Lianne's 365 Days of French

[Lianne]

Day 119:
35 minutes Memrise (French Nouns 1)
ASL: about 1 hour

Day 120:
30 minutes Memrise (French Nouns 1)

I've really gotten back into Memrise! This course has actually been fairly easy so far; a lot of the words I already knew, some others were at least familiar or were cognates, and the remaining totally new words are just enough to keep it interesting. And since I have never really had any idea of the size of my French vocabulary, I like that once I've done a few of these courses I'll have some minimum numbers to put to that.

In other news, the 6 Week Challenge starts today, and while the bot isn't working so far, I'm still signing up for it. I'm going to do a 6WC in ASL (while obviously continuing with my French, too). I'm starting with only a lesson and a half behind me, and using only ASLU (Lifeprint) to study. So this is very much in keeping with the original concept of the 6WC! We shall see how much I progress!

[Lianne]

French 365 Day Challenge
Day 121:
29 minutes Pimsleur French III, lesson 1
10 minutes reading articles about learning Italian, in French

I started Pimsleur French III! There were some hard bits. I definitely struggled with verb forms that suddenly had too many words (vous avez été élevé).

ASL 6 Week Challenge
May 1:
40 minutes - video portion of lesson 2

Here's the process I've been following so far for each lesson:
1) Read through the lesson objectives, clicking any links to read about various concepts.
2) Learn the vocabulary in the list.
3) Try all the practice sentences.
4) Read through any additional discussions on the lesson page.
5) Watch the video. I find this step really cements my knowledge of the vocabulary, plus I pick up extra grammar bits and general tips.
6) Go over the objectives again, confirming that I've met all of them.

So, I'm just about done with lesson 2 now. I just have a few points I want to go over to make sure I have all the details. From looking over the lessons, I think that if I am very thorough and really absorb all the content, the lessons on this site will take me quite far!

[Lianne]

French 365 Day Challenge
Day 122:
15 minutes Memrise (French Nouns 1)
15 minutes reading La vie compliquée de Léa Olivier: Rumeurs

Day 123:
28 minutes Pimsleur French III, lesson 2
10 minutes Memrise (French Nouns 2)

ASL 6 Week Challenge
May 2: nothing
May 3: about 1 hour, 15 minutes

I finished up lesson 2. I did the practice quizzes, and also found one for lesson 1 that wasn't linked from the lesson. I got 100% on all of them! I'm feeling pretty great about that. Really loving this beginner stage super fast progress.

[Lianne]

French 365 Day Challenge
Day 124:
30 minutes Duolingo

ASL 6 Week Challenge
May 4: about 1 hour

Started lesson 3. I've learned most of the vocabulary for the lesson. (It takes a surprisingly long time, when you read all the explanations and learn the related signs.)

In unrelated news, I bought a new (to me) bike! I went to a community bike sale and got myself a road bike. I named it Bifrost. Hopefully I can get used to it quick and ride it in my triathlons this year.

[Lianne]

French 365 Day Challenge
Day 125:
30 minutes intensive reading
10 minutes Duolingo

I spent half an hour on a single page of my regular book, Rumeurs. I can read the book quite easily, but want to start doing bits of intensive reading sometimes to make sure I'm really learning new words and grammar. One thing I noticed is that I really don't often know when to use de, à, etc. This is the kind of thing that doesn't really affect my reading, but would definitely affect my writing or speaking. An example sentence from my book: Tu es super fine de m'encourager comme ça. (Side note: I feel like people in this book call each other "fine" and mean something like "nice" a lot, which doesn't really jive with the translations I found when I looked up the word.)

ASL 6 Week Challenge
May 5: about 30 minutes

Learned the last few vocab items for this lesson, and did all the grammar readings. So, still have to watch the video, do all the practice sentences and stories, and do the quizzes.

[Lianne]

French 365 Day Challenge
Day 126:
29 minutes Pimsleur French III, lesson 3
10 minutes reading La vie compliquée de Léa Olivier: Rumeurs

Day 127:
29 minutes Pimsleur French III, lesson 4
5 minutes reading La vie compliquée de Léa Olivier: Rumeurs

Day 128:
29 minutes Pimsleur French III, lesson 5
18 minutes listening to News in Slow French podcasts

I finally installed Google Podcasts, and am listening to podcasts for the first time in my life! I don't know why I waited so long. I'm finally listening to Welcome to Nightvale, and look forward to getting references to it. I'm also trying out a few French podcasts. So far I've listened to a few from New in Slow French. They're only about 6 minutes long, and then they ask you to subscribe. But the free portion is a nice little news clip, that fits perfectly when I finish a chapter of my audiobook, or a Pimsleur lesson, and I'm still a block or two away from home.

ASL 6 Week Challenge
May 6-8: Nothing!

Sadly, no ASL the last 3 days. One of those days was my birthday; that's my only excuse, lol.

[Lianne]

French 365 Day Challenge
Day 129:
10 minutes listening to Journal en français facile podcast
31 minutes watching Au service de la France

Day 130:
8 minutes listening to News in Slow French podcast
29 minutes Pimsleur French III, lesson 6

I'm finding Pimsleur French III surprisingly easy!! Like, maybe easier than I found French II just a few months ago. Could I really have gotten that much better since then? Or is French III just easy? I don't know, but it's good for the ego.

As a side note, lately I've been experiencing a funny effect of being a Canadian adult French learner: there are a lot of words I know like the back of my hand that are introduced in later levels of courses. Recent examples have included "je m'appelle" and "mon stylo". I've known words for school supplies, colours, greetings, etc., since I was like 7. I always complain about how little French I learned in school, because we went over the same stuff year after year after year, but that stuff we did cover is easy peasy lemon squeezy now!

ASL 6 Week Challenge
May 9: nothing
May 10: 1 hour, 45 minutes

I finished lesson 3! My streak of perfect scores on all quizzes continues. I love this feeling that I'm learning so much, so fast.

[badger]

I started Pimsleur French III! There were some hard bits. I definitely struggled with verb forms that suddenly had too many words (vous avez été élevé).

I'm sure you figured this out already, but it made me do a double-take when I saw it - I thought for a moment that there was yet another tense/mood/whatever that I hadn't come across.

"être élevé" means to be brought up/raised, so "vous avez été élevé" is just the passé composé of être with "élevé" on the end. it's not some triple-word compond form of élever (thank goodness).

One thing I noticed is that I really don't often know when to use de, à, etc. This is the kind of thing that doesn't really affect my reading, but would definitely affect my writing or speaking.

I really struggle with this & it seems - unfortunately - to just be one of those things that you have to learn by heart. here are a couple of links that I'm finding useful:

https://www.frenchtoday.com/blog/french-verb-conjugation/why-french-verbs-followed-preposition-a-infinitive

https://www.frenchtoday.com/blog/french-verb-conjugation/why-french-verbs-followed-preposition-de-infinitive

[Lianne]

I started Pimsleur French III! There were some hard bits. I definitely struggled with verb forms that suddenly had too many words (vous avez été élevé).

I'm sure you figured this out already, but it made me do a double-take when I saw it - I thought for a moment that there was yet another tense/mood/whatever that I hadn't come across.

"être élevé" means to be brought up/raised, so "vous avez été élevé" is just the passé composé of être with "élevé" on the end. it's not some triple-word compond form of élever (thank goodness).

I did figure that out, but yeah, it took a moment! It helped me to think of it super literally in English. Like, "vous avez été" is "you have been", and "vous avez été élevé" is "you have been brought up". I don't find it intuitive yet, but I'm at least getting used to this specific phrase.

One thing I noticed is that I really don't often know when to use de, à, etc. This is the kind of thing that doesn't really affect my reading, but would definitely affect my writing or speaking.

I really struggle with this & it seems - unfortunately - to just be one of those things that you have to learn by heart. here are a couple of links that I'm finding useful:

https://www.frenchtoday.com/blog/french-verb-conjugation/why-french-verbs-followed-preposition-a-infinitive

https://www.frenchtoday.com/blog/french-verb-conjugation/why-french-verbs-followed-preposition-de-infinitive

Thank you for those resources! This is one of the many things I should probably start working on intentionally, rather than just hoping I'll magically absorb them from reading.

[Lianne]

French 365 Day Challenge
Day 131:
30 minutes reading Bescherelle: l'art de conjuguer

Day 132:
30 minutes Pimsleur French III, lesson 7

Hey @badger! Funnily enough, right after our exchange about "j'ai été élevé", I read a few pages of my Bescherelle book, and found even more ridiculous examples!! First, here's a section from the book on similar usage to the one we discussed:

Les temps surcomposés utilisent l'auxiliaire habituel du verbe, lui-même composé à l'aide d'un autre auxiliaire. Noter que l'auxiliaire être est en première position lorsque le verbe a une construction pronominale.

Dès que Sylvain a eu fini son travail, il est parti.
Dès qu'elle a été née, on l'a aimée.

But then, it gets wilder! (Thankfully, this next construction is uncommon.)

Les temps surcomposés à la forme passive -- à vrai dire d'emploi très rare -- utilisent l'auxiliaire être pour le passif et l'auxiliaire avoir lui-même composé (avec un autre auxiliaire avoir), en sorte qu'il y a trois auxiliaires successifs, dont deux au participe passé :

Dès que le ministre a eu été opéré, il a repris ses responsabilités.

ASL 6 Week Challenge
May 11-12: nothing (except at some point I tracked down the lesson 4 video on YouTube since it isn't linked from the lesson for some reason)