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

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rdearman
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Sun May 30, 2021 9:52 am

I have counted up all the unread physical paperback books in French that I have in my house. There are 21 books of various shapes and sizes people have given me over the years. (There are probably a couple of more in different bookshelves, but I'm not going to look for more!)

I've decided I'm just going to power through all of them. There are 7025 pages in total, so this is 140.5 books as far as the super challenge is concerned. Since these are all physical paperbacks I'm not going to bother with intensive reading, but I might do intensive (e.g. look up every word I don't know) every 50 pages for a couple of pages. I've also decided that since I have a monolingual French dictionary, I'll look up any words I don't know in that. And any words I don't know in the definition in the monolingual dictionary as well. So one page might turn into a massive spiral of dictionary work!

We'll see how long I can keep that up.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby Carmody » Sun May 30, 2021 8:30 pm

Rick
I've decided I'm just going to power through all of them. There are 7025 pages in total, so this is 140.5 books as far as the super challenge is concerned. Since these are all physical paperbacks I'm not going to bother with intensive reading, but I might do intensive (e.g. look up every word I don't know) every 50 pages for a couple of pages. I've also decided that since I have a monolingual French dictionary, I'll look up any words I don't know in that. And any words I don't know in the definition in the monolingual dictionary as well. So one page might turn into a massive spiral of dictionary work!
Thanks for sharing your study plans; I was interested to read what you are going to do.

However, it did make me curious about your goals when you say
I've decided I'm just going to power through all of them. There are 7025 pages in total,
That doesn't sound like much fun to me. Is it fun for you? Everyone has to follow their own bliss but you make it sound like work.

Please advise.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby IronMike » Sun May 30, 2021 11:33 pm

rdearman wrote:I have counted up all the unread physical paperback books in French that I have in my house. There are 21 books of various shapes and sizes people have given me over the years. (There are probably a couple of more in different bookshelves, but I'm not going to look for more!)

I've decided I'm just going to power through all of them. There are 7025 pages in total, so this is 140.5 books as far as the super challenge is concerned. Since these are all physical paperbacks I'm not going to bother with intensive reading, but I might do intensive (e.g. look up every word I don't know) every 50 pages for a couple of pages. I've also decided that since I have a monolingual French dictionary, I'll look up any words I don't know in that. And any words I don't know in the definition in the monolingual dictionary as well. So one page might turn into a massive spiral of dictionary work!

We'll see how long I can keep that up.

I don't dare do this. I'm afraid of finding out how many books/pages I've not read. ;)
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby Beli Tsar » Mon May 31, 2021 8:32 am

rdearman wrote:I don't know if anyone is subscribed to my YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQEy77 ... 0iG6Zt6H5g

But if you are, have you been getting notifications? Strangely it tells me I have zero subscribers, yet the page is clearly showing a number of subscribers. However, the last 3 videos I posted nobody watched, even though I normally get 10-15 views. So I'm wondering if there is something amiss, or I'm just posting crap and nobody is watching (a very real possibility).

:)

Sample of one, but my own (work-related) channel suddenly stopped registering most of its views a couple of months (?) ago, registering far fewer than I knew it was getting. Have they changed the algorithm that decides what counts as a 'view' very aggressively? If so, your videos might not be getting zero views by any normal count.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Thu Jun 03, 2021 6:46 pm

OK, slight problem with the French book reading. It seems an Italian book sneaked in there! But as I suspected I have more French books in a different bookshelf. So I took one out of there as a replacement for the Italian one. I didn't add the other ones I saw. The page count of the replacement is slightly higher than the Italian book (about 200 pages), but since I'm counting books not pages it doesn't really make any difference. Therefore, I've still got 21 books to read, just an uplift in the number of pages.

I've also got a bucket load of Italian books in various bookshelves, but let's knock out one problem before moving on to the next problem! :mrgreen:

I did complete one French book, which is why I was looking for another. The Italian book was the thinnest, so I thought I would go for that one, only to discover that I've mixed up the language. Anyway, I've double-checked the languages now and the only one that threw me had a load of English in the front! Then I discovered it was just the introduction and the rest of the book is a French play.

So the book I completed is: La Nuit des temps. Which is a 1968 French science fiction novel by René Barjavel. I'm not going to do a review, but it is a pretty good read. However, warning. If you're easily offended, you probably don't want to read a book written by a French MAN in the 1960's but if you can get past your 21st century bias then you'll probably enjoy it.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Sat Jun 05, 2021 7:51 pm

So today I publicly humiliated myself on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQEy77dAENOtj0iG6Zt6H5g :oops:

But it was for a good cause I think. As many frequent readers will be aware, I spend a lot of time talking with people and doing conversation exchanges. Typically, when I speak to people we'll always cover the same ground again and again. Which is brilliant for engraining Boris Shekhtman's "Islands" into your brain. But not so good at identifying gaps in your vocabulary. Here I mean active vocabulary, not words I recognize when someone else says them, but rather words I can retrieve and use freely without any pauses or hiccups from the brain to the mouth.

In order to get some automaticity (active use) for a greater variety of vocabulary, I have been doing an exercise where I reply verbally to a random question. There are a few random question websites on the Internet, some random essay topics, etc. So using these sites I randomly choose a topic (I mean really randomly using https://www.random.org/) and I force myself to speak on the topic or answer the question in the other language.

I don't normally record myself, and I normally give myself a bit more time than I did in the video. When extemporizing alone at home I'm free to ummm and ahhh and pause while thinking, but for the recording it was a bit more pressure (read a lot more pressure). But regardless the technique is the same, and it forces me to think of how to express myself in the TL in the way I would in English. I have done similar things with a language partner in French where she gives me a topic and I have to speak about it. The example I remember most was explaining how an aeroplane flies.

This method doesn't give you any feedback about pronunciation, or grammar, or anything other than gap analysis, but it does identify where I don't actively know or are able to use a word I'd use in English. In English, I might say something regarding a symbiotic relationship between two things. I have no way of saying that, or even describing what a symbiotic relationship is in French or Italian. I could probably muddle through, but wouldn't it be good if I could expand my active vocabulary to include more words.

The problem with speaking is that you always think to yourself later, "oh! I could have said this instead of that", but that is because you've dredged up some vocabulary from the passive. But just like the clever retort you didn't make to that bartender because you didn't think of it until later, it doesn't count unless you say it immediately. No good thinking of it in the car on the way home.

I've been speaking to my French friend for 3-4 (possibly more) years now, and because we have covered all the mundane family talk and where do you live, etc, etc. we try to work harder with the exchanges. Improvising on various topics, or description of random pictures, etc. So I like this little exercise because it forces me to think and then find the words I don't know. It is easier when you're in a language exchange to do better extemporizing, since you're already "in the zone" as far as the language goes, and it gets easier after 5-10 minutes of speaking.

Anyway, most of this post is just self-justification for why I'm so rubbish in the video and not speaking well. :oops:
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby Le Baron » Sat Jun 05, 2021 9:45 pm

rdearman wrote:The problem with speaking is that you always think to yourself later, "oh! I could have said this instead of that", but that is because you've dredged up some vocabulary from the passive. But just like the clever retort you didn't make to that bartender because you didn't think of it until later, it doesn't count unless you say it immediately. No good thinking of it in the car on the way home.

Aye that's very true. It's always better when you run it back in your head with improvements. I can't count how many times I've sat up in bed before falling asleep and realised I said a completely wrong sentence to someone and the person I spoke to said nothing about it. I don't know whether that's a good or bad thing for language interactions in general.

rdearman wrote:I've been speaking to my French friend for 3-4 (possibly more) years now, and because we have covered all the mundane family talk and where do you live, etc, etc. we try to work harder with the exchanges. Improvising on various topics, or description of random pictures, etc. So I like this little exercise because it forces me to think and then find the words I don't know. It is easier when you're in a language exchange to do better extemporizing, since you're already "in the zone" as far as the language goes, and it gets easier after 5-10 minutes of speaking.

I've done this myself. It's a good exercise though because at some point the basic business of just interacting in the language becomes more like a reflex as you concentrate on technical vocabulary for a topic. You mentioned that you remembered the one about how an aeroplane flies and it's always great when the topic interests you, it's like vocabulary appears because need it. The more the topic is a blank slate to me it's like the vocabulary well is emptier.
Sometimes I've tried to hide the fact that a discussion is an exercise by not openly saying there was a chosen topic, but just raising it like you'd raise any topic and then you get that thing where the other participant sort of jogs your vocabulary memory and you mirror each other (more me mirroring them) which helps a lot and it like how natural conversation in your L1 improves your facility in the language.
rdearman wrote:Anyway, most of this post is just self-justification for why I'm so rubbish in the video and not speaking well. :oops:

I just watched the video. You pretty much punished yourself with those random topics. :lol: What is your accent, I was baffled?
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Sat Jun 05, 2021 10:48 pm

Le Baron wrote:I just watched the video. You pretty much punished yourself with those random topics. :lol: What is your accent, I was baffled?


This comes up a lot. I am an American from the Midwest who moved to Georgia in the deep south, then lived in England for 30 years with a 2 year stent in Ireland. So it is an American/English/Irish accent. :lol:
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Sat Jun 05, 2021 10:53 pm

I looked back tonight at my reading speed in french for my first super challenge on HTLAL and it was 1 page every 5 minutes. I was hoping back then that one day I would get to even half my reading speed in English, which is 5.5 pages per minute. Well this evening I was averaging 2.2 pages per minute, so not far off half speed. It has taken a couple of years and a couple of failed super challenges, but it is progress!
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rpg » Sun Jun 06, 2021 9:41 am

rdearman wrote:
Le Baron wrote:I just watched the video. You pretty much punished yourself with those random topics. :lol: What is your accent, I was baffled?


This comes up a lot. I am an American from the Midwest who moved to Georgia in the deep south, then lived in England for 30 years with a 2 year stent in Ireland. So it is an American/English/Irish accent. :lol:


I was going to ask the same question--fortunately I scrolled up first! My best guess was going to be some kind of Northern Irish accent. Your move abroad has definitely left its mark!

Good on you for having the bravery to put yourself out there. If you do make another one of these, I think you need to find a better source of topics first :lol:
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