Should Know Better But French, Spanish and Japanese

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Sarafina
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Should Know Better But French, Spanish and Japanese

Postby Sarafina » Sun Nov 11, 2018 2:24 pm

Background Information
I want to use my first year of uni to get a solid foundation in languages that I'm interested in and really improve my French. I've been doing some research on goal-setting and one of my main problems is that I set lofty goals but I don't create sustainable and consistent habits that will be help me progress and eventually reach my goals. Sometimes I even forget some of those bigger more long-term goals that I've set. For example I can't even remember any of my language learning related New Year's resolutions were. I've experimented in the past with creating checklists but I didn't break down the tasks well and ended up feeling overwhelmed.

I also experimented with going full AFATT little less than 2 weeks. It was surprisingly a lot more tougher than I thought- I had to delete my history on YouTube and Google to avoid getting sucked into English content. Whenever I watch/read anything- there's always that slight feeling of discomfort because I don't have 100% comprehension and I could easily watch just as enjoyable (if not more) content in English. But I learnt that the feeling eventually faded into the background if I engaged myself for long enough. Then by the end of it, I felt that my listening comprehension really really improved and I could watch most French vloggers with almost the same ease of English-speaking ones. However after that, uni started and I gave myself permission to consume English content. Then I barely touched French at all beyond the occasional podcast, random youtube video in French here and there. Although since last week, I've been getting back into partial AFATT.

I remember watching a video where this person talked about how people have double standards when it comes to language-learning and exercise/sport. If most people are trying to lose weight/improve in a certain sport, they understand that they need to put in the hard work which may not be the most fun activity in the world however with language learning some people want to improve their accuracy when it comes to speaking or writing but avoid doing stuff like grammar drills because it's tedious and repetitive. He then elaborated about how people who do 100 push-ups don't do it because it's fun and engaging but because they recognise that it's necessary (more effective than x more relaxing/less boring alternative) for the goal that they want to achieve.
I confess that I've had this attitude especially with my avoidance of grammar and pronunciation drills (even though I've long established that I need to improve it). Sometimes I wonder if language learners like me are too self-indulgent when it comes to language learning.

I've been getting into MIA which is heavily inspired by AJATT. It's short for mass immersion approach. This approach is nothing particularly ground-breaking. Everyone that I know who has a high level in English without spending a long period of time in an English-speaking country have spent a lot of time consuming a lot of native English content over a long period of time. Although I try to watch and read stuff in French. It's a bit all of over the place and it's not a sufficient amount.

I need to consume more native French content on a daily basis. I need to do more work with grammar (I need to finish that massive French grammar book and the other grammar book that my uni assigned to me). I need to improve my pronunciation. I have about 3 hours that I can dedicate for immersion and one hour of stuff like Anki, grammar work and pronunciation drills.

What I do want to achieve for this academic year specifically with French?
-Complete the Super Challenge ++
The books I currently have available on me

1. Le Monde de Charlie (I've been reading book in French for so so long- I've read 3/4 ).
2. L'Étranger by Albert Camus. (I should have finished this book as well as finished listening to the audio book ages ago).
3. La Chute by Albert Camus
4. Le rêve de Ryôsuke by Durian Sukegawa (I've read the first chapter)
5. La vie devant soi by Romain Gray
6. Bonjour Tristesse (but it's a graphic novel adaption of the book)
7. Entre les murs
8. En attendant Godot
9. Les mandarins
10. Mon village à l'heure allemande
11. Chanson douce
12. Dans les forêts de Sibérie
13. Les Impressionnistes à Londres
14. La saga de Grimr
15. Petit Pays (I've read the first chapter)


This doesn't include the books that is on my French reading list for uni. I haven't been able to properly see my reading list yet.
I need to find 85 more books. I'm also trying to find a collection of essays that tackle interesting issues and I like reading personal essays. Ideally something along the form/style of 'Notes of a Native Son' by James Baldwin. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

In terms of TV series
1. Steven Universe (I've finished season 1 and I've watched the first episodes of Season 2)
2. Heidi petite fille des montagnes (51)
3. Bouba le petit ourson (26)
4. D'Artagnan et les Trois Mousquetaires (26)
5. Timothée va à l'école (25 episodes)
6. Le Monde Incroyable de Gumball (138) (I've watched at least 3-4 episodes already)
7. Teen Titans (65) (I've watched three episodes already)
8. This is Us (36) (I've watched 7 episodes already)
9. Last Man (26) (I've watched the first episode)
10. ATLA (61) (I've watched 7 episodes)
11. Adventure Time (104) (I've watched the first episode)
12. Breaking Bad (62)
13. Game of Thrones (67)
14. Daredevil (26)
15. Les Revenants (16)
16. Le Bureau des légendes (30)
17. Baron Noir 16)
18. Kaboul Kitchen (36)

I'm not planning on finishing all the episodes for every single TV series listed but it's just a list of the TV series that I'm interested watching and that I'm planning on watching as well.

For movies
Basically I'm just going to start watching movies only in French if I'm watching them by myself. I've switched my Netflix account to French. I don't have a set list but I just want to watch 1-3 movies each week.

Grammar/Writing
To finish Complete French All-in-One but only complete from page 129-525 so I have 396 pages to get through by the second week of January.

For each grammar exercise, I'll add Anki cards for each sentences. The cards will be mixture of 'fill in the gaps with the correct conjugation' or 'translate x sentence to x language'

Intensive line by line translation of one article from either Le Monde or Le Figaro or any interesting article from any French newspaper. One sentence will be from French to English then the other from English to French to better internalise French grammar then I'll chunk the more tricky sentences into Anki.

Speaking
Just one italki lesson each week.
I have oral classes but nobody progresses much from just one hour a week with 7 other people competing for the teacher's attention and energy.

I have finally found a great language exchange partner who is reliable and interesting and fun to talk to. I have no energy to look for anymore language exchange partners online. I'd rather just bite the bullet and pay for more lessons instead. The French society isn't well organised at all and I think after the first week most of French natives just used it to find it each other and I never saw them again. There's a select few who ruin it for everyone by speaking only French and expect people to respond to them in English back. I went to a tandem organised by the city with some French natives who want to work in the hospitality industry. I think it went well- I hope something good and long-term comes out of it.

Pronunciation
I can't avoid it anymore. I just need to tackle it in small chunks. Firstly I'll need to go back to the bare basics and going through each sound carefully. I'll be only using the site for the first three week and spend at least 15 minutes just going through it. http://prononcer.net/progression/
Then I'll move on to pronunciation drills. I took a trial lesson with Italki tutor that specialised in accent/pronunciation sometime in the summer but he doesn't seem to be available at all and not for a while. I think I need to spend December finishing the 'Phonétique Progressive du Français' book. Then January and February will be dedicated to shadowing dialogue from dialogues en français. Then I might think into getting a tutor that is dedicated for accent reduction/improving my pronunciation by the end of February/beginning of March. I should have saved enough money as I'm resuming my part-time job during December and I'm getting a part-time job in my uni as well starting from January.
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DaveAgain
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Re: Should Know Better But French, Spanish and Japanese

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Nov 11, 2018 3:02 pm

Sarafina wrote:This doesn't include the books that is on my French reading list for uni. I haven't been able to properly see my reading list yet.
I need to find 85 more books. I'm also trying to find a collection of essays that tackle interesting issues and I like reading personal essays.
The Bibliotheque nationale de France (BNF) have a list of 150 out of copyright books that the ministry of education asked them to prepare. I assume these are texts that french children either have to read at some point, or are suggested as suitable reading material.

I've just read Baron Munchhausen from this list, and it's a fun collection of silly short stories.

My favourites of the books I've read so far this year are Les Peugeot, and Pour finir avec le moyen age.
Last edited by DaveAgain on Tue Aug 30, 2022 6:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Sarafina
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Re: Should Know Better But French, Spanish and Japanese

Postby Sarafina » Sun Nov 11, 2018 3:13 pm

DaveAgain wrote:
Sarafina wrote:This doesn't include the books that is on my French reading list for uni. I haven't been able to properly see my reading list yet.
I need to find 85 more books. I'm also trying to find a collection of essays that tackle interesting issues and I like reading personal essays.
The Bibliotheque nationale de France (BNF) have a list of 150 out of copyright books that the ministry of education asked them to prepare. I assume these are texts that french children either have to read at some point, or are suggested as suitable reading material.

I've just read Baron Munchhausen from this list, and it's a fun collection of silly short stories.

My favourites of the books I've read so far this year are Les Peugeot, and Pour finir avec le moyen age.


Thank you for the links and the recommendations. They're really helpful.
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Sarafina
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Re: Should Know Better But French, Spanish and Japanese

Postby Sarafina » Sun Nov 11, 2018 9:03 pm

Spanish
I'm learning Spanish because my flatmate is a native Spanish speaker who used to be a language tutor before. I don't know when I'll get this opportunity where I'm friends with a native speaker who is not only acknowledgeable and enthusiastic about second language acquisition and has already taught people before and we live in the same block. Honestly this is a sign however he's only here for the year. We've had 3-4 lessons already. He's a really good teacher. His English is really really good. He has a British accent which is remarkable considering that he's never been to England for an extended period of time before and he didn't go to a British international school in Spain. But I think that it's because he's gifted in mimicking accents in general. I've signed on the 6weeks challenge in Spanish and it's going much than the last one. He complimented me on my pronunciation- saying that I'm picking it much faster than he expected and even hoped especially with the Spanish 'r'.

Grammar
-Gramática básica español which claims to take you to a B1 in Spanish. There's a CD that it's all in Spanish and I'm trying to figure out how to use it. (I'm also using this textbook among other things to mime sentences for Anki and apply Jun's method for this)
-Practice Makes Perfect Spanish Verb Tenses (I've learnt how to conjugate ar and er and ir verbs already).

Listening
-A mi aire podcast (I'll create Anki cards from this using the audio with Audacity for I can train my ears). The cards will have the audio with Spanish sentence behind it and at the back English translation
https://www.podclub.ch/en/podcast-page/a-mi-aire
After I've finished 75 episodes, I'll have a search for more Spanish podcasts preferably that are accompanied by transcriptions.

I like the look of http://radioambulante.org/ and http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/audios/fall ... /1063511/#

-Peppa Pig
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... uSiKeFca9I
This playlist has about 4 minutes clips of Peppa Pig with Spanish subtitles. I'm planning on creating Anki cards that will have only the audio when displayed with the front of the day then at the back is the Spanish sentence and translation
(There's 63 clips. I hope to finish it before 12th December)

During the winter break, I plan on moving on to Steven Universe. On Neflix, I think that the first season is available in Spanish and from what I can see this site http://es.steven-universe.wikia.com/wik ... astellanas appears to contain the transcription of some episodes
Jorge el Curioso (There's 42 episodes available on YouTube)
Les aventures de Tif and Oh (It's available on Netflix and there's maybe 52 episodes in total
Paquita Salas (I'm really forward to watching this one)
Grand Hotel (I've already finished the series ages ago but with English subtitles)
OITNB
Elite


Reading
1. Crónica de una muerte anunciada by Gabriel García Márquez
2 .La Ladrona De Libros by Markus Zusak
3. Aristóteles y Dante descubren los secretos del universo by
4. Las Ventajas De Ser Invisible by Stephen Chbosky
5. (A history book about al-Andalus)
6. A collection of Neruda's poetry

Speaking
I already have mini Spanish conversations with my flatmate. As my knowledge of Spanish increases so will our Spanish conversations.

As for writing, I'm not too fussed about it.
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Sarafina
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Re: Should Know Better But French, Spanish and Japanese

Postby Sarafina » Sat Nov 17, 2018 3:37 pm

17/11/18

I haven't been doing much with my languages apart from flicking through some pages of the books that I bought and watching some random French videos. I'm slipping back to my old habits. I need to read Atomic Habits- this book was recommended and apparently it's really useful in trying to establish habits. I've trying to put less emphasis on the goals/outcome which I cannot control too much but rather daily suistanable and useful habits in order to continously progress. I feel like I sometimes forget about the actual process instead I'm more obsessed with the results/potential achievements that I want to have e.g. pass DALF C2 sometime in the future.
I've currently read the online guide that he created. He talks about how the three patterns for habit change are reminder, routine and reward. Sometimes I'm guilty of only studying/learning French when I feel particularly motivated.

I came across a quote from the guide which I found to be interesting. "Because your life today is essentially the sum of your habits. What you repeatedly do ultimately forms the person you are, the things you believe, and the personality that you portray."

I'm realising the importance of time-boxing. It was really useful for me when I felt overwhelmed with all the coursework that I'd been procastinating on. But I always used it as a late-minute tactic to force myself to do everything in manageable chunks. But the only hassle was that I would have to spend a considerable amount of time detailing each tasks and being really precific.
I also remember seeing some articles on time-boxing on the AJATT website but I never paid much attention to it.
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/bl ... es/page/3/
https://www.hackingchinese.com/timeboxing-chinese/

I'm going to splitting all of my goals/habits that I want to develop into 10-20 minutes chunks.

For the rest of November
Bare mininum
-When reading anything, always have FranceCulture for background listening.
-20 minutes of reading 'Le rêve de Ryôsuke by Durian Sukegawa'
-20 minutes of reading 'Dans les forêts de Sibérie'
-10 minutes working through prononcer.net/progression
10-20 minutes working through Complete French All-in-One
10 minutes creating Anki cards of specific grammar points learnt
10-15 minutes reviewing those said Anki Cards
15 minutes doing line-by-line translation of a short article from Le Monde/Le Firago
10 minutes of watching French Youtubers
10 minutes watching an episode of something in French
1 minute a recording of me speaking about anything in French
1 minute a recording of me reading something out loud in French

Unfortunately, the site that I was watching most of my TV series in French has disappeared yet again. So I still have Steven Universe, ATLA, Heidi petite fille des montagnes, Bouba le petit ourson, D'Artagnan et les Trois Mousquetaires and Timothée va à l'école and if there isn't another alternative then I'll probably watch OITWB, Teen Wolf, Daredevil and Luke Cage on Netflix instead and buy the DVDs of the actual French TV series on Amazon.

If anyone is interested in any of the series that I've mentioned. About 4 of them are available on YouTube for free.
Bouba https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... czBD6lP5ha
Heidi https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... z2WCZu6Gw0
D'Artagnan https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 968861B864
Timothée va à l'école https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... Yf4WrWoJ80
(This one has French subtitles however the subtitles aren't in sync at all). I'm considering using this as a mini transcription/translation exercise.)

One thing that I think that will be fun to do and also an incidentally good intensive listening practice to provide English subtitles for the French YouTubers that I like that have a smaller following. But I might start that project in December or January. I've been talking about doing intensive listening for some point maybe using both fr.euronews and Golden Moustache.

I want to add more non-fiction books to my list like collection of personal essays, memoirs, autobiographies and some books about the implications and possibilities of time travel, cryptocurrency, justice system, a volume of contemporary French poetry. I'm looking the list of authors that won the 'prix de l'essai' and see if there's any that catch my eye.

I think to think of how to break down my goals for Spanish and Japanese. I still want to do the whole 'understanding a Studio Ghibli film in 90 days challenge' that I should have done for the summer.
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Sarafina
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Re: Should Know Better But French, Spanish and Japanese

Postby Sarafina » Tue Nov 20, 2018 11:11 pm

I'm thinking of doing something crazy. I'm going to sign up for the DALF in December 2019. Like actually signing and paying the £150 to sit the exam. This should take my French to the next level having this external fixed pressure. It'll be interesting to see if I can actually pass it. Even if I fail it would have been a good learning experience. I hate wasting money so I would want to give myself a fighting chance so it would actually be a massive source of motivation. Maybe this is too ambitious and borderline delusional. But I look forward to the challenge.
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DaveAgain
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Re: Should Know Better But French, Spanish and Japanese

Postby DaveAgain » Tue Nov 20, 2018 11:23 pm

Sarafina wrote:If anyone is interested in any of the series that I've mentioned. About 4 of them are available on YouTube for free.
Bouba https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... czBD6lP5ha
Heidi https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... z2WCZu6Gw0
D'Artagnan https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 968861B864
Timothée va à l'école https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... Yf4WrWoJ80
(This one has French subtitles however the subtitles aren't in sync at all). I'm considering using this as a mini transcription/translation exercise.)
I think I watched the english language dub of that D'Artagnan cartoon as a teen. "Dogtagnan and the musketeers"?
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Re: Should Know Better But French, Spanish and Japanese

Postby MamaPata » Wed Nov 21, 2018 7:42 am

Sarafina wrote:I'm thinking of doing something crazy. I'm going to sign up for the DALF in December 2019. Like actually signing and paying the £150 to sit the exam. This should take my French to the next level having this external fixed pressure. It'll be interesting to see if I can actually pass it. Even if I fail it would have been a good learning experience. I hate wasting money so I would want to give myself a fighting chance so it would actually be a massive source of motivation. Maybe this is too ambitious and borderline delusional. But I look forward to the challenge.


Would you be thinking of doing the C1? Are you still able to book for the December exam? My vague memory of my experience doing the B2 was that they closed registrations around now.
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Corrections appreciated.

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smallwhite
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Re: Should Know Better But French, Spanish and Japanese

Postby smallwhite » Wed Nov 21, 2018 8:47 am

Sarafina, what does the title of your log mean?
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Dialang or it didn't happen.

Sarafina
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Re: Should Know Better But French, Spanish and Japanese

Postby Sarafina » Wed Nov 21, 2018 10:34 am

MamaPata wrote:
Sarafina wrote:I'm thinking of doing something crazy. I'm going to sign up for the DALF in December 2019. Like actually signing and paying the £150 to sit the exam. This should take my French to the next level having this external fixed pressure. It'll be interesting to see if I can actually pass it. Even if I fail it would have been a good learning experience. I hate wasting money so I would want to give myself a fighting chance so it would actually be a massive source of motivation. Maybe this is too ambitious and borderline delusional. But I look forward to the challenge.


Would you be thinking of doing the C1? Are you still able to book for the December exam? My vague memory of my experience doing the B2 was that they closed registrations around now.


Some part of me would like to how it would be like to prepare for a C2 exam. But doing the C1 is already near impossible in the limited time frame I've put for myself. I think if I signed up for the C2, I would just be wasting my money. So the short answer is that I'm planning on doing the C1. For me the benefits between passing C1 vs C2 don't differ that much and they both demonstrate fluency in the language.

The deadline for the December examinations is the 29th October 2019.
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