Lawyer&Mom, Less is More (French & German)

[Lawyer&Mom]

I’m currently enjoying the most pleasurable language learning activity of my entire language learning career. My kid and I are doing language workbooks together. Kid does Practice Makes Perfect Basic French and I do Practice Makes Perfect Basic Spanish. One or two exercises a day right after school. The workbooks themselves are pretty great, very straightforward tasks, and they mirror each other almost perfectly. Kid works on days of the week, I work on days of the week, etc. etc. My two years of Middle School Spanish 30 years ago are serving me well, making things pretty easy. Easy is so much fun! Do I wish my kid was doing CLE Grammar Progressive? Sure! That’s the self-teaching gold standard, but it’s slow and methodical, and Practice Makes Perfect is better for an elementary school attention span, while still being pretty darn good. Plus explanations in English are helpful for a kid who would rather not be doing a workbook at all. (But enjoys it begrudgingly!)

[stell]

I really enjoyed Practice Makes Perfect Spanish Verbs! I remember looking at the very first paragraph I was expected to translate, and thinking “there’s NO WAY I can do that”. And then it was easy!

I love that you and your kid are learning together!

[munyag]

I have finished ER. 15 seasons, 93 discs, 322 episodes, 278 hours of dubbed French. I bought the boxed set in November 2017. It took me 1.75 years. (It felt longer.)

So where am I now? My listening comprehension has definitely improved. But even so it’s still probably only 80% maybe 85% per episode? I can follow the story perfectly, but I absolutely still miss things. The real difference is when I watch something easier. A newscast or a documentary. Suddenly I seem to understand everything!

What’s next? I watched the first episode of Fait pas ci, Fait pas ça last night. Wow. It’s so wild to watch French in actual France instead of Chicago (filmed on a set in LA.) I’ve spent a lot of time in Europe, and my mind was constantly picking out the little familiar details. The plugs! The angled handle on the shopping cart! That haircut on the French teacher! The language maybe got less attention. That’s actually a perk of watching a familiar dubbed show, the only thing new and different it the language itself.

For some reason I thought of Iguanamon when I saw your work with ER (I loved watching that show as a kid growing up in the 90s in Zimbabwe). I just couldn't help but think if you were to work diligently with a tutor and follow the Blueprint Iguana used your French would be so much further ahead. I could be wrong but I imagine you would probably enjoy your series more as your listening comprehension would be much higher. Perhaps that could be the key of breaking out of the Intermediate plateau and hitting the B2/C1 levels for you. At a certain point definitely opening up a grammar book or working with Quizlet (As recommended by Cavesa) could also further do wonders for your French. Very enjoyable log I must add too!