The Happy Mental Tourist enjoys French and Spanish

[sfuqua]

Day 9

93 pages of Spanish read so far.
83 pages of French read so far.

I stunk at shadowing a French novel. I probably could use a run through Assimil to pull my shadowing up to speed, but I'm trying not to do courses. My French needs a lot of support with the popup dictionary and/or a parallel text. The problem is weakness in French vocabulary, and general unfluent reading. I'm glacially slow at getting through French text, if I try to understand everything. Of course part of the problem is that I'm reluctant to read Harry Potter or Narnia.

My Spanish is smoothly improving with the steady diet of input I've been giving it. I may even want to switch into some pretty hard books as the challenge goes on.

I haven't been listening much, yet because I'm not sure how useful it would be for French with my substandard comprehension of reading. I would like to get in a thousand pages of reading, or something like that to bump up my vocabulary. I should have time to do a lot of watching this summer.

Back around the time I was working through FSI in Spanish, I did a bunch of cards of sentences from García-Márquez (definitely too advanced for me at the time). I didn't do 10000 sentences or anything, but after a couple of thousand cards, I found that my reading comprehension took a jump. I'm going to try to do a bunch of sentence cards made up from a couple of books that I want to read, but which are probably too hard for me.

I have edited this thing to fixed the many typos, I seem to be making these days.

[sfuqua]

Day 12

113 pages spanish
103 pages french
300 sentence cards in spanish and french SRS.

I've been doing a bunch of sentence cards in anki, to try to bump up my comprehension in French. I find it very interesting, how much trouble I have reading sentences, even Spanish sentences in anki with no context. I believe that my Spanish is in a pretty good place, I can comprehend enough that I can enjoy reading, but I miss some things. The solution for this is just more reading, a lot of it. I love reading, so this is a pretty happy place to be.

French is much shakier. I do find that the SRS cards are useful; SRS can be magic to change incomprehensible sentences into easily comprehended ones. I hope that blasting through a bunch of these cards will start to transfer into easier comprehension of novel sentences. It reminds me of what happens when you do the passive wave in Asssimil, after you work through a couple of thousand sentences, you start to be able to read independently, at least a little.

I read 20 pages of French today, and it was too hard to do every day. I feel like I worked really hard, looked up a bunch of words, understood enough to follow what was going on and... forgot all of the words I looked up. I've got some work to do. By using SRS to review hard parts of what I am trying to read, I don't think I really need to go back and do another course. I believe that things will get easier rapidly if I keep slamming away at it, but I know that there is going to be a lot of effort to get there.

I mentioned my wife's health challenges earlier in the thread, and I have wonderful news. My wife has had her tumor removed; there was no sign of the any other tumors, and our oncologist is not recommending chemo at this point. We were warned that there may be a recurrance, but for now, the news is as good as it can be.

[coldrainwater]

I mentioned my wife's health challenges earlier in the thread, and I have wonderful news. My wife has had her tumor removed; there was no sign of the any other tumors, and our oncologist is not recommending chemo at this point. We were warned that there may be a recurrance, but for now, the news is as good as it can be.

That is great news. I am happy for you and your wife. I wish you both all the best going forward!

[sfuqua]

reading 95 pages each in French and Spanish
watching 115 minutes in French

Well, at less than 200 pages of French, my comprehension and reading speed have already started to shift in the right direction, or else I've had a couple of good days by chance
Whenever I did my 5000 pages of Spanish before, I had a constant battle not to slow down and think too much. Of course it is good to understand the language you are reading, but if slowing down and improving your comprehension of a certain word or sentence slows you so much that you loose the context of the story, well it's not worth it. I found that I was understanding better whenever I stopped "trying." Maybe this is a version of Yoda's saying: "Do or don't do. There is no try." I'm pleasantly shocked by how well I can understand some of the French sentences I've been reading. I can't even explain why I understand them, I don't have a clear understanding of all the words, but somehow through partial understanding of a whole bunch of words, in context, I can read way above my actual comprehension. It's enouraging. Only another 5000-20000 pages and I'll be able to read French fluently.
The real encouraging thing is that it isn't as painful as it was a couple of weeks ago.
Spanish continues to move along. I've learned a few new words. My Spanish seems to have recovered from the partial layoff I did.
I wasted some time trying to build the perfect anki deck to support my reading. I ran into the old issue of building anki decks -- which helps your reading more, an hour of doing skills related to reading on an anki deck, or an hour of reading? Reading improves reading, listening improves listening, talking improves talking, and writing improves writing. I need a lot of input to get where I want to go as far as building up my comprehension. And I do think that improving my vocabulary through reading will help me make a big push on listening later.
I have been reading a couple of fairly weird books, both about the tragic, unstable, Jean Seberg. The Spanish book, by Carlos Fuentes, _Diana o la cazadora Solitaria_ is an extended story about his affair with Seberg in 1970. I partially read this book in translation, and I have to admit that I was a little grossed out by it, and I didn't finish it. It was too much of Fuentes bragging about his conquest. He didn'tsound very nice, neither does anybody else in the book. In Spanish it is much better. He's reaching hard for something profound, and at times he succeeds. Perhaps what he was trying to say just sounds better in Spanish. I'm going to have to read some other things by Fuentes.
The French book, _Jean S_ by Alain Absire, is a fictionalized telling of Ms. Seberg's life. I read a lot about her before I started this book. The book has an amazing amount of detail, some of which is true. Whether he captures Ms. Seberg's personality or not, he does create a compelling image of a bipolar, overly sensitve and artistic girl growing up in practical, Republican, small town Iowa. The book is way, way too hard for me at my current level of French, but by making it into a parallel text, I am getting thourgh it, and it is getting easier.

It's a lurch, but right now I feel like the super challenge is working as I hoped it would. Some time, you have to put courses aside and just read.

edited to correct a typo

[sfuqua]

Super Challenge Romance languages (French and Spanish)
100: 396 / 5000 books
100: 159 / 9000 movies
I'll change my signature bars to bars for a double challenge, if I finish a single challenge.

I'm a little shocked about how well my progress is going in French. By checking every few days with unfamiliar material, I can tell that my reading comprehension is improving rapidly.

I've been using a technique that I haven't heard of before, but which I bet is pretty common. I've been working with books and their google translation reading them in online spreadsheets. I've arranged the sheet so that a google translation in the L1, English is in the A column and the sheet and the L2 is in the B column. I have the books divided by sentences (with really long sentences split also. I've been reading through the book in the order of column A then column B, and then moving down a line. This is sort of like what you do with a glossika GSR file, except it is reading, not listening and shadowing/repeating. I don't try to stop and parse the sentence when I don't quite get it, but just keep moving. This is a very unnatural way to read a book, but it seems to be increasing my reading abilities a lot. It feels sort of like the L2-R1 step in L-R.
I think that this will only be useful for a short time, but it is a way to get through a book that is too difficult to handle from context.

I haven't done much listening/watching yet. I may start doing some L2-R1, to try to see if I can get a similar improvement in listening. I watched some things with subtitles, and while I enjoyed that, I don't really think I was helping my listening comprehension much.

I had a vague plan to read 5000 pages first in each language, then do 5000 minutes of L2-R1 and finish up with 5000 minutes of movies, but I probably can mix up the steps a long more instead of doing them sequentially.

[sfuqua]

Super Challenge Romance languages (French and Spanish)
books: 436 / 5000
movies: 219 / 9000

Yesterday everything fell apart with my reading, especially my French. I don't know why. I dragged my eye across 10 pages of each, but there was no joy in it. I'm not sure why; maybe the vocabulary was extra unfamiliar or the sentences extra complex, but it was not fun. I did follow the stories (more or less).

I chalked it up to a bad day.

Afterward, I was alone in the living room. I was tired after a hard day of teaching sex education to 13 year olds just before their summer vacation (yes, science teacher do that too here in California), and I lay down on the couch. The TV news was as infuriating as usual, so I did my usual escape from reality, by putting on something from a. foreign language. Filipino soap operas were done for the day, so I put on something random from Netflix. Hmmn, La Reina del Sur? Sure, I watched that thing in 2012, but I don't remember this episode... Suddenly I could understand everything, every single syllable. Wow, I never understood Spanish that clearly before! Why wasn't it always this easy? (and why couldn't I read today?) I tried Gran Hotel, another old favorite, and it was also great. If Spanish was easy, I wonder if French is easy tonight... I put on my beloved "Breathless". I am very familiar with this movie in its standard subtitled form, but I usually only follow a few words, and... it was easy to understand most of it. I even understood parts that aren't in the subtitles. Very nice.

I don't think that there was anything amazing going on, I had a bad day reading, just random variation. I tried doing some listening, which I haven't been doing lately, and since I have been doing a lot of reading, my French and Spanish(yay!) have improved. I was able to notice this while watching/listening yesterday.

This is no great insight for most folks, but I found it interesting.

Today the reading was very easy. I may try reading 15 pages a day in each language. I'm going to try random newscasts in French and Spanish tonight in bed, after the family goes to sleep. If I don't find anything fun, I'll sleep listening to one of the books I've been reading...

I continue to be very encouraged by the effects of the super challenge.

[sfuqua]

Super Challenge Romance languages (French and Spanish)
100 books: 536 / 5000
100 movies: 239 / 9000
The past few days, even though there really isn't any change in what is happening, the past few days I've become very dissatisfied with my language learning. My French stinks; my Spanish stinks, and I'm a hopeless learner. All is in vain.
When stuff like this has happened to me before, it usually means that I am not enjoying the way that I am studying enough. If I'm not getting sufficient feedback about my improvement, I start to feel that it is all a waste. Trying to level-up two languages at the same time slows everything down, so it is not too surprising that I might fall into one of these funks when I am going through a little plateau. I'm actually enjoying my reading a lot, and everything I know about language learning tells me that I am rapidly learning vocabulary and building independence in reading both French and Spanish. So what is the problem?

I haven't spoken French or Spanish for about a month now, only reading and listening/watching. I tried my usual solution for this, anki. I made, tried, and rejected about 10 different anki decks. Too easy, too hard, too boring, too stupid. Why am I straining to learn this word or this sentence? I want to run free in the whole language. I don't want to learn a French sentence; I want to be in France. I want to be an insider in Mexico, laughing at the tourists. I want...

OK, this is a common feeling for language learners at some point in their learning. What to do?
I know I'll just shadow through Assimil again! Yay! This will work!
Not.

Well, when I tried shadowing my French novel before, I stunk. I can read Spanish aloud with (my friends say) an exaggeratedly corrrect and careful accent, so I could read or shadow Spanish, but what about French? Hmmn...

What about slowing the tts voice way down and then trying to shadow the French...?
Hey it works.
!
I'm going so slow that I sound as if I were brain damaged (no joke or insult to anyone), but I'm shadowing a French novel! Of course, if your only input is novels, you will get more that your share of third person (usually), past tense, and long sentences.
I made a couple of cleaned up subtitle files into epubs today. I'm going to try shadowing them tomorrow. I'm sure I'll be able to speed up the tts voice pretty soon.
I think my brain is hungry to listen and speak, and that my time of only reading is over, sooner than I expected

edited to clarify (hopefully)

[sfuqua]

Hmmn. I got the speed up to between 100 and 110 words per minute shadowing.
This sounds natural, but slow for speech. I'll keep experimenting and try to get up to full speed over the next few days.

[sfuqua]

I missed a day shadowing, or doing anything other than silent reading. I did read my 20 pages, 10 each in both Spanish and French.
Super Challenge Romance languages (French and Spanish)
100 books: 576 / 5000
100 movies: 239 / 9000
In looking at progress, I'm on schedule to do a double challenge in Romance languages for the super challenge. Using parallel texts for a weak language has been my big discovery so far. I'm not sure how much longer this will be necessary. The parallel text make sure that one doesn't get too lost in a story, and they are even faster than a popup dictionary for unknown words.
I'm way behind schedule for listening/watching. I've added some shadowing into the mix; shadowing assures that one is paying attention and it keeps one concentrated when you are shadowing unfamiliar text. Shadowing unfamiliar text is a very different thing than the repeated shadowing that I used to do with Assimil.
I've got to pick up my pace with listening/reading. I'm reluctant to watch a bunch of TV or movies with English subtitles, when my vocabulary and reading comprehension is still so rudimentary in French. It would legally rack up minutes, but I don't think it would be optimal for learning right now. Probably in a couple of months. So right now it's audiobooks, slowed down a bit if needed. I've been listening to Journal en français facile at night before going to sleep. I can follow it pretty well, but I find it challenging. I think this will get easier quickly (at least I hope so). I haven't been counting it since, I think that the News was specifically excluded from the challenge.

My Spanish and especially my French are imroving rapidly now. I don't even understand how I can be improving so quickly; I'm not doing anything special to memrize unfamiliar words, I just silently read the sentence and try to line up unfamiliar words with the meaning of the sentence (from the parallel text). Then I move on.

There are 21_000 different words and word forms in the French book I'm working through right now. I'm probably in a state of partial learning of many thousands of French words. I may not be able to bark an English translation of them if I see them in isolation, but I'm probably starting to recognize them, which makes the whole thing go faster. When I check unfamiliar French out in the wild somewhere, I sometimes find that I intuit the meaning of the sentence, even though I'm not certain of the meanings of the words in the sentence; if I have enough half baked intuitions about the meanings, I can add them up to a pretty good certainty about the meaning of the whole sentence.

If I complete double super challenge in French and Spanish, I would expect to be about halfway to C1/C2 level reading and listening. I need to crank up the pages and the minutes and do it for months and years. I hope that by this time next year, I am reading much faster and that I am watching TV and movies regularly and with pretty good comprehension. The main danger to my completing this is wanderlust.

Italian and Portuguese call to me sometimes.

edited to add smileys and fix typos

[sfuqua]

Super Challenge Romance languages (French and Spanish)
100 books: 626 / 5000
100 movies: 239 / 9000

OK, how the heck is this happening so fast?

I just tried a book that I last tried to read just before the super challenge started. It was really, really hard. Way above my head.
I just opened it today. There was only one word on the next page I didn't know. It was easy, trivial. This is definitely working...

I think that my strategy of using parallel texts to read things that are way above my level is working. I think that I am getting better and better at reading (French) without a complete understanding of all the words. I think that I am getting better at guessing uknown words. This isn't a new skill, but I think it is a recently reawakened skill.

And I think there is something magic about reading something in a foreign language where you are interested in the story and forget that you are reading in a "hard foreign language".

Anyway, I'm encouraged, and I intend to continue a lot of reading (with emk style "cheating"). It's sort of magic...

I got bored with shadowing really fast. I think my original idea of getting a beach head in the language by reading is good.

I'm less than a week away from summer vacation. I probably will have less time to study when I'm on vacation (it makes no sense, but I've noticed this effect).
I'm less than a month from being in Europe. Despite my language ambitions (pretentions?), I am really, really looking forward to being in Dublin and Paris with my wife and daughter.

My wife's cancer has kind of reset my priorities. We have today. Tomorrow is uncertain, but very hopeful. I intend to enjoy every second I/we have. Sorry for preaching, but we should all enjoy today, because nobody promised tomorrow.
This summer should be fun, and I am not going to waste a second stressing over trying to be an outstanding tourist.
I'm so glad to have this summer! Wow, I'm going to Paris and Dublin with the most beautiful girl from the Philippines!!
Maybe a really happy tourist is an outstanding tourist...

edited to fix typos and add a couple of words