Re: PM’s French Re-entry into the Matrix - Phase 1: 500 Hours Extensive Reading

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Re: PM's French Target: C1 2018

Postby PeterMollenburg » Sun Nov 12, 2017 10:35 pm

Xmmm wrote:It seems quite ridiculous to me that Xmmm can read Camus in Italian, and PM cannot read Camus in French. And Xmmm can watch Marseilles in Italian, but PM cannot watch it in French. It's absurd.

You ought to know, PM, that the limits are all in your mind. You have yourself in a mental prison.

If you really want to be able to impersonate a French native, you have to act like a French native. And they read French novels without having a dictionary handy. And they watch French TV without transcripts.

Buy a French paperback and a highlighter. The highlighter is a concession to your anxiety. Mark all the words you don't know, but don't look them up. Read the whole book cover to cover without looking up a single word. At the end of it, be amazed that you are still alive and that it was easier than you thought.


I never said i could or couldn’t read Camus. I have no idea what it is. I’m B2 in French, I’m pretty sure I can do a lot in French, I’m pretty sure I’ve already read a few books in French. I approach learning languages (perhaps vastly) differently than you. I’ve already watched Marseilles in French and numerous other movies and episodes (over 100 in the current SC). Plenty of advanced French learners struggle with series/films and plenty of advanced learners look up words along the way with reading. I do so at times with English. Where I differ a lot from the majority of learners here, is that most of my learning has come from grammar and course books. Thus I’m not entirely comfortable with series/film and novels/books (I have probably read less than 50 English books in my life - it’s not something I relished in growing up). I’m not an avid reader, but do enjoy it more as an adult when I have time. Take my situation into consideration. I’m not you, so my struggles are not absurd.
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Re: PM's French Target: C1 2018

Postby Xmmm » Sun Nov 12, 2017 10:51 pm

PeterMollenburg wrote:
Xmmm wrote: Plenty of advanced French learners struggle with series/films and plenty of advanced learners look up words along the way with reading. I do so at times with English. Where I differ a lot from the majority of learners here, is that most of my learning has come from grammar and course books. Thus I’m not entirely comfortable with series/film and novels/books (I have probably read less than 50 English books in my life - it’s not something I relished in growing up). I’m not an avid reader, but do enjoy it more as an adult when I have time. Take my situation into consideration. I’m not you, so my struggles are not absurd.


Well, it was meant as encouragement and not as criticism. But if you're not avid reader to begin with as you say, then my remarks were off-base. Sorry about that.
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Re: PM's French Target: C1 2018

Postby PeterMollenburg » Sun Nov 12, 2017 11:15 pm

Xmmm wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote:
Xmmm wrote: Plenty of advanced French learners struggle with series/films and plenty of advanced learners look up words along the way with reading. I do so at times with English. Where I differ a lot from the majority of learners here, is that most of my learning has come from grammar and course books. Thus I’m not entirely comfortable with series/film and novels/books (I have probably read less than 50 English books in my life - it’s not something I relished in growing up). I’m not an avid reader, but do enjoy it more as an adult when I have time. Take my situation into consideration. I’m not you, so my struggles are not absurd.


Well, it was meant as encouragement and not as criticism. But if you're not avid reader to begin with as you say, then my remarks were off-base. Sorry about that.


My apologies Xmmm. I did take a little offence, but I clearly misunderstood. Thank you for the encouragement :)
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Re: PM's French Target: C1 2018

Postby whatiftheblog » Sun Nov 12, 2017 11:36 pm

I think Xmmm's point was that if you feel like you're plateauing, it's likely because you're not leaving your comfort zone of B2 material (and yes, I would say that even a "C1" graded reader is probably still objectively B2 material with maybe slightly trickier grammar structures and some fancier vocab). I can understand your frustration with not progressing toward C1 as quickly as you'd hoped. I know you've already received this same assessment from myself and many others across several threads here, but the reality is... it's very difficult to get to C1 on B2 material.

Throwing in an example from a completely unrelated field, I spent a very significant portion of my youth figure skating. It's a sport where you also have pre-defined levels, and each level has a set of required elements that get progressively harder as you move forward. Among jumps, a flip is harder than a loop, a lutz is harder than a flip, an axel is harder than a lutz, a double toe loop is harder than an axel, and so on. However, you're not supposed to train step by step. Any coach worth their salt will tell their skaters that they should already be attempting axels once their loops are solid, and that they should already be going for double toes before they even perfect their lutzes. The reality is, plenty of people manage to land double toes before their axels, and many end up with better axels than lutzes, even though the latter is considered the "easier" element. I've found this leapfrogging approach to be perfectly applicable to language learning as well, particularly on the B -> C journey. You don't actually need to memorize the precise subjunctive form of every single verb in order to listen to, understand, and fully enjoy a cool podcast/book/debate show that was created by and for natives. I still look up the spelling of certain verb forms, my pronunciation isn't perfect, and I mess up genders with some regularity, yet I somehow managed to wriggle my way into a (très) grande école. Imperfection is okay (their English is worse).

Progressing toward C1, and especially C2, effectively means accepting that your training wheels have to come off and that intensive study, particularly with courses, has to give way to loads and loads of native-for-natives consumption. That's how all that grammar and vocab is going to click into place; it's also how you get to the point where you instinctively reach for French phrases and, perhaps most significantly, amass a corpus of phrases in your head that you just "know"/"get" in French, without an English translation lurking in the background. As an example, I have no idea what "dispositif" would be in English, I've never looked it up; I just "get" it in French because it's a word I hear/consume 10x a day. This, of course, is also the same method we all used to learn our native languages, so that's proof of its efficacy right there.

The good news is that you're studying French, not Kazakh, so you don't need to rely on Buffy and graded readers. Do you actually enjoy Buffy or are you just using it because there are subs/transcripts available? If you're only using it because it's commonly recommended to B-level learners and you derive no real pleasure from it, you have all of Youtube and literally thousands of podcasts at your disposal - pick something native you actually like and move forward with that. If, as you say, you've gotten to a point where your pronunciation is great because you've done a bunch of intensive listening and repeating, you won't actually need transcripts or subs.

No course can propel you into the Cs because a) that's not what they were actually made for, and even if it says C-something on the cover, it's a marketing tactic designed to keep higher-level learners paying into "the system" when they objectively don't even need it anymore; b) every course is finite, it simply can't expose you to enough grammar/vocab/sentence structure variety in a language as rich as French. The more (varied!!!) native material you consume, the more you'll be exposed to, and the richer your body of knowledge/expression will become. That's how you hit the Cs.

TLDR: in order to really progress into the Cs, you have to make yourself comfortable with the uncomfortable. Basically.
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Re: PM's French Target: C1 2018

Postby PeterMollenburg » Mon Nov 13, 2017 12:38 am

whatiftheblog wrote:I think Xmmm's point was that if you feel like you're plateauing, it's likely because you're not leaving your comfort zone of B2 material (and yes, I would say that even a "C1" graded reader is probably still objectively B2 material with maybe slightly trickier grammar structures and some fancier vocab). I can understand your frustration with not progressing toward C1 as quickly as you'd hoped. I know you've already received this same assessment from myself and many others across several threads here, but the reality is... it's very difficult to get to C1 on B2 material.

Throwing in an example from a completely unrelated field, I spent a very significant portion of my youth figure skating. It's a sport where you also have pre-defined levels, and each level has a set of required elements that get progressively harder as you move forward. Among jumps, a flip is harder than a loop, a lutz is harder than a flip, an axel is harder than a lutz, a double toe loop is harder than an axel, and so on. However, you're not supposed to train step by step. Any coach worth their salt will tell their skaters that they should already be attempting axels once their loops are solid, and that they should already be going for double toes before they even perfect their lutzes. The reality is, plenty of people manage to land double toes before their axels, and many end up with better axels than lutzes, even though the latter is considered the "easier" element. I've found this leapfrogging approach to be perfectly applicable to language learning as well, particularly on the B -> C journey. You don't actually need to memorize the precise subjunctive form of every single verb in order to listen to, understand, and fully enjoy a cool podcast/book/debate show that was created by and for natives. I still look up the spelling of certain verb forms, my pronunciation isn't perfect, and I mess up genders with some regularity, yet I somehow managed to wriggle my way into a (très) grande école. Imperfection is okay (their English is worse).

Progressing toward C1, and especially C2, effectively means accepting that your training wheels have to come off and that intensive study, particularly with courses, has to give way to loads and loads of native-for-natives consumption. That's how all that grammar and vocab is going to click into place; it's also how you get to the point where you instinctively reach for French phrases and, perhaps most significantly, amass a corpus of phrases in your head that you just "know"/"get" in French, without an English translation lurking in the background. As an example, I have no idea what "dispositif" would be in English, I've never looked it up; I just "get" it in French because it's a word I hear/consume 10x a day. This, of course, is also the same method we all used to learn our native languages, so that's proof of its efficacy right there.

The good news is that you're studying French, not Kazakh, so you don't need to rely on Buffy and graded readers. Do you actually enjoy Buffy or are you just using it because there are subs/transcripts available? If you're only using it because it's commonly recommended to B-level learners and you derive no real pleasure from it, you have all of Youtube and literally thousands of podcasts at your disposal - pick something native you actually like and move forward with that. If, as you say, you've gotten to a point where your pronunciation is great because you've done a bunch of intensive listening and repeating, you won't actually need transcripts or subs.

No course can propel you into the Cs because a) that's not what they were actually made for, and even if it says C-something on the cover, it's a marketing tactic designed to keep higher-level learners paying into "the system" when they objectively don't even need it anymore; b) every course is finite, it simply can't expose you to enough grammar/vocab/sentence structure variety in a language as rich as French. The more (varied!!!) native material you consume, the more you'll be exposed to, and the richer your body of knowledge/expression will become. That's how you hit the Cs.

TLDR: in order to really progress into the Cs, you have to make yourself comfortable with the uncomfortable. Basically.


I absolutely agree with everything you have to say here whatiftheblog. And thank you speaking in Xmmm’s defence as both your comments and his are justified.

I don’t at all disagree with you, nor have I for some time now. To clarify a few things... My resources have not necessarily been the problem in more recent months (although I acknowledge that they are in part), yet the amount of study time is. For months I’ve been struggling to find enough time to study everything I’ve wanted to. I’ve gone on reading, watching, course and listening binges more or less, because I’ve lacked time to do it all synergistically. I just haven’t put in the work consistently enough. When I watched, I was tired and just watched because I had little energy for anything else.

I know easy readers are not C1 level material, but I’ve just not gotten through my easier material to get to the tougher stuff yet (but I have read standard books in between), again inconsistent studying. Why not skip the easier stuff? I actually do want to do it, and I will. Then the real books.

I am aware of the limitations of courses (and their marketing). However I do actually get a lot out of them. Again, if I stubbornly refuse to drop them, I must ensure sufficient extensive activities take place, so as to have sufficient exposure to the language.

Again this means consistent routine, in which I’m not lazy (i’ve had a lot of late nights in the last 6 months resulting in an hour study one day, none the next day, two hours the next. Hardly effective for rotating through numerous resources of intensive and extensive varieties. So resources aren’t the entire issue here- I need to work hard and more consistently over a long period as well as consider my resources and getting on with it all in order to progress to harder material (thinking reading there again).

I’ve not even made it past midway in the first season of Buffy due to watching other things orbreadingbor courses instead. I do want to use this resource. Not my favourite show, but i’m still motivated to use the resource, it’s not useless to me, it’s still loaded with unfamiliar words- the result perhaps of too little extensive exposure to the language.

I have a desire now too as you describe to get a feel for French via loads of extensive exposure, I’m simply working towards that gradually.
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Re: PM's French Target: C1 2018

Postby PeterMollenburg » Mon Nov 13, 2017 10:13 pm

Okay...

I’ve made a few more decisions (a lot of time to think about this on holiday).

I’m going to complete only two more courses - Assimil Using French, for which I’ve around 25 lessons to go in the 2nd wave (and I might do a faster review of all lessons post 2nd wave), and French in Action beginning where I last left off around leçon 17. I’m going to focus on completing these two as my major objective in the medium term (hopefully under 6 months) with no other activities allotted to my desk study time (leisure time and commuting is different, or reading random things in French here and there). I’m no longer going to look up words for these 2 courses unless absolutely desperate and even then a French only dictionary will be my first and perhaps last port of call. No SRS no distinct vocab study, just these two courses, done the way they were designed to be used.

This well help me transition to getting a feel for the language, instead of slowly translating and memorising grammar rules and vocab (and as a side note, despite a lot of grammar study, I’m nowhere near as good at it as many here might conclude, probably because I haven’t got a great natural feel for the language).

After the two courses I reserve the right from then on to use courses to fill specific gaps and weaknesses as needed, or for exam preparation. However, I am aiming to leave courses largely behind after these 2 are completed. I will have to force through the frustration of not understanding words and grammar straight away. It’s like perhaps going from a child’s bike with training wheels to an adult’s bike with smaller training wheels in which the screws are loose and have a limited future.

Okay, I admit that, after that, I’m likely to stick to nicely laid out Dutch bike paths, since I will continue with the learning magazines after these two courses are done (which I was going to do anyway as per my plan above in a recent post), but courses will be dropped unless specific needs are recognised.

From there it will be my routine (minus the courses) as noted in the recent post. I will smash through all the easy readers, bilingual readers and kids books and move on. Not sure about Yabla, likely to move on to Buffy and then other series.
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Re: PM's French Target: C1 2018

Postby Carmody » Tue Nov 14, 2017 1:43 am

Good luck on French in Action. ;)
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Re: PM's French Target: C1 2018

Postby PeterMollenburg » Sat Dec 02, 2017 9:49 am

Update -

November:
47 hours 44 minutes of French. However for 2 weeks I did not count anything I did in French, and that was while we were on holiday in New Caledonia. So, given that once we returned I had very little in the way of French numbers on the board for November, well it's evident that the holiday helped renew my enthusiasm and application to learning French consistently day in day out.

What I'm doing
Assimil Using French
2nd wave. Actually I started while on holiday casually reading through the lessons 48 onwards (which is where I was up to) without the use of the audio. When I say casual- it was out load, I reviewed all the vocab and I did the exercises and all this multiple times for each lesson. Today I did the last lesson. I never used my French English dictionary. I used the French only dictionary very little and I just relaxed a lot more and went with it. So now that i've done a faster review of the latter portion of the book/course, i'll return to lesson 48 tomorrow and do the 'real 2nd wave' fully (shadowing and reproducing French while looking at the English and so on).

French in Action
Like Assimil I've been doing this every day, and again even less dictionary use, even if I cannot work out meanings. In fact I'm only using it occasionally to confirm phonetics. I'm progressing, but slow. The major grammar and bulk of the exercises I've decided are too easy for me, but that's okay, I fly through them. While the reading texts at the end of each lesson are more challenging and I'm trying to spend more time on those. While I'm ever so slightly tempted to ditch FIA due to it being too easy, I know I won't be saying this a few lessons down the track, and if I do, I don't care, as I'm dedicated to making it to the end this time. I've never made it past leçon 26, and when I do, it will feel like a milestone, since it was 20 years ago that I first made it there. Yes my French is a LOT better now, but I'm still getting stuff out of this course and I'm enjoying it despite the easier components. So I started back on Leçon 17 (where I left off 6 or 12 months ago) and am now nearing the end of the next leçon, leçon 18.

Easy Readers (extensive reading)
Every 2nd day I'm reading from some kindle easy readers via my large mobile phone. I want these out of the way because they are absolute shit. If you ever see easy French readers on Amazon by author Jean Blanc do NOT buy them!. I've written a scathing review in disgust. I'm talking spelling errors, factual errors (prime example- Brussels Germany!), conjugation errors, use of English-French false friends in the way they are NOT SUPPOSED TO BE USED and so on. But as ridiculous as it seems, I'm going to finish reading them. They are easy, and once i've read them all, well they can go and get %&&*(*&ed! They are quick to read too. I've read about 75-80% of them, so in perhaps another week i'll be done.

Yabla
Working my way through videos gradually upping the difficulty level (I do this every other day when i'm not doing extensive reading). I review videos i've already viewed in the first 10 to 15 min in an attempt to hammer into my brain new vocab, since lately i'm doing no dedicated vocabulary study - I stopped writing down unknown words and stopped reviewing them. I figure with FIA and Assimil I can just review the books without writing things down, which seems like more efficient use of time, as well as seeing words in context. The easy readers have English translations throughout and Yabla has subtitles EN and FR which you can turn on and off and I can review old videos.

Other stuff
Podcasts when commuting - trying to introduce new podcasts alongside the old ones to train my ear to hearing different things, different paces, different vocab etc. TV here and there (dubbed or native). Speaking to my daughter.

My left ear
Still pissing me off majorly. Not preventing me from study, but very annoying. Water is still draining (ever so slowly) and i'm still having hearing issues which don't actually usually prevent me from hearing things but are simply a source of irritation - my voice often produces an abnormal vibration-like sound in my left ear as I speak, I still hear constant 'hissing' (although I forget about it sometimes) and I haven't seen anyone about it yet - but I will!

Overseas plans/ French enthusiasm
I think due to the fact I had a good break and my wife and I concluded we are aiming for 12 months in Europe in around 2 years time, that my enthusiasm for French has grown incredibly, after when I look back a rather mediocre 2017 for perhaps half of it in terms of enthusiasm (don't let me study hours fool you - remember quality not quantity!).

I've also been reading over some older forums which i've read before on nursing in Belgium and Switzerland. The challenges posed by entering these countries seem like they are so much less challenging the higher your language skills. I concluded that, what others had advised some time ago now, that I aim for C1 in French instead of adding Dutch and attempting to reach B2 in that alongside my B2 French, was sound advice. A much stronger level of French will place me in a much better position when jumping through all the hoops, tests and assessments in my attempt to gain employment. Yes (Swiss) German would help me for Switzerland (as would Italian to a lesser extent), but I sincerely believe now that more advanced French skills will put me in a better position than adding another language to the detriment of advancing French faster.

I even came across a kiwi nurse who had written an article in a New Zealand online journal about her experiences with nursing in Belgium! This is gold to me, as it's really tough to find reliable information online with regards to nurses from anglo/North American countries (and more from Australia/NZ) and how they have integrated into nursing in Francophone Europe, and even if it has been done successfully. I replied, the editor contacted me, then she contacted me and has provided me with some useful tips and hopefully more to come. It's hopefully a good sign. Belgium currently seems more inviting as the more I read about Switzerland the trickier it seems to become.

Anyway all these things and me now sticking to my study régime as solidly as possible, has my enthusiasm to reach C1 perhaps stronger and more realistic than ever.
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Re: PM's French Target: C1 2018

Postby smallwhite » Sat Dec 02, 2017 10:22 am

Congratulations on reaching 100 pages! What a bunch of chatterboxes :P
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Re: PM's French Target: C1 2018

Postby PeterMollenburg » Sat Dec 02, 2017 11:31 am

smallwhite wrote:Congratulations on reaching 100 pages! What a bunch of chatterboxes :P


Tnx smallwhite... speaking of logs, where’s yours? ;) How’s the German coming along?
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