- Completed lessons 1 – 11 of Assimil French with Ease
- Watched & listened to a lot of French news
- Continued to ‘read’ but still trying to find my way
- Got to grips with ClozeMaster – 592 new cards, seen 2,410 times
- Started Coffee Break French podcasts – listened to episodes 1 – xx
- Started FSI French Phonology & University of Michigan French pronunciation videos
In a bit more detail:
Sunday
- Really struggling to work out how to use Assimil. Though I found a blog post that was reasonably helpful – I still felt as though I wasn’t ingesting the material. Simply skimming it
Monday
- Started making mistakes on Assimil from lesson 5. Given I was told by my French partner that I should find it easy until lesson 50, it did feel like a set-back. How could I be so bad?! Had to remind myself that this is the nature of learning, and that learning involves mistakes – lots of them! I also started listening to Coffee Break French – in the past I had always started listening as a later lesson, guaranteeing my frustration and disengagement the moment I didn’t understand something. So I thought I would start at the very beginning – a very good place to start!
Tuesday
Asked for help regarding pronunciation and got some good advice. University of Michigan videos were good but the R sound training (there are two short ones) felt hurried. Again, I need to embrace the difficulties and not have a tantrum & give-up!
Wednesday
Continued with Clozemaster. Some familiar words in unfamiliar contexts are really throwing me off guard but I am noticing a very gradual awareness of this and improving slightly with every round of cards.
I also managed to find a secondhand book shop in London selling French books! Hooray. 3 for £5. A bargain. One is Quelle Sorte De Créatures Sommes-Nous? By Noam Chomsky. Seems heavy but I am hoping that because it relates to language and psychology, it might be engaging. I managed to get through the first page with about 65% comprehension, so that felt good!
Still feeling a bit indifferent about my Assimil progress – it didn’t seem to be ‘going in’. So after a lengthy search on the forum I found good advice from Seneca on how they use Assimil.
Seneca wrote:This is how I do the passive wave:
1) Listen with the book closed x3
2) Listen and silently read along with the Italian x3
3) Listen, pause after each line, and repeat out loud 3 times before moving into the next line
4) Compare translations and read the grammar notes at the bottom
5) Listen twice, first reading along silently with the English and second with the Italian
6) Listen and read out loud along with the Italian x3
7) Do the exercises and then read a cultural note if present.
Thursday
I tried Assimil using the newly discovered method. Wow, what a difference. In fact, I moderated Seneca's approach slightly to my own liking:
1. Cover the English with post-it notes to prevent accidental checking (super important!)
2. Listen with the book closed (x 4)
3. Listen and silently read French (x 4)
4. Think about the unknown words/phrases – what could they be?
5. Listen, pause after each line, repeat out loud (x 4 – or more, until it feels reasonably comfortable to say out loud)
6. Write down the difficult words/phrases and write best guess at translation
7. Move the post-it notes to the exercise answers, to reveal the English dialogue. Compare the written French with the English
8. Listen and silently read English (x 1), then silently read French (x 1)
9. Read out loud with French (x 4)
10. Play exercise audio (x 3) and attempt to translate orally
11. Listen to exercise audio and silently read (x 1)
12. Translate exercise and complete missing blanks exercise
13. Check answers
14. Review difficult words, grammar explanations, etc and add any new terms or problem answers/spellings from exercises to Clozemaster
Friday
Did a bit of listening and watching but no Assimil or pronunciation work. Did the minimum on Clozemaster to keep my streak!
Saturday
Continued with learning as usual. If I reflect on the quality of my use of assimil now compared to start of the week it seems much better. I would like to be a little more dedicated next week as I’m not doing much about the reading part and need to get over the discomfort of not knowing every word, or having to continually look stuff up.
