A language learners’ forum

An email notified me this morning that my Assimil course has been shipped. It should arrive on Thursday morning, coincidentally the same day I get my new running/gym shoes... so, tomorrow is apparently Zelda's Self-Bought Presents Arrival Day, Finally. Should put that in my calendar as an official holiday.

/y/, /ø/, and /œ/ are still kicking me in the pants. It feels nice to know the correct pronunciation of these French vowels, but it feels not-nice to discover how sloppy my French pronunciation actually is. (I blame my parents and friends for telling me that my French accent is good simply because I can pronounce the French R and throw some nasal sounds around.)

Language-learning takes a lot of self-examination and adjustments. I love studying on my own, but it's turning out to be difficult to stay accountable or even to know if I'm making progress! I've adjusted my learning schedule a little bit, so right now I'm focusing on just three things:

1. Exposure to French, even if I don't understand what's being said. I'm trying to balance both pure audio exposure, and audio-with-subtitles exposure. My main goal is to be able to notice how words sound when they are in a sentence, where they begin and where they end. This is where I'm really challenging myself, because it's not very fun to be listening so closely to something that doesn't make sense to me. However, when I do understand a phrase or small set of words, I get a HUGE dopamine rush. Thanks brain!
2. French grammar with the Easy French book. I'm doing about 15-20 minutes a day. Nothing intensive. I want a solid foundational knowledge in basic grammar concepts.
3. Pronunciation practice, mostly to aid listening comprehension.

April 26, 2018

Assimil French has arrived! I must admit to being surprised at the size of the Assimil book... it is about the length of my hand, like a guidebook. It's shorter than Strunk & White Elements of Style. I wonder if Assimil books are all this way, or it's just the 2016 version. Also, the typeface looks nothing like the old French With Ease books that I've seen online -- the typeface in my book is sans serif, which isn't my favorite but that's a minor niggle.

Overall I'm excited to get started. I haven't been able to complete the first lesson or listen to the audio, since my MacBook doesn't have a CD drive (I would blame Apple, but this is the first time I've ever needed to use a CD in like 3 years). I'm using my partner's computer to move the first 10 lessons to a thumb drive which I can then transfer to my MBP. Should take an hour or so.

I also got my copy of English Grammar for French Students, which looks like it's straight out of the 1960's. The book is used and someone made sloppy notes in it with a black pen that had a propensity to bleed through the pages. Many of the notes are riddled with spelling errors, and most are complaints about the book being too hard/not making sense. To say I'm annoyed is an understatement. Thank the gods, it looks like this person quit when they were about nine pages into the book.

Bon Courage!

I thought I was the only one who used Strunk & White Elements of Style

Nice to see another enthusiastic learner log!

Does your Assimil course include the mp3 CD? If so, the files have embedded subtitles. If your audio player supports subtitles, you have the means to do pretty good work listening to Assimil while reading all on the go.

I have a podcast suggestion: Balades, on podclub.ch http://www.podclub.ch/fr/emissions/balades-f. These are free fortnightly podcasts aimed at students between A2-B1, but are much easier to follow than the Jounal en francais facile. The best thing is that there is an active transcript, by which I mean the sentence being spoken is highlighted. In addition, they came out with a free app last year, and the app allows you to download your podcasts to listen offline. The app also has the active transcript feature. What's great about the podcasts is they talk about a lot of different topics and are quite interesting.

Zelda, I had a fatal coup de foudre myself with French when I was ten, and I haven't recovered yet. In fact it's the only language I feel guilty I haven't done more with, and I regularly feel the need to stop everything else and simply master French.

Not to mention Chanel and the rest of all the dreamy French things... (sigh).

Try Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie on YouTube. If you like that sort of thing you'll enjoy them a lot.

jeffers wrote:Does your Assimil course include the mp3 CD? If so, the files have embedded subtitles. If your audio player supports subtitles, you have the means to do pretty good work listening to Assimil while reading all on the go.

I have a podcast suggestion: Balades, on podclub.ch http://www.podclub.ch/fr/emissions/balades-f. These are free fortnightly podcasts aimed at students between A2-B1, but are much easier to follow than the Jounal en francais facile.

Hi Jeffers, thanks for stopping by and for the podcast recommendation! My Assimil course does include the mp3 CD, but I never would have thought to look for embedded subtitles if you hadn't mentioned them. After a little rooting around, I discovered the transcripts under the iTunes Lyrics button. I am keeping all my mp3 in iCloud, which means I can access them on both my computer and my iPhone. It's super handy. Thank you so much!

renaissancemedici wrote:Zelda, I had a fatal coup de foudre myself with French when I was ten, and I haven't recovered yet. In fact it's the only language I feel guilty I haven't done more with, and I regularly feel the need to stop everything else and simply master French.

Not to mention Chanel and the rest of all the dreamy French things... (sigh).

Try Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie on YouTube. If you like that sort of thing you'll enjoy them a lot.

French is an amazing language, isn't it? The French culture fascinates me, too. Somehow, it strikes a balance between traditional and non-traditional, dreamy and cynical, reserved and sacrilegious. I hope you'll get a chance to work on French a little more. Thank you for the recommendation too, I will certainly check out that show!

April 27, 2018

I keep writing 2017 instead of 2018. Then I realize that I don't really care what year it is, it's just a number. Am I getting old?

Assimil is awesome, you guys. I started out with the Premier Leçon yesterday, just to get a taste of the course and see what it's like to work with the book and audio. The audio quality blew me away. It doesn't matter if I'm listening on my MacBook, my iPhone, my speaker or my fancy headphones -- on all of them, the Assimil audio is crystal-clear. Obviously, the voice actors and actresses have lovely voices. I wonder... if I shadow the audio a million times, will I sound as sexy as they do whenever I choose to speak French? That would be amazing. I'd have a super smooth, enunciated French accent, and still have an awkward, smooshed American accent.

As is noted everywhere on the internet, the Assimil dialogues themselves are humorous. This is a huge boon for me, as I enjoy dry, witty humor.

Today, I tackled four lessons (through the Cinquième Leçon), because I'm finding myself too advanced for the first several lessons. I'm feeling pretty good about my French right now. Even though I complain about my listening comprehension, I know I've been making progress. All that matters is that I'm better than I was a week ago!

I found this thread today: LIE to a Polyglot https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5071. I agree with the initial post as well as many of the observations in the replies. This just solidifies my recent conclusion that I need to focus more on listening, especially pure listening.

I recorded myself speaking a short, sweet French introduction. The sentences are very simple beginner sentences, but I hope that recording myself will help me get over my fear of speaking French in front of others. I also would like to have a voice recordings so I can keep track of my speaking progress.

Before recording, I wrote a short blurb about myself and our pets on a piece of paper, practiced speaking it aloud once, and then recorded myself immediately. Therefore you will notice some lapses in rhythm, and poor pronunciation. I did not check any of my grammar or vocabulary so that I wouldn't get caught up in analysis paralysis.

If you are interested, here is the clip: https://vocaroo.com/i/s0Kswz8B9SVV.

Note: I was told that "ronronner" means "to purr", I hope this is the case. Also, that is not my true age nor my true name.

Hello. Nous sommes une famille heureuse sounds more appropriate. "Viens" and mariée need some work. You may also need to open your vowels a bit. Your pronunciation was above average. Good luck.