Should Know Better But French, Spanish and Japanese

[Sarafina]

I have to intensify my efforts if I even want to have anything resembling a shot at passing this exam. Each month I'll be going through one DALF prep book. I need to sort out the other DALF prep books that I'll be using for April, May, June, July, August, September, October and November. That's at least 8 more books to think about. But I wonder if 8 DALF prep books is overkill (is there even up to 8 different DALF prep books).

Goals for March.
-I've bought Réussir le DELF/DALF which will be arriving on Wednesday which I hope to go through for this month.
-To watch at least 100 episodes (
-To finish reading Le Monde de Charlie, L'Étranger and Écrire la parole de nuit (which is an interesting collection of Francophone Caribbean short stories and I've already read two of them I have about 10 more left to read)
-To go through a further 100 pages of my French Grammar book and make cloze deletion cards and continue to use Jun's method to further internalise the grammar
-Using a dictation technique for Euronews.fr, FranceInter with Claude Askolovitch (which usually have a near perfect transcription accompanied)
-To transcribe episodes of Steven Universe and bits of FranceCulture and RFI (at have anything from 4,000-10,000 words by the end of the month
-To finish at least 30 more lessons in Phonétique Progressive du Français (I'm tired of this book and I should have finished this ages ago.
-To do record at least one minute of myself speaking in French

(I'm finally over language exchange partners in general I have about two that are really good but we've been quite busy for most of January and February so I'll probably try to contact them and see if they are now less busy. If not then I'm content to wait until end of April before I resume regular Italki lessons. Language exchanges for me now at this stage is rarely helpful- for the most part I feel like I'm having 100 variations of the same topic and I feel like I have more luck actually winning the lottery than finding someone that will be consistent, reliable and actually interesting to talk to and is regularly available.)

[MamaPata]

It’s a tough time but don’t stress too much. You can 100% do the C1 - I am certain that you will pass.

If you want to talk internships, feel free to PM me and I can tell you what I did. It’s hard but there are things out there. And you still have several years of your degree left, you don’t have to have it all sorted yet. (Many many people never do!)

Give yourself a break. Look how much French you have achieved even with all your other stuff going on.

[Lianne]

I've only missed one day from the 365 day challenge (that was because I started studying at 11 something at night and by the time I reached the 30 minute mark it was already the next day).

That doesn't count as a missed day! In the rules for the 365 Day Challenge it says that it still counts as the same day until you have your night's sleep. So night owls can totally do our studying at midnight and it's all good.

[zjones]

I have to intensify my efforts if I even want to have anything resembling a shot at passing this exam. Each month I'll be going through one DALF prep book. I need to sort out the other DALF prep books that I'll be using for April, May, June, July, August, September, October and November. That's at least 8 more books to think about. But I wonder if 8 DALF prep books is overkill (is there even up to 8 different DALF prep books).

Goals for March.
-I've bought Réussir le DELF/DALF which will be arriving on Wednesday which I hope to go through for this month.
-To watch at least 100 episodes (
-To finish reading Le Monde de Charlie, L'Étranger and Écrire la parole de nuit (which is an interesting collection of Francophone Caribbean short stories and I've already read two of them I have about 10 more left to read)
-To go through a further 100 pages of my French Grammar book and make cloze deletion cards and continue to use Jun's method to further internalise the grammar
-Using a dictation technique for Euronews.fr, FranceInter with Claude Askolovitch (which usually have a near perfect transcription accompanied)
-To transcribe episodes of Steven Universe and bits of FranceCulture and RFI (at have anything from 4,000-10,000 words by the end of the month
-To finish at least 30 more lessons in Phonétique Progressive du Français (I'm tired of this book and I should have finished this ages ago.
-To do record at least one minute of myself speaking in French

(I'm finally over language exchange partners in general I have about two that are really good but we've been quite busy for most of January and February so I'll probably try to contact them and see if they are now less busy. If not then I'm content to wait until end of April before I resume regular Italki lessons. Language exchanges for me now at this stage is rarely helpful- for the most part I feel like I'm having 100 variations of the same topic and I feel like I have more luck actually winning the lottery than finding someone that will be consistent, reliable and actually interesting to talk to and is regularly available.)

Hi Sarafina!

I've enjoyed reading your log and I think it's GREAT that you are going to take the C1! Your plan looks intense, but good. Take care not to burn out, I think that's the biggest risk you have when you set up this kind of program.

I'm not sure if there are 8 different DELF/DALF prep books for C1. If not, you can always go back to previous books and re-do certain exercises (the production exercises are great for this). That's what I've been doing with my single DELF B1 book.

Edit: I clicked submit before I was done! One more thing: Recording yourself will be useful to practice the production part of the DELF/DALF, especially since you don't have any language exchange partners (I know, this is one of the worst parts of language learning for me... LE's are extremely difficult to find and keep). Even if you don't listen to your recordings ever again, making a recording will change the way you approach the exercise. Personally it made me more accepting of my mistakes, better at correcting errors on the fly, and quicker to move on.

[Sarafina]

It may turn out that I'll need to wait until May before I start to get Italki lessons. I had a delightful conversation with a longterm French exchange partner (honestly he's by far probably the best language exchange partner I've ever had). I realise how much more work I need to do with my spoken French. It wasn't pretty at all. I also recorded myself speaking for two minutes in French- it was similarly as horrible. When I relisten it- I make mistakes that I should know better and how my prodosy in French can be off and my less than perfect pronunciation. Although I'm happy with my improvement in my listening comprehension, it doesn't necessarily translate to a similar leap in one's speaking abilities. I'm waiting for my mouth to catch up with my ears.

Overall, March has had a relatively sluggish start.

I finally have my Réussir le DALF C1/C2. I'm hoping to go through all the exercises by the 9th April. My heart sometimes sinks when I flip through pages. The book is a bit too thin for my liking- I'm trying not have a defeatist attitude but rather try my hardest to be as well-prepared as possible and hope for the best. I don't know if I should start doing intensive work with books that contain DALF C1 past papers by April or whether I should try to go through as many DALF prep books (ideally 2-3) as possible from now into June then do serious work with past papers then. I've only found one book that contains only 6 mock DALF C1 past papers. I'm trying to find previous DALF past papers- I can only find the odd site that has a 'sample' of a DALF C1 exam. Any advice on finding them would be much apperciated. I wish that there was a collection of all the previous DALF exams that I could pay for.

I've made slight modifications of my March goals.
1. To transcribe 4,000 words of FranceCulture: Le Journal des idées (every thing one is exactly 5 minutes along). Trying to transcribe a TV series episode takes too long. I need something that is short enough that I can go through one everyday.
2. I'll be alternating between dictating at least video from RFI.fr, Euronews.fr and France Inter with Claude Askolovitch which sometimes has accompaning accurate subtitles. http://www.rfi.fr/videos/. Ideally go through 30-60 videos.
3. I'm going through Perfect Makes Perfect French All-in-One but I'm focusing on chapters 5-7, 10-20, 35 and reading through Grammaire Progressive Niveau Intermediaire.

But the remaning goals are still the same. I'm debating whether I want to go through FSI French Phonology as well- I really want to iron out my less than perfect perfection. After Phonétique Progressive du Français I'm debating whether I should move on to FSI French Phonology to just jump right into shadowing practice using AudioWorkBook.

I've completely abandoned Spanish- I only started learning it because I had an opportunity to have regular one-on-one lessons with my Spanish flatmate who was really good at teaching and now it's a thing of the past.

I'd rather learn Japanese. I don't know if I should try to still dedicate one hour to Japanese- I still have subscription to Japanesepod101 that ends in November- I want to finish as many episodes there as possible so it doesn't feel like I've completely wasted my money. I don't know why I've flopped every single 6 week challenge I've participated in. I find Japanese to be much more interesting than French in almost every aspect yet I shun it in favour of French. If I already spend 3 hours on French then one more hour for Japanese wouldn't hurt...I hope. I want to be in a position by the January 2020 my French is at C1 level and I have a decent listening comprehension in Japanese.

With Japanese, I'm going to take a more chill approach of just going through one episode of Japanesepod101 using Audacity and creating audio-focused Anki cards on weekdays and reviewing flashcards (at least 30 minutes) and two episodes on weekends and intensive listening using AudioWorkBook with episodes from Japanese TV series (at least 30 minutes). I'll refrain from making any goals except to finish all the episodes on Japanesepod101 that is part of 'my pathway' before the subscription ends which is on the 25th November and I have 266 episodes left to go which is definitely possible if I stick to my plan going through one episode a day on weekdays and 2 on weekends. I'm curious to see how far it will take me.

I'm trying to find opportunities in France/any French-speaking part of Euriope to either work/do an internship/work experience for the summer. While there were some really cool ones in Latin America but it wasn't helpful in the direction I'm trying to move towards.

[Sarafina]

I've written another log except it's only in French. I got inspired by MamaPata's log. I hardly ever write in French. I tried to proof-read the post that I wrote but I know it's going to be riddled with dumb mistakes. This month was been a near failure. I can't even blame coursework. If I organised myself well enough, I would have plenty of time. I still have at least 2 weeks left to complete the goals that I set for myself on March. I don't know what possessed me to do this exam in December.

My friends joke about how I love jumping into extremes. I am the same person who signed up for the ice hockey team despite not knowing how to ice skate. A friend was remarked that maybe I don't have a procastinaton problem but rather maybe I'm an adrenaline junkie therefore I subconsciously love putting myself in difficult/challenging situations in order to increase the sakes. I seem to love doing everything baptism by fire or sink or swim. But half the time I end up miscalculating badly and end up either burning myself or drowning. So I need to change that mentality ASAP.

For the next month, I'm going to be using mainly the videos on FranceInfo as prompts for mock speaking practice.

I wish I applied for a position for Finance and Economic society. I allowed myself to lose confidence by previous rejections on trying to be on the committee of other societies.

Uni has been tougher than I imagined. But it's not all bad. I've made some wonderful friends and I've met some really interesting people recently. I've tried some really good stuff. Things are finally starting to look up.

I'm focusing on volunteering and trying to develop my skills in mainly technology (and passing the DALF and trying to make sure that . There were some really interesting spring weeks/summer internships for first years but I found that they were only available for people that were in their first year of a third year degree or second year of a 4 year degree which was a little disappointing.

[Sarafina]

I should be going basically full AFATT at this stage. But I've been getting really into a couple of Taiwanese dramas- honestly after Japanese and maybe Spanish, Mandarin will be the next language that I tackle. There's a new season of Terrace House that I haven't finished watching: it's weird to be able to understand 10%-20% even though I literally spend no time studying Japanese: usually it's the greetings/conversation starters and a couple random phrases that I already understood even without the subtitles. Stuff like 'I have a cold' or 'This x meal is really good'.

I still haven't touched my DALF text book/pronunciation focused book. But I'm working on other stuff in French but I'm still reading and listening to French everyday though.

[Sarafina]

I bingewatched the first season of Skam France. I can understand why it's better to have native materials that you are actually interested- it makes the process less painful. I was so caught up in the story that there was no space to feel frustrated by not having 100% comprehension. Although I don't particularly like doing intensive listening but because I wanted to follow exactly what was going on- there were times that I would rewatch a scene ten times just to make sure that I could understand everything.

But I suppose that sometimes in order to really advance you have to do things that may be outside your comfort zone and you don't particularly enjoy. While there's an abundance of perfectly decent French resources and native materials. It's hard finding native materials that are binge-worthy where it stops being a task that you're doing to improve your skills in the language but rather something is actually enjoyable. I need to work on my disclipine rather than relying on my motivation and how I feel about doing something.

Next month, I'm going to try to do as much AFATT as possible. I remember doing that last summer- it wasn't a complete success but it wasn't a complete failure. I didn't spend all of my spare time devoted to just French but it proved to me that it's possible to have fun and learn so much and communicate without needing English as a medium. It wasn't the most comfortable thing but it was possible and bearable- I'm at a stage where I understand most of what I listen to and understand. I need to bridge the seemingly endless gap from being intermediate to being entirely fluent in French.

[Sarafina]

I've finished almost all the episodes of Skam France. The slang is now a lot more understandable- the characters tend to repeat the more common ones. Unfortunately I had to watch a lot of the episodes with English subtitles because for season 3 I couldn't find the episodes without English subtitles on YouTube/Dailymotion. I'm going to invest in a VPN or something- there are so many really interesting French TV shows that are geo-blocked in England. I wonder if there was an equivalent of Netflix that basically has access to decent French TV shows- I wouldn't mind paying a monthly subscription for that. Apparently 'myCanal' operates similar to Neflix. I'll probably try to do free trial as soon as it is April.

My speaking still feels awful but my long-term French language exchange partner says that my French is improving and I don't have any major problems but need to practice more and be more fluid and natural.

I've been trying to find French literary magazines or any type of site that showcases short stories, poetry and extracts of interesting novels, plays etc.

[Sarafina]

I've finished Skam France. It's pretty good for your average teen drama and there were plenty of interesting and insightful scenes. It was really challenging to understand at times. I managed to find a YouTube channel that actually had most of the episodes with French subtitles.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw_PLe2 ... JY&index=3 At some point over the weekend, I'll make a big list of all the slang used and double check my understanding of what I thought those words meant. Season 3 was by far my favourite. I'll create a separate post and hopefully it might be useful to someone.

I really enjoy 'Les Cahiers d'Esther' which is a TV series that is adapted on a graphic novel with the same title. I've binge-watched 27 episodes of it already (it's not impressive considering that the episodes aren't very long). The show really captures what it is like being a 8-10 year girl. A wide breadth of topics are discussed. I'm impressed by the show doesn't shy away from certain topics and how the main protagonist allowed to a complex character who has the capacity to unbelievablely cruel in the way children can be and endearingly innocent and sweet in the way children can be. I wish there was a show like this when I was 10 years old. It can be difficult trying to understand what her brother is saying- he tends to really slur his words.

I've bought Shadow of the Wind and it's going to arrive tomorrow. I remember reading the book in English ages ago and I really liked it but I never got round to finish it. I have a Murakami book which I absolutey love the opening and the prose is so striking and has a dream-like quality. But I feel guilty reading his book in English. I'm thinking of buying a couple of his books in French considering what I'll be reading a translation regardless of whether it's in English or French. I've read a snippet of his work in French and the language seem really accessible. I can't believe that I thought that I was going to finish 100 books in French last year. I'm aiming for 20-30 books before the DALF exam. I remember when I was younger I used to read at least two books a week.