There are worse things I could do... (FR, RU, ES)

[MamaPata]

Does anyone have any advice on how to measure progress at the intermediate level? (I don't really want to do more tests - it takes a lot of time that I don't really have to spare at the moment- but I am thinking about it). When I was a beginner, it was a lot easier to see myself improving, whereas I do feel like I've plateaued at B1 for French for the last five years.

Without a test, you could perhaps:

1.search YouTube for examples of other people taking a DELF B1, B2, C1 oral test, and ask yourself how well you understand the dialogue, and try to compare your own skills by reproducing a self-talk summary in french afterwards.

2. If you can remember finding a book/video/song difficult way back when, you could revisit it now and judge your own progress.

EDIT
TV5 Monde, and RFI both have some A1-B2 graded exercises (RFI even have a few C level exercises). You could try a few of those and see how you do.

Those are really good ideas, thank you. I've done some of the TV5 Monde ones previously, but I'll check out the RFI ones. I also ended up accidentally reading something I started a while ago in Russian, and it is a lot easier now, which means there is some progress going on. I'll have a look for similar things - it's a good point.

[MamaPata]

With regards to French, you might simply need to push yourself harder. Your time is limited, so don't use all of it on activities that you're comfortable with. Work along your boundaries. Listen to things which are just that little bit faster than what you're comfortable with, or which contain fewer known words or different registers. Vary your reading more also to include different genres and different styles of writing, and really concentrate on how the things you read (especially articles and essays) are structured.

I've never really felt that I've plateaued in Swedish, and I think that is partly to do with the fact that I have always been overly ambitious in my Swedish journey. I am only feeling a bit discontent with my progress now that I've settled into a routine and am not stretching myself as much.

This is a very good point. I don't think this is the case for Russian, but it definitely might be for French.

[MamaPata]

This week coming is reading week at my university (a week without classes, so students can concentrate on essay preparation, dissertations, etc for one week). It coincides with the time of year that I tend to get really run down and miserable, so I'm really glad to have a week to sort of reset. I don't have any massive language related goals for the week - I want to get a decent amount of exercise in, and I really need to work on my dissertation. But I think it will help me refresh a little, which will help get the language stuff back in gear for what remains of 2017.

Russian
- Hours: 15 hours. Too much of this was watching, but this week was a bit of a pain, so I'm not worried for now.
- Read: Articles for our classes - we get a text to translate or summarise weekly, as well as a couple of texts for our other classes. This week the translation was of an extract from Это я Эдичка by Limonov, so that was pretty interesting. We're also reading about the Westerners and Slavophiles, which is less intriguing. (I studied it in a lot of detail a few years ago, so summary articles aren't really that interesting).
- Watched: Груз-200 (Balabanov, 2007). All the trigger warnings for this one - it was a bit of a jump from last week's light comedy! I've now seen about four of Balabanov's films (Брат, Брат 2, Я тоже хочу) and another film with the lead actress Agniia Kuznetsova (Все умрут, а я останусь). I like some of Balabanov's work a lot (I admit, Брат 2 is not brilliant, and I really disliked Я тоже хочу, but that may be more about me than the film). His films are really carefully made - the soundtrack is always key, the mise-en-scene is incredibly detailed, in order to make his point. There is always more to notice, and I think that is particularly true of this film. But god, it's pretty grim.



I also watched the first two series of Castle.
- Wrote: a summary for class.
- Grammar: ... nothing really. I need to work on getting this back into my routine as I need to continue automatising the basics, and add in some of the higher level detail.

French
- Hours: 10 hours.
- Read: I've finished 'Avec Mon Meilleur Souvenir' by Francoise Sagan. This is definitely a good option for people at B1 level - it's a set of short texts about her life and experiences. She had a pretty fascinating life and she knew a lot of really interesting characters, so there's chapters on Jean-Paul Sartre, Orson Welles, Billie Holliday, Rudolf Nureyev, etc. There was a decent amount of vocabulary I didn't know, and sometimes I found it difficult to get into it (I'm not really a short stories person), but overwhelmingly I thought it was very well written and worth reading.


- Watched: Quite a few youtube videos.
- Wrote: Nothing much.
- Grammar: I've been working through my grammar book. I also did exercises on past tenses and prepositions.
- 2 italki lessons. These were both really useful and went pretty well. I'm not bad at chatting, but my register is definitely overly informal, and I don't use French structures. (And I did have a couple of moments when I was searching for a word and could only think of the Russian, but fewer than I would have expected!)

[MamaPata]

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure I have much to report really. As predicted, I spent most of reading week exercising so I could get myself back on track in that sphere and improve my mental health. Then my brother was here at the weekend, so we were obviously spending time with him. I also found myself looking at jobs a lot, which is useful in that it's helping me get a sense of what is out there, but as I can't apply for a little while, it's not that helpful! There should be a more interesting update next week.

Anyway, languages.

Russian
- Hours: 10 hours.
- Read: A few articles.
- Watched: No films this week, but quite a bit of Castle. My film watching should increase again soon though.
- Wrote: ... potentially something?
- Grammar: Zilch.
- A couple of italki lessons. I did one lesson with a retired woman from Kazakhstan, which was hilarious. It was just like being back in Russia and talking to middle aged women. The woman I was speaking to was explaining that I'm getting too old to not have a fiance/husband (and I know I'm getting older, because I know get asked about Жених/муж where they used to say друг). But this is in the same breath as commenting that many people are divorced by 25.
At any rate, she was very sweet and it was very natural Russian (and very cheap) so I'll probably have lessons with her from time to time to practise conversation and listening.

French
- Hours: 9 hours.
- Read: I read the first section of Femmes de Dictateurs 2 (No prizes for guessing what it's about!). This section was about Castro, who I don't know masses about, so I did find it difficult from time to time. I think if I knew the context better, it would be easier, as it wasn't necessarily vocabulary that I was having problems with, but just holding it all in my head. I also can't decide if the style of writing is holding me back - she swaps between different individuals a lot and I never remember character names, so occasionally I find it hard to work out which woman she is discussing. While this would definitely be easier to manage if my French was better, I do think there is also a style problem.
- Watched: Quite a few youtube videos, an episode or two of Jane the Virgin. I've been watching quite a few of Tibo In Shape's videos, which are definitely a bit more challenging than my usual.
- Wrote: Nothing much.
- Grammar: Nope
- A couple of italki lessons.

[MamaPata]

I haven't really been with it for the last two weeks so I haven't been filling in my spreadsheet. As a result, I don't really have much to report, so this will just be a quickie, to get me back into the swing of things. I honestly don't see my language studies improving at in the next 5-6 weeks of this year, so I'm really not expecting much.

Russian

I watched Коктебель (Khlebnikov and Popogrebskii, 2003).


Honestly, I wasn't really a fan. It's their first film and I'm not convinced that they totally pull it off, though there's some gorgeous cinematography and excellent acting. If you're into cinema as an art form, I'd definitely recommend it though, as they were clearly trying to make an art/auteur film.

French

I watched Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries in French.

It's definitely a show that I would recommend - very light hearted, a lot of comedy and witty one liners - and I found the French dub very easy to watch as it's quite slow and the vocab is very manageable.

[MamaPata]

Still not reporting much - I am now ill on top of everything else, and being a real baby about it. Anyway, here are the films I've watched in Russian.

Крестьнская доля

1912 silent film by Goncharov. (Okay, so technically, I didn't watch it in Russian. But it's Russian and I watched it). I think it's very well done, and it's an interesting little story (genuinely little, I'm not sure it's even 30 mins long). It's very much of that pre-revolutionary Russian melodrama type, but it is slightly different from others in its treatment of some of the themes. There are some very sweet scenes, and it's definitely interesting in terms of the history and filmography.

Путешествие с домашними животными

2007 film by Vera Storozheva. I actually liked this quite a bit, but it's not my usual taste. It's a very quiet story - bits of it are bleakly funny, but mostly it just sort of swims along. The filming is really interesting and it's definitely heaped in meaning and imagery. It's actually very quiet in some ways - I think there's no speech for the first ten minutes.

Лунный папа

1999, Bakhtier Khudoinazarov.
This film destroyed me - I think it's genius. I have seen another of Khudoinazarov's films (Шик) and both of them are in my top films of all time. His films are totally surreal and bonkers, and yet manage to be hilarious and touching. I just have a lot of feelings about them and would recommend them to anyone. He's an incredible director and well worth your time. This is one of his earlier films and it's a lot less polished than Shik (or at least the version I watched was) but the timing is exquisite - it just doesn't put a foot wrong.

[MamaPata]

Well yesterday I sat the DELF B2 exam. It wasn't the best of times, because this term has been a bit difficult generally so I haven't been able to do the kind of longer-term preparation that would have been useful. And then this week I got tonsillitis, and then ended up having side effects from the painkillers. (Which, I hasten to add, were your standard over-the-counter, taken within the recommended dosage. My body couldn't even cope with that ). So I was still in quite a bit of pain, hadn't been able to revise and was just generally a bit out of it. Perfect exam conditions.

Oral: I did the oral in the morning. We were given two random mini-texts to choose from - I had one on introducing technology into classrooms and one on whether employers should be able to access employees' work mobiles. I chose to do the education one and had 30 minutes to prepare a 5-7 minute presentation. Then the two examiners asked me questions about the presentation and potential areas I hadn't covered. I didn't find it too intimidating as it's pretty much the standard format of all oral exams (in school, sixth form, uni) except that I hadn't prepared the presentation at home. The examiners were really friendly and nice. However, I don't think I did well. I definitely made some mistakes, but mostly it simply wasn't the level of French that they're looking for - I didn't have the connectors or the evidence of my skills. It was a good conversation but it was a more basic level than it should have been.

Listening: In the afternoon we had the written sections (2h30, starting with listening). We heard one longer text (but much shorter than I had been expecting) which was about encouraging children to read, played twice. It was pretty clear, but there was some stuff at the beginning that I couldn't make out (though I am unclear if this was French or my generally rubbish hearing). Then there were questions: multiple choice and short answer. Then there was a shorter text with a professor of ethnology about the importance of hair in culture. This was not hard, but it was very low quality - I found it physically difficult to hear because it was quite crackly*. Then a page of short questions. Generally, I found these to be much easier than I was expecting, but maybe that's a sign that I got a lot of stuff wrong!

* This is generally a major problem I have with the DELF exams. One of the indicators of B2 is the ability to understand, even where there are barriers to hearing, like background noise. Personally I don't think this is relevant and I think it biases against a lot of people. I am not deaf, but I do have problems hearing and even in the UK, if I am in a noisy pub, I often won't be able to hear what my friends are saying because of the background noise or multiple conversations happening at once. Equally, I can almost never hear announcements. My hearing is good enough and I get through day to day life with almost no problems, but I do spend a lot of time asking people to repeat themselves or clarify things, or guessing based on what I did hear (this is not a great strategy). This is not a problem with comprehension - English is my native language. I don't appreciate the idea that my French is low-level because I am unable to do this. Equally, if I was someone who was hard of hearing or d/Deaf, I'd find this quite insulting. There are better ways of testing listening comprehension.

Reading: We then had two texts for reading comprehension. The first was on open office layouts and the second was on something that escapes me completely. Again, these were both fine. I find the questions where you have to pick True or False and prove it with a quotation from the text quite hard, because the whole quotation (which I would include to make the sentence make sense) is too long for the space provided. But yeah, there was very little vocabulary I didn't know in the texts and there was nothing I didn't understand, it was more trying to work out what they were looking for.

Writing: We had to write a letter to the mayor to encourage them to start a Book Box programme (where people can leave and take books for free). Like the speaking, this wasn't bad but I know it was much lower than the standard of language I should have been proving.

I'm not really sure how it went overall - I find it very hard to tell with language exams generally and I've never done anything like the DELF before. The reading and the listening were much easier than I had been expecting (despite the one listening question that I simply could not get), but I am sure that I was well under what is needed for the oral and the writing. Hopefully the two areas will balance each other out and I will pass, but I suspect it's unlikely. It was a useful experience and I am grateful for it.

The results come out in February, so I'll let you know my thoughts then when I know how I did.

[MamaPata]

In case anyone wants a summary of my life, these comics feel very accurate.

[MamaPata]

Woops, it's been a while. I have been doing some work for both French and Russian, but I won't run through it all here - anything interesting I watched may be added to a summary in the next few weeks.

As it's nearly the end of 2017 (when did that happen ), I figured I'd have a look back over and lay out my stats for the Super Challenge - what went well, what I need to think about in the future, progress, etc, etc. I may read a few more things, but I won't bother counting them on the official tracker. So here it is:

French

I watched 163 hours of TV and film from June 2016. I had aimed to do a single challenge, which I finished back in May this year. After that point, I decided that I would stop counting dubbed media, which had made up the most of my watching, but would continue to watch stuff. Therefore, I haven't really tracked anything after May aside from a few episodes of Au Service de la France and Ainsi Soient-Ils.

I read 6167 pages of text in French, which included a mixture of native and translated content. In terms of native texts I read: (anything I finished should be listed at the start of my log)
L'Etranger
Trois Mousquetaires
Les Gens du Balto
Histoire de Madame de Luz
La Belle et la Bete
Suite Francaise (only 25 pages)
L'Elegance des Veuves (only 10 pages)
Le Terroriste Noir (only 10 pages)
Les Miserables (only 30 pages)
Les gens heureux lisent et boivent du café (God, I hated this and I like a good romance novel)
Le Roi de Fer
Avec Mon Meilleur Souvenir
Femmes de Dictateur (94 pages)

This was a real game changer for me - I came across the Super Challenge in late May, which led me to the forum, and it was a whole new experience. I have seen a definite improvement in my French, but most importantly, it just became a part of my life. I do now read in French much more regularly and I will always choose the French dub, if I am going to watch things on Netflix. I've even roped my family in - we now watch Jane the Virgin and Brooklyn-99 together in French.

I didn't do as well watching native content after May. Some of that is just me being lazy/cowardly, but some of it is more than that, which I'll talk about in Russian. Overall, I'm really pleased. I would say that my French was probably about a low B1 when I began, but I'm definitely nearing the B2 range now. I can watch videos without subtitles and catch pretty much everything happening, though I do miss nuance. My vocabulary is much larger than it was previously, thanks to both the watching and reading. I can read with a lot more ease than I could when I started - you don't have to go back too far in my log to find me complaining about Le Roi de Fer when I started, but it got significantly easier to read by the end. I also saw a huge jump after reading Les Trois Mousquetaires.

My French definitely isn't where I would like it to be, and my writing (and general accuracy) lags behind. But I can talk about pretty much everything I want to (with mistakes) and watch and read the things I want to. It is a bit of a process settling into a new book, but I can read for pleasure, which is one of my key goals. I couldn't work in French, which is probably a vague goal of mine, but otherwise, I feel happy with my level of French to do the things I want to do.

Russian

I only read 1748 pages of Russian for this Super Challenge, which is well below reaching my goal! I am slightly annoyed by this as I am sure I would have seen a much bigger progression had I worked harder. I can't read without the help of a dictionary in Russian, which meant that I really have to push myself to do the work. However, in my defence, I do a lot of reading for class - weekly translations, reading aloud in skype lessons, etc - which I did not count, because it's never more than 5 pages here and there. But as it is very regular, it has helped me. I also started using LWT, which I will push on with next year.

However, I did make it to the films portion of the challenge! I watched 198 hours over the challenge, which I'm really pleased with. I watched a lot of dubbed content, but also a good number of films. If anyone is looking for recommendations, my favourite films are starred.
Интердевочка
Кухня
Екатерина
Брат 2 (This is entertaining, but Брат is far superior)
Cherry Orchard (play)
Student films
Вдох, выдох
Я тоже хочу
Точка
Итальянец
Портрет в сумерках (very good, but so so grim)
4
Исповедь содержания
Все умрут, а я останусь
Беловы (This is a semi documentary film - just looking at the lives of this family, so it's interesting if nothing else!)
Метель
Станционный смотритель
Летят журавли (It's a classic. It had been hyped up for me so I didn't like it as much as I had expected, but it's very good)
Жил певчий дрозд
Мольба
Романовы
Hammer and Sickle
Вор (I like this director. He makes quite Hollywood style films so they're a nice way into Russian cinema with all its misery. His are miserable, but in a more familar style)
Кукушка (The scenery is gorgeous and it's a very light war film)
Груз-200 * (So good, but so grim)
В Движении (I hated this, but it's very in keeping with that Russian mentality that everything is out of your control)
Лунный папа * (One of my favourite films ever)
Коктебель
путешествие с домашними животными
Русалка * (Hilarious and brilliant)

Again, I do also watch a lot of dubbed content in Russian. Like I said, there are certain things I watch with my family, but also, I watch a variety of shows recommended to me by friends. Equally, if I'm going to watch a series (rather than a film or documentary) I want to be able to then share it with my friends, who are unlikely to watch stuff with subtitles (and none of whom speak French or Russian). Plus, I know what I like when it comes to British and American TV (and literature) so I have a much much higher chance of getting into a series or book. I don't love Russian TV series - I like things that are reasonably cheerful or I know will end happily, but I can't stand second hand embarrassment or people being unnecessarily mean to each other (both of which seem to be pretty standard in Russian comedies).

This is something I really want to work on in 2018 and in the next SC for French, but I'm also not too bothered about it (and not at all bothered for Russian). I do watch a lot of youtube content (which I don't count) and so on in both languages, so I am getting exposure to native speech. Equally, I have watched a lot of Russian films (if that's something you're interested, I will be posting here, or you can friend me on Letterboxed).

Overall, I am really pleased with both Super Challenges. I can see a real jump in my comprehension and I am sure that it has helped cement grammar rules. I'm looking forward to the next one!

[MamaPata]

2017 in Review

We are basically done with 2017. I'm still not sure when that happened, but I guess it did. 2017 has been a pretty great year for me overall, but the last few months have been quite a struggle. This time last year, I was travelling on the Trans-Siberian with my mum, so it's quite a big jump! She is sending me photos of the places we were everyday, which is really cool. Today we were in Birobidzhan.

After that, I was back in Moscow and studying (with a break to travel to Omsk when some friends came to see me). I studied until the end of May, then did an internship here in London over the summer. September/October was the start of my final year of my BA. This first term has been a bit challenging for a number of reasons, but I've made it through. Overall, it's been a really brilliant year - I made some great friends, travelled, really improved my French and Russian. I read 71 books, which I'm really pleased with. I had originally aimed for 20, so this is so much better than I was expecting. And of those, I read a decent number of classics and books by women, which were two of my reading goals. Mostly, I was reading in English, but I'm happy with that - there's a lot I want to read in English! But in the coming year, it might be nice to push my numbers up for foreign languages, even if it remains very unbalanced.

I talked quite a bit about languages when I was looking at the Super Challenge, so I won't rehash that. Overall, I did 470 hours of Russian work, 270 of French and 30 of Spanish, before I decided I had to just focus on the two until I graduate. I would have liked to reach slightly higher numbers for both French and Russian (my final goals were 300 and 500 hours respectively), but it's much higher than my original goals, so I'm happy. Also, I count my uni classes elsewhere and some of the films under dissertation, so the actual time spent on Russian was over 500hours.

Looking Forward

I don't have any big New Years Resolutions this year, because the year is basically split into two parts. Until the end of May, my only goal is university - I want to do as well as I can. Obviously, I will have reading and sports goals, etc, in order to help my mental health survive. So Russian will be the main focus, but I will also be prioritising my non-language based subjects. I am stronger there and enjoy them more, so I think it is worthwhile putting in the time there, rather than getting stuck pushing with Russian and not making as much progress.

After May, it's all a bit blank! It all depends what kind of job I manage to find and where that is based. I am not ruling out trying to work in Europe, but I am not sure that willl be possible, and obviously that will make a lot of difference to what I focus on. When I am a bit clearer (and probably procrastinating ) closer to the time, I will figure out my precise language goals for the rest of the year.

For the time being, my plan is to survive the final slog. Then at the end of May, I will join the Super Challenge for French, Spanish and Russian (though unlikely a full challenge for any of them). I may waver about Russian, as I might take a little time off after all the focus of my degree, but I don't want to lose it or forget why I (have) enjoyed it. My Spanish is currently quite poor, but I still understand better than I ought given how little work I do(!), and I think it wouldn't take too much to get it back to a decent B1 and then work towards the B2 range.

And possibly, at some point in the autumn, I would like to pick up a new language. I'm not thinking about this seriously now, but it's a fun game to play sometimes. I don't want to learn another Romance or Slavic language particularly so I flirt with German/Mandarin/Arabic/Persian... We'll see.