French, Japanese and Who Knows What Else

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Sarafina
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Languages: English (N)
French (Intermediate )
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Re: Language Log: French, Japanese and more

Postby Sarafina » Mon Nov 20, 2017 5:58 pm

I have another Italki lesson on Wednesday. I'm preparing for my IB French HL oral exam which takes place in early February I believe.
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Sarafina
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Re: Language Log: French, Japanese and more

Postby Sarafina » Mon Nov 20, 2017 6:08 pm

Sarafina wrote:
rtickner wrote:Well done on the conversational breakthrough, what a feeling it is after all that hard work.

Loving the enthusiasm and ambition in your log, don't be too hard on yourself though when you don't meet those very lofty goals! B1 to C1 is quite a journey - it took me around 12 - 18 months to move from B1 to B2 and the road to C1 has been even longer.

Bon courage! I will be watching your progress with interest.


Thank you for your words of encouragement.


I'll try to keep this in mind. But I'm not planning on actually taking the DALF C1 exam next year. My goal is to pass the listening and reading section of a past year C1 exam. One of my Italki teachers is a DALF examiner so I'll take a mock exam of all the sections except writing part. I'm just doing a speaking section for fun. See how far away I'm from having speaking skills that are up to standard of C1.
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Sarafina
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Re: Language Log: French, Japanese and more

Postby Sarafina » Sat Nov 25, 2017 2:29 pm

I forgot to write about how my lesson went. It's incredible how much I've improved in terms of listening comprehension. I remember when I had my first Italki lesson ages ago and how I was struggling to even string a sentence in French and now it's rare that I even say a word of English in my recent lessons.

The lesson was really intense. I did un examen blanc and she gave me such valuable feedback. In HL French, the oral exam is meant to last for 10 minutes. About 5 minutes discussing a picture which is related to the topic of health or leisure. Then a discussion based on the topic. A typical follow-up question after I've described a picture that suggest that there is a young girl suffering from anorexia.

The follow up question would be 'Qu’est-ce qui peut entraîner ces troubles alimentaires ? Quelles solutions'. Then we can compare cette situation avec d’autres situations alimentaires à risque par exemple en Afrique ou aux Etats-unis ?

My main feedback was that I over-complicate my points and the meaning becomes obscured. Although my pronunciation has improved, there is still some work to be done and I still make a considerable number of mistakes. She advised me to keep my points simple and clear to understand and then gradually I can develop the language skills that will be sufficient enough to express more complex ideas. I shouldn't sacrifice accuracy for complexity which was a good point because the oral exam can be harsh when it comes to accuracy to language regardless of whether your points are interesting or evaluative (which doesn't matter if the examiner struggle to understand you).

At some point I realised that I understood everything she said. I remember the first time I tried to have my Italki lessons in French, I would only understand 60% of that they were saying and I would pretend to understand by nodding along. But now I understand 95+%.

I found a site that some of my favourite cartoons in French with so many episodes available. I stumbled across this channel by chance. It's an incredible gift. It must be a sign by fate.
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Sarafina
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Re: Language Log: French, Japanese and more

Postby Sarafina » Wed Nov 29, 2017 5:49 pm

This week is my busiest week with so many deadlines I can't dodge forever. It's meant that I haven't been able to go as intensive as I would like. Japanese has been neglected.
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Sarafina
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Re: Language Log: French, Japanese and more

Postby Sarafina » Wed Dec 06, 2017 11:48 pm

This is the best and most inspiring language forum I've ever had the pleasure of being a part of. Seriously you guys are so informative and helpful and are all round awesome :)

I realised that although I need to limit my dependence of French subtitles as a crutch. It's better than using English subtitles. But French subtitles should be something I use as a way of evaluating my listening comprehension and being able to easily search up new words. From now I'll listen to the videos without any subtitles first then listen to it again with the French subtitles.

My French timetable/daily schedule


*ApprendreTV5monde (I aim to do a series of exercises on x topic per day- I only do B2 level tasks)
*Listen to at least one 'Journal en français facile Savoir.rfi
*Do spend at least 30 minutes reviewing Anki 'French Input' deck and aim to add 50+ words
*Readlang 4 articles. My favourite sites are Le Monde Diplomatique, Le Monde, Le Firago and Vice.fr (25 minutes)
*Do A4 page worth of grammar exercises on Complete French All in One Textbook
*Write 500 words for a Section A task/Watch 250 words for a Section B task (Section A and Section B refers to the different writing tasks in my writing paper for the IB)

*Try to follow along to an audiobooks: (in maybe roughly this order) L'Étranger, Madame Bovary, Candide ou l'Optimisime, Les fleures du mal and others (at least 20 minutes)

*Using YouTube for extensive listening e.g. Squeezie, Golden Moustache, Licarion Rock,, Coup de Phil, Un Cookie par Ginger Force, Le Tatou. My aim to try to listen to watch each video twice. Once without subtitles then with subtitles. With some of the more lengthier videos- I don't think I'll have patience for it (in total to have spent at least 30 minutes generally listening to the French youtubers that I've subscribed to)
To listen to one of the FranceCulture podcasts
Other podcasts for some background listening: NoFun, Balados (which has a French transcription), Season 1, La Poudre and France Inter (Podcast listening: at least 30 minutes)

Recording attempts to shadow of videos of 7jours and Easy French (total of 10 minutes worth of shadowing)
To record myself trying to summarise the key message of each 7jours I watch (around 2 minutes)
Intensive Listening: transcribing a video of Le Monde (their YouTube videos don't usually French subtitles which means I can avoid the temptation of using the subtitles as a crutch. (however long as it needs to taken but no more than 30 minutes on a trying to transcribe a single video)

Fun enjoyable series that I use to relax as well as increasing the amount of time I'm spending listening to French. No subtitles available so I have no choice to push myself to really understand. It will be interesting to see it as yardstick to measure my progress in how much my listening comprehension has improved.
Le Incroyable Monde de Gumball. I can't express how much I enjoy this series. I'm familiar with it in English so it's a delight to watch it in French. I was pleasantly surprised with how much I understood.
I'm thinking of after each episode, recording myself trying to recap what I've watched, talk about why I liked it and why it made laugh etc. I have 4 seasons available.
LA FORÊT DE L’ÉTRANGE is a series that I've been wanting to watch for a while. I've started watching it and it's wonderful. But it only has one season :cry: (I'll probably end up finishing it by the 17th December)
ATLA (After I finish watching all FORÊT DE L’ÉTRANGE then I can really dive into this)
Steven Universe (I like the series but never watch it consistently enough- it's easier to binge watch it on certain days than to try to watch one episode everyday. Just to shake this up. So on Friday evening and Saturday morning, try to watch as many episodes as possible)
Teen Wolf I
Adventure Time (I am watching it from Season 2 to Season 9- the first season gets on my nerves)
(in total: at least 60 minutes)

This second list has the same purpose as the first one but I am watching with French subtitles. Most of them are from Netflix.
Chef’s Table
*Marseilles
Call My Argent
The Break
Divines (movie)
Du soleil plein la tête (movie)
They Are Everywhere/Headwinds
Journey to Greenlands/Arctic Heart
(at least 30 minutes)
*I have French scripts of a lot of episodes of The Simpsons so I'm aiming to record myself reading along to it (15 minutes)
I'm at lost what to do with my playlists 'well it's still French' which had children-aimed French content and 'Français Input' which is just a random collection of French videos that I watched/thought was interesting to do. At first I was going to use them for shadowing purposes. But '7jours' and Easy French are better choices for shadowing for now. So should I try to shadow at least 1 minutes for each playlist?
Wait!
*I'm going to record myself summarising what happens in the video and what I liked and didn't like about it from 'well it's still French'/'Français Input.' (in total for both playlist: 5 minutes long critique

Speaking
-To have two lessons a week although with the upcoming holidays- that may get thrown out of the window for the next two weeks
-To have a language exchange whether I consistently speak in French for at least 30 minutes
-To repeat along to Learn French # 8 Hours To Pronounce Correctly French Language video
- To repeat along/practice the dialogue in each dialogues en français video

For the last couple of weeks, I've been consistently having two Italki lessons a week. And at least one language exchange. I've applied for a couple of jobs. Hopefully with a job I can have three Italki lessons a week.

My speaking exam is at the end of February. In my last assessment in October I got around 13-15/30 for my oral exam. My dream would be to get 27/30 (but I am targeting at least 25 which means I need to get 8/10 my group oral and 17/20 for individual oral.

With the intensity required for French, it's too often at the expense of Japanese. It's going to take incredible time management for me to still reach my goals in Japanese.
Last edited by Sarafina on Tue Dec 12, 2017 9:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Maiwenn
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7321
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Re: Language Log: French, Japanese and more

Postby Maiwenn » Thu Dec 07, 2017 8:06 am

Sounds like you've got some good plans in place. :) In addition to other netflix-available titles you've listed, I would recommend Au service de la France/A Very Secret Service. It's well-produced and hilarious.
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SC reading: 3819 / 10000 AR
SC reading: 3334 / 5000 FR
SC reading: 65 / 2500 DE :?

Corrections are always welcome. :)

Sarafina
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Re: Language Log: French, Japanese and more

Postby Sarafina » Thu Dec 07, 2017 7:23 pm

Maiwenn wrote:Sounds like you've got some good plans in place. :) In addition to other netflix-available titles you've listed, I would recommend Au service de la France/A Very Secret Service. It's well-produced and hilarious.


Thank you for the suggestion.
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Sarafina
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Re: Language Log: French, Japanese and more

Postby Sarafina » Tue Dec 12, 2017 9:20 pm

I've edited my French daily schedule. I've watched the first episode of Teen Wolf in French. I understand the gist but at least I know how what the French word for werewolf is. :)
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Sarafina
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Re: Language Log: French, Japanese and more

Postby Sarafina » Sun Dec 31, 2017 1:16 pm

Sorry for lack of update. I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays. With a new year a day away, it's important to look back and think about how I want to progress for 2018.

2018 will be my most productive year. I received really valuable advice regarding the best to improve my listening. I realise that I was slowly burning myself out with the amount of different resources I was using to improve my listening.
I think I am better of limiting it to a couple in order to feel greater sense of progress.

My goals for 2018
French
-To have 600-750 hours worth of French audio input (which includes TV series in French, French podcasts and youtubers, audiobooks) by the end of 2018 (to be 360 hours by the end of May)
-To be in a position to pass DALF C1 exam which will take place around 13-14th December 2018. Although it may seem like a stretch and too ambitious. I don't think it's completely unrealistic. I am a B1 in terms of listening and speaking and probably writing as well but a B2 in terms of reading. I also planning on studying French while at uni in combination with another non-language subject as part of a joint honours degree and will have access to even more resources and French native speakers. I don't have many other commitments (e.g. kids or a demanding job) which require majority of my time and attention. (I'm still uncertain about this one because with the time I'm spending preparing for it I can use that time to dabble in Spanish, Chinese and Persian for a couple of months).
I have decided to instead sit the DALF C1 exam around March or at the latest June 2019.
Instead I want to see if it's possible to get B1 in Chinese, B1 in Spanish and A2 in Persian
-To have read 50-100 books in French/(which ever (I read books really fast as in on average it takes me a day or two to finish reading a book in English however in French it may take me up to a week or two if it's really challenging)
-To have written 223 pages in French (which includes diary entries, philosophical musings or rambles, responses to certain writing tasks)
-To have 50-100 conversations in French (I only count the time that I actually speak French and it needs to add up to at least 50 hours) and 50 hours worth of me recorded myself speaking French
-To get a 7 in HL French
-To have answered and marked and read 144 IB HL French texts (in Paper 1 we have 4 texts titled Text A, B, C, D in a single paper and I have about 34-36 Paper 1

Japanese
To finish learning to learning pathways on Japanesepod101: Nihongodojo: Absolute Beginnner; Nihongodojo: Beginner; The Path to Advanced Japanese (as well as shadowed all the dialogue section of each episode). I already listen to on average 2 episodes a day
To have read 3 full length novels in Japanese, 4 manga and at least 10 short stories
To have read all Yasunari Kawabata's works (which overlaps with my previous goal)
To finish all the materials on Wasabi.jp
To have listened to 300 hours worth of Japanese audio input

I still want to do a couple of short (like one week or 30 day) challenges in other languages e.g. 30 day Korean K-Pop challenge (inspired by Judith Meyer attempt to understand your favourite show in a month by using subs2srs) except I'll be using songs of my favourite K-pop group. It's a fun experiment to say how far how I can understand Korean by using songs.

I am considering trying some uni evening class where I am learning Spanish or Chinese (but I don't know if learning in that setting will be too frustrating and slow) supplementing with some language exchanges with native speakers who are from the same uni and watching some children's show and reading books aimed for children. Then all of this is a major distraction and leaves me with even less time to prepare for the DALF C1.

I still want to eventually learn Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Persian and maybe German during my years at uni. I had planned on trying to add Spanish and Chinese in the summer but the summer of 2018 is now to intensify my Japanese learning and really push myself with it.

Maybe 2019 (hopefully have passed DALF C1) I'll start to seriously learn Chinese and Spanish and somehow try to fit Persian in.
Last edited by Sarafina on Sun Jan 07, 2018 4:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Sarafina
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Posts: 373
Joined: Tue Sep 26, 2017 6:02 pm
Languages: English (N)
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Yoruba (Advanced Comprehension)
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Re: Language Log: French, Japanese and more

Postby Sarafina » Fri Jan 05, 2018 2:42 pm

It's hard finding sufficient amount of time to learn Japanese to a decent level by the summer. I'm in my final year and I'm also intensively learning French as well. I am trying to find the minimum time I should be devoting to Japanese. I don't know how far 1 hour a day can take me.

It's temporary dileman. When I finish my final exams. I have practically 3-4 months of holiday.
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