italian to rectify that. Still arguably a lot of the reason for the poor showing in Italian vocabulary is simply not enough reading and the same for French I feel. Speaking hasn't been a challenge for me, because I have been very lackadaisical about this. Conversations with tutors and friends rarely goes outside of my comfort zone of vocabulary. I haven't had any iTalki tutor or language exchange partner want to talk about microprocessors, boolean logic, distributed ledger and blockchain technology, Alexander the Great, or Hannibal and the Numidians. It is always where I live, children, blah, blah. So perhaps I need to set myself some more challenging goals here.

LET THEM KNOW IN ADVANCE.

I recommend Léa Tirard-Hersant, she is the best French teacher on italki and she'll give you this challenge

[rdearman]

If you ran an extract-words-from-corpus magic on your cards and tested yourself on the genders of the nouns, how well do you think you'd do?

I think I know what you mean, but please explain "extract-words-from-corpus magic" in more detail please?

[PeterMollenburg]

I don't know if my study methods are one sided. The only thing I really leave out is grammar books, and I recently bought 3 grammar books in Italian to rectify that. Still arguably a lot of the reason for the poor showing in Italian vocabulary is simply not enough reading and the same for French I feel. Speaking hasn't been a challenge for me, because I have been very lackadaisical about this. Conversations with tutors and friends rarely goes outside of my comfort zone of vocabulary. I haven't had any iTalki tutor or language exchange partner want to talk about microprocessors, boolean logic, distributed ledger and blockchain technology, Alexander the Great, or Hannibal and the Numidians. It is always where I live, children, blah, blah. So perhaps I need to set myself some more challenging goals here.

LET THEM KNOW IN ADVANCE.

I recommend Léa Tirard-Hersant, she is the best French teacher on italki and she'll give you this challenge

In your opinion. I’ve spoken with her also, quite a while ago, but although I wouldn’t not recommend her, as she is excellent and passionate about what she does, I’ve spoken with one on italki who was better in my opinion for my particular purposes.

[rdearman]

I don't know if my study methods are one sided. The only thing I really leave out is grammar books, and I recently bought 3 grammar books in Italian to rectify that. Still arguably a lot of the reason for the poor showing in Italian vocabulary is simply not enough reading and the same for French I feel. Speaking hasn't been a challenge for me, because I have been very lackadaisical about this. Conversations with tutors and friends rarely goes outside of my comfort zone of vocabulary. I haven't had any iTalki tutor or language exchange partner want to talk about microprocessors, boolean logic, distributed ledger and blockchain technology, Alexander the Great, or Hannibal and the Numidians. It is always where I live, children, blah, blah. So perhaps I need to set myself some more challenging goals here.

LET THEM KNOW IN ADVANCE.

I recommend Léa Tirard-Hersant, she is the best French teacher on italki and she'll give you this challenge

In your opinion. I’ve spoken with her also, quite a while ago, but although I wouldn’t not recommend her, as she is excellent and passionate about what she does, I’ve spoken with one on italki who was better in my opinion for my particular purposes.

Peter, I think you've probably hit the nail on the head when it comes to tutors on iTalki. It depends on your purpose. I have had a lot of great people on iTalki, and a couple who were for me rubbish. But they were rubbish mainly because they didn't suit my purpose. I wanted only to converse not to be taught, they wanted to teach. I've actually lined up someone for a language exchange I used to speak to who was a nanny in the UK for awhile. Between us we've agreed to discuss the book Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. She is reading in English and me in French. We've agreed to discuss our opinions of the characters and our impression of the events in the books. Both of us realise the language used in both the French and English versions are archaic, but the point is the discussion about the book.

Tarvos point is well made. If I want to move outside my comfort zone in conversational French then I need to have conversations of more substance, and I need to notify the tutor in advance of my objectives.

(I did bookmark her just in case, and I'll book a lesson at some point)

[tarvos]

Well I recommend Léa because a) she's a friend of mine and b) she always managed to get the best out of me, but I am sure everyone has their preferences.

I think one of the important non-linguistic skills at the advanced level is agency. Taking control of your learning process and ruthlessly weeding out what doesn't push you forward. That's the reason I told you to focus on writing. You suck at it and your grammar needs improving. Just fix that first, and you'll find it will bleed over into your other skills. B1-B2 is the skill level where writing gets REALLY important