Resolution: re-establish my skills in French

[MrsStarez]

I hit something of a hiatus in my French studies over November. I think it was a combination of having too much on at work to feel like I could stop working on my afternoons off and on my full-time days, just wanting to chill out on my commute. Listening to background music on the way home was more appealing than having to really concentrate on something. I'd built up a backlog of episodes of Grand Réportage, the subject matter of which I just wasn't interested in, so that didn't motivate me to listen.

On Wednesday last week, I realised that I just had to switch off from work and do something else, otherwise I'd drive myself crazy. This is a familiar theme for me in Q4: I normally work like mad to get everything done and then end up ill over Christmas!

So, I deleted the podcasts I wasn't interested in and started picking the ones I did want to listen to - and hey presto, my motivation to listen came back! Having bought an Assimil book at the start of the month and barely touched it, I've completed a few lessons, and I'm starting to notice some of the things it covers in some French transcripts at work. I'd intended to catch up on some work this evening whilst babysitting for a friend. Instead, I've been glued to Lawless French quizzes, translations and dictées (98% on a C1!), finally managing to increase their DELF rating of me I was starting to get a bit frustrated with Lawless, as I felt I was stuck in a level which was too easy and not challenging enough, so this should spur me on to do more.

November's effort has all been very much last-minute, but I'm glad I've got back into it.

[MrsStarez]

New year, new resolutions.
​
Having found my motivation again over the end of November, I lost it pretty quickly over December. Christmas preparations, cooking, gift buying and wrapping just took over!

Now that's all out of the way, it's time to refocus. My husband bought me the Assimil Advanced French CD set for Christmas and I'm determined to get through this in the next six months. Why six months? I'm now three months pregnant, so when I'm on maternity leave I won't have any super-long commutes where I need something to kill the time.​

I'm hoping to spend some of my mat leave with a former colleague who's French, and will be off at the same time as me. When we worked together, I was too shy to try speaking to her in French, but I'm much more confident these days. I've been looking into baby classes and think I'll sign our new arrival up for Bilinguasing. That must surely attract some French mums...?

So, in short, the focus for this year is to maximise what I get out of my remaining commute, and then to link up with French people whilst I'm off on mat leave!

[DaveAgain]

Why six months? I'm now three months pregnant, so when I'm on maternity leave I won't have any super-long commutes where I need something to kill the time.​

I'm hoping to spend some of my mat leave with a former colleague who's French, and will be off at the same time as me. When we worked together, I was too shy to try speaking to her in French, but I'm much more confident these days. I've been looking into baby classes and think I'll sign our new arrival up for Bilinguasing. That must surely attract some French mums...?

So, in short, the focus for this year is to maximise what I get out of my remaining commute, and then to link up with French people whilst I'm off on mat leave!

Congratulations!

[zjones]

Congrats MrsStarez! It's very exciting to hear that you'll have a little baby in the house in just a short while. I'm happy to hear you'll still have some time for language learning too.

[MamaPata]

Congratulations- hope everything is going as smoothly as possible!

[MrsStarez]

Oh dear... at the start of January I said I was looking forward to refocussing, as Christmas was out of the way. This has barely happened.

I stuck the Assimil Using French CD in my car, and once I'd reminded myself how to get a CD to play in the car (my iPhone has taken charge of in-car entertainment), went through several lessons on my commute. I'm actually pretty disappointed with it... Having bought the book separately a few months ago, I was surprised that it was just someone reading out each of the pages. It's also not something that can be used easily in the car as I don't have sufficient short-term memory to be able to repeat the sentences. I guess this is why it's sold with the book. That said, I have picked up some useful phrases and it feels like I'm learning new things. I just need to learn to work our overly-complicated stereo at home so I can use the book and CD combined.

Watching French TV has been minimal, which is annoying, as there have been plenty of opportunities. But as I'm now at the half-way mark of my pregnancy, I'm generally tired, so any evenings I've had to myself and had complete control over the TV, I've just wanted to crawl to bed.

I'm trying to keep physically active, and drag myself away from work for my precious two hours of freedom between officially finishing work and collecting our son from school, twice a week. I need to get more disciplined here, as I usually end up working late on at least one of those days. I've made a concerted effort to switch off on a Friday and just go for a walk, often with the specific goal of getting a (decaf) flat white from the nice coffee shop at the other end of town, listening to some podcasts, and this has been really good for me, both from a language and a switching-off-from-work perspective.

Finally, I've been writing much more in French, having somehow managed to switch a lengthy e-mail conversation trail from English into French. I think I'm achieving much more by doing this than any of the Assimil/podcasts/Kwiziqs etc. I know it's not perfect, and there are probably a few clunky phrases, or things that are plain wrong, but it feels like progress. So looking back on the top line of this post, maybe I'm just being too hard on myself.

[Neurotip]

It's also not something that can be used easily in the car as I don't have sufficient short-term memory to be able to repeat the sentences.

I know what you mean, but I'd recommend persisting. Assuming the sentences are not so long that you'd have trouble repeating them if they were in English, but long enough that you can't remember them word for word, then the exercise forces you to translate the sentence into its meaning on the fly, then express the meaning again in French - which is a Good Thing. It is super hard work though

[MrsStarez]

Mr Starez would not be impressed if I abandoned it. ‘Twas not cheap!

[MrsStarez]

I’ve not posted much on here recently, as whilst I’ve been doing my daily Kwiziq exercises, I don’t feel I’ve made much progress. Thanks to various reshuffles of radio programme timetables, rather than listening to French podcasts in the car, I’ve been catching up on my favourite programmes instead.

However, this evening I’ve had what I judge to be a log-worthy leap: I managed to sustain a conversation with a native French speaker for a good 15 mins or so! The first time we met, we only spoke in English, and it was only when we left that I admitted to him that I really wished we could have chatted in French. So I took the plunge this evening and survived! Apparently I sounded quite fluent and had a good vocabulary for all sorts of things (Lego, schools, cooking, building work, you name it!), so I’m counting this as progress!

[MamaPata]

Congrats, that sounds great!