Slow Learning: French and Hindi

[jeffers]

Here's a small update on my progress.

French
I'm still on week 8 of Hugo French, because I am not putting very much time into it per day. However, I have been putting most example sentences and exercises into Anki, so what I am learning is sticking much better than before.

Today I finished Les Récrés du Petit Nicolas, another enjoyable book in the series. It's the fourth book in the series I've read, but was actually the second one to be published (back in 1961).

I have followed smallwhite's lead in cheering PM on as he prepares for his B2 French exam in May. As I wrote in his log:

Course: I will make every effort to finish Hugo French in 3 Months by the the end of May.
Listening: I will continue with regular listening to Au coeur de l'histoire
Reading: I will read one of the novels I bought for Kindle back in 2014 for the last super challenge but never even looked into. Either Un sac de billes by Joseph Joffo or Un aller simple by Didier Van Cauwelaert. I'll probably read the first few pages of each and make a decision.

I read a few pages of Un sac de billes this morning, and I'll just go ahead and read that one first. I will try to finish the Hugo course and Un sac de billes by the 18th of May.

Thinking about books I bought for the previous Super Challenge has made me realize I need to take stock of what I have. So here is my list of shame, all the books in French I have bought but haven't read yet:

Paperback readers with CD
Le Comte de Monte-Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (CLE facile version)
Cinq semaines en ballon by Jules Verne (CLE facile version)
La guerre des boutons by Louis Pergaud (CLE facile version)
La tête d'un homme by Georges Simenon (LFF facile version (B2)) -- I've listened to this audiobook many times, but not read it.
Maigret tend un piège by Simenon (LFF facile version (B2))-- I've listened a few times, but not read it.
Une erreur de Maigret and La vieille dame de Bayeux (Hueber Hörbuch edition)

Paperbacks
Menace sur la finale de foot (a book for 10 year olds I bought when I was in France 5 years ago)
Nouvelles contemporaines (three short stories by three French authors)
Le Temps des Villages by Azouz Begag. This is in a book with two of his short stories, the first of which I read a while ago, and enjoyed, but the book has gotten further and further back in my queue of books.
L'étranger by Albert Camus. Has long been on my hitlist, but I realized a while back that I don't want to read or listen to this until I am good and ready. I also have the audiobook.
Les contes rouges du chat perché by Marcel Aymé. A "folio junior" book which I found in a used bookstore for a pound.

Kindle books
I prefer to read French books on my Kindle because of the quick access to the dictionary, and easy portability of dozens of books. The problem is, it's easy to buy books on Kindle and forget you have them!
Un sac de billes by Joseph Joffo. My current read. The autobiography of a Jewish boy who travels across France with a friend to escape the Nazi occupation.
Un aller simple by Didier van Cauwelaert. Considered a modern classic.
Les Maquisards by Hemley Boum. I got this because the culture commentator on 7 jours sur la planète said it was the best novel he'd read in ten years.
Les nouvelles enquêtes de Maigret by Georges Simenon. A collection of 5 Maigret stories totalling 624 pages. I thought this would be great for the Super Challenge, but I'll read it once I've read my Maigret readers mentioned above.
La Planète des singes by Pierre Boulle. I read about 40% of it and got bored (having read it in English a few years before).
Les grandes dates de l'Histoire de France Pour Les Nuls French history in 71 pages, and free on Kindle.
Learn French with Stories by Frédéric Bibard. Of all the dozens of self-published French readers readers there are out there, this one looked the best, and you can download the audio for free. The audio even has a slow and a fast version. I've listened to the audio twice, and it's not too bad for beginner stories, so I'll probably read this next.
50 Micronouvelles As the title suggests, 50 stories by 50 authors, comprising about two pages per story. An interesting concept, and free on Kindle.
Coin coin le vilain petit canard Ten short stories, free on Kindle.
Un pastis sinon rien: Les enquêtes de Ruben Quinquet by Charly Green. Another Kindle freebie, but Amazon doesn't seem to sell it anymore.
Le Fantôme de Pont-Saint-Rémy by Patrick Llewellyn. I got it for free, but now it's £1.55.
Le mystère de la chambre jaune by Gaston Leroux. Another Kindle freebie.
Chalk, épisode 1: Enfin lâche ! by Freddy Woets. Free on Kindle.
Si... d'aventure ! (Polar Live t. 1) by Phil Marso. Free.
Histoires à lire dans le métro - extrait (Pause-nouvelle) Very short stories by various authors. Free extract (27 pages). If I ever read it and enjoy it I'll look into buying the rest.
J'accuse by Émile Zola. A classic, and free on Kindle.
Le pléonasme cent répétitions (Collection "les Cent") Dunno... it was free.

I also bought about 15 romance novels, again for free on Kindle, back in 2014. They were offering a lot of books which seem to be the first in a series for free. I haven't looked inside any of them, but as they were free I thought, "What the hell", and bought all the ones I could find. There was some discussion during that Super Challenge about romance novels being easy to read. Now I have so many other things to read, I'll probably not touch them.


That list was a lot bigger than I expected. Now I need to make a plan for how I'm going to approach this pile of books. My general strategy is going to be to alternate between something more difficult (i.e. made for natives) and something more easy (i.e. made for learners). For starters I've just started reading Un sac de billes. After that I will read one of the reader + CD books, because I really want to finally make use of these sooner rather than later. I'll make another post later, picking out my top books for the next few months.

[jeffers]

French
I've been on holiday this week, but that doesn't always mean I have more time. For example, on the weekend I joined some friends for nearly a full day playing Ingress. And of course I have to spend some time with my family! Nevertheless, I have a bit more time to binge on languages this week and the next.

One decision for the holiday has been to dig further into my DVDs of Boulevard du palais, which have no subtitles. I bought all three boxes back in Jan 2015 because they had a 3 for 2 offer on box sets, and I thought I would watch them during that Super Challenge. I have watched the occasional episode here and there over the past couple of years, but I always felt a little lost. I could understand what is going on in general, but I still had the sense that I was floundering. The telling sign is that while watching I would check the clock every 10-15 minutes.

This week I watched one episode and felt more or less the same way. However, I decided to keep going with it and watch another the next morning. So far I'm up to four 90-minute episodes in the past 48 hours, and as I suspected it's getting easier and more enjoyable. It's not that by some sort of magic I'm understanding more, I think it's that after the first episode I let go of the need to understand every detail.

I'm still working on Hugo in 3 Months, but I'm just doing one section per day, so it looks like it will take 2-3 weeks to complete each "week". I finished week 8 and now I have to do the progress test, which will be hard to get myself into. I really do want to do the test because my purpose in working on Hugo is to ensure a solid foundation. Therefore, if there are sections on the test I struggle with, I will go back to the relevant chapter and enter the examples and exercises into my new Hugo deck on Anki.

The thing I haven't done enough of, despite being on holiday, is reading. I'm too far behind to complete the reading portion of the Super Challenge, but for me reading is the most important part of improving comprehension.


Hindi
I didn't write about Hindi in my last update because the post got so long, and because there wasn't really much to say. I completed listening through (and occasionally shadowing) Le Hindi sans peine, while walking the dog each evening, and now I'm doing audio reviews of just chapters 1-15. I'll do a fairly quick review through these chapters in the book sometime this week and then get down to studying chapters properly once I get to a chapter I feel needs more than a review. After that I expect to follow the standard Assimil method (listen, read, listen + read, study the notes, listen again, do the exercises), but I'll probably only complete one lesson per week.

[jeffers]

Although this week is a holiday week for me, I've had a new distraction: our dog had a litter of puppies Tuesday night! It feels like when I get some time to myself there's another knock on the door of someone wanting to have a look. Oh well.

French
I needn't have been so reluctant to do the 2nd self assessment test in Hugo. I found it pretty easy, and made a few silly mistakes; overall I scored 88%, which Hugo says is "excellent". So now I've begun week 9.

The beginning of Un sac de billes was a bit difficult. One page I'd have to look up a single word, then 5 on the next and I was wondering if this book was going to be too difficult for me. Today I took my daughter and her friend to the swimming pool, knowing that I'd have at least an hour in the café overlooking to pool to read. In the end I had an hour and a half of uninterrupted time, which is rare for me these days. After doing some Anki I read the 1st and 2nd chapters of Un sac de billes and, as expected, the pace picked up as I got drawn into the story.

Hindi
Started working on Assimil ch 10. It's easy for me, but nice to review.

[jeffers]

Wow, it's been a while since I've even been on these forums. Just got too busy, but still keeping up with my languages (always a little bit!) So here's an update:

French
I carried on reading Un sac de billes until I got just over half way through it. It is certainly an enjoyable book, and after a kindle-assisted reading I think I'd like to dig deeper and read this one intensively, making notes and everything. However, the last time I touched it was about two months ago because school got too busy.

Hindi
Hindi has just become my main focus because I am planning a trip to India with my parents and surviving brothers and sisters. One of my brothers died a little over 3 years ago and one of his wishes was to have some of his ashes scattered on the hill in India where we went to school. It's been a little while getting everyone on the same page about travel, but now we're planning to go during my Easter holidays in 2018. Whenever I have a trip coming up to somewhere they speak one of my target languages, I turn 90% of my language-learning efforts to that language. So for the next 8 months I will mainly be studying Hindi.

Of course, I have a plan. Any feedback and suggestions would be welcome.

1. Review grammar and vocabulary
- Anki to study vocab from things I'm reading (I find it sticks better if I'm choosing words from sources I'm reading and re-reading).
- Assimil le Hindi sans peine. I got up to about ch 26 (of 55) a couple of years ago. I'm restarting from chapter 10 and hope to complete about one lesson per week. That won't get the book finished, but I'd rather not rush through it.
- Rupert Snell's podcasts. These are podcasts about vocabulary, some made to match chapters in his textbook, and others on topics. Good to listen to while driving.

2. Lots of input to activate understanding
- Reading from the Routledge Intermediate Hindi Reader. I work through the chapters quite intensively, and add unknown words to Anki. The 20 chapters only have 2-4 pages of text, and I tend to read them many times. I'm first working through chapters I've worked on before (ch. 1-14), reviewing the vocabulary on Anki and re-reading the chapters several times.
- Tintin. I have most of the Tintin books in Hindi and have only read two of them. I'd like to dig into the series. In addition I have several other Indian comics in Hindi.
- Bollywood films. Netflix has an OK collection of Hindi films, and I have many more on DVD.
- News podcasts.

3. Output practice
- Writing language islands (described below)
- Shadowing Assimil.
Most of my language study has been based on massive input. I'm shy to speak, partly because I want to think a lot about what I say and it takes too long. I've developed the idea that (for me anyway) to road to speaking freely is going to come by writing. While writing you have all the time in the world to think about what you want to say, look up unknown words, etc. But like anything else, it gets easier with practice. As writing fluency gets better, it stands to reason that speaking fluency will improve as well because you are getting better at producing the language. Therefore, I intend to write several "language island" pieces and get them checked on Lang-8. Once I'm satisfied with each piece I will memorize it as well as I can.

"Language islands" was an idea of Boris Shekhtman. In brief, you write set pieces on topics that interest you and memorize them. When you find your conversational skills are lagging, attempt to turn the conversation to one of your chosen topics and you can rely on memorized chunks to give yourself a bit of a break.

[rdearman]

Good to see you back!