Lianne's 365 Days of French

[Lianne]

Day 74:
probably about 45 minutes reading La vie compliquée de Léa Olivier: Perdue (mostly on bus rides and on my break at work)

Day 75:
2 hours watching Hesitation (Eclipse), French with French closed captioning

Day 76:
39 minutes reading La vie compliquée de Léa Olivier: Perdue

[Lianne]

Day 77:
1 hour, 20 minutes listening to audiobook, Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Day 78:
30 minutes reading La vie compliquée de Léa Olivier: Perdue

Day 79:
45 minutes reading La vie compliquée de Léa Olivier: Perdue

Extremely tired this week. So incredibly ready for spring break (next week)! Also, my sister and her kids are in town, so they've been taking up some of my evenings. I've still managed to get a bit of reading in at least! Next week will be blissful rest, and hopefully lots of French.

[Lianne]

Day 80 (March 21):
30 minutes reading La vie compliquée de Léa Olivier: Perdue

Day 81:
30 minutes reading La vie compliquée de Léa Olivier: Perdue

Day 82:
30 minutes reading La vie compliquée de Léa Olivier: Perdue

3 days in a row of being exhausted and just reading for half an hour before bed! Today (day 83) I might get a bit more done. I just saw my sister and niblings for the last time before they go home to B.C. And I still have a full week off for spring break! Plans include: lots of sleep; lots of reading (I've got some overdue library books); some housework; and lots and lots of French!

[Lianne]

Day 83:
30 minutes reading La vie compliquée de Léa Olivier: Perdue

Day 84:
45 minutes reading La vie compliquée de Léa Olivier: Perdue

Day 85:
55 minutes reading La vie compliquée de Léa Olivier: Rumeurs

OK, so my log hasn't really gotten any more interesting in the last couple days, but I did finish a book! And started book 2 in the same series. I know, I'm so unpredictable!

On the bright side, I have gotten a LOT of sleep. I also finished two of my English books in progress today, which is awesome, since I have recently built up quite a stack of started-but-not-finished books, including some that were very overdue at the library.

[Lianne]

Day 86:
25 minutes Learning with Texts
30ish minutes learning synonyms for dire
several hours doing exercises from Practice Makes Perfect Complete French All-in-One

I'm slowly working my way through a news article in Learning with Texts. In the beginning it takes forever because I have to deal with every single word. I'm hoping that going through a few news articles will get me enough of the common vocabulary that I'll be able to do news articles quite quickly. Then maybe I can do some longer stuff. The longer texts I started with (the prologue of New Moon and the transcript of an episode of Angel) were way too long to start with.

Then I looked up synonyms for dire! This was based on an activity that's weirdly stuck with me for 20+ years. In grade 3 or 4, my teacher had us brainstorm other ways of saying "he/she said". So we shouted out things like asked, yelled, replied, whimpered, etc. The book I'm reading now doesn't really use those words as much (because of its epistolary format), but when I read that Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel in February I really noticed that there were a lot of verbs used in place of dire, and I didn't know what most of them were. I managed to pick up chuchoter (to whisper) from context, and a few have English cognates, but I thought it would be fun to make a big list of them. I particularly enjoy the selection of verbs meaning to mumble/mutter: murmurer, marmonner, marmotter.

I finally got back to my textbook today. I took it out from the library so that I could really work on hammering in some grammar. It's hard to put a time on what I did today, since I did it on the couch while my husband watched James Bond movies. But it was enjoyable. I did a few chapters on present tense verb conjugation. I know that seems like something I should have mastered years ago, but honestly I find myself frequently not knowing how to conjugate a verb that isn't a regular -er verb. So I figured, back to basics is good. I might make even more drills for myself for the present tense, and then I'm gonna do the chapters on pronominal verbs, imparfait and plus-que-parfait, simple past and past future, present and past conditional, could/should/would, subjunctive, and OK maybe I should just do this whole textbook because honestly I could use some work on all of these things. Ooh, I definitely want to work on my relative pronouns. Sentences with "en" and "y" in them are the ones I most frequently have to sort of gloss over, because I can't quite figure out what they mean (except where it's obvious like en=some/any or y=there).

[tomgosse]

Which text book are you using?
--Tom

[Lianne]

Which text book are you using?
--Tom

It's called Complete French All-in-One, from the company Practice Makes Perfect. It basically combines the seven existing Practice Makes Perfect French books into one big book.

It has some downsides. In particular, I don't care for the way some exercises test more than just what they're supposed to be testing. Like sometimes there are translation exercises, and the vocab isn't from the lists in that chapter. I know that's a common issue with grammar books; I've seen people say that beginners shouldn't use grammar books for this reason. But I'm not a beginner anymore, and still I have to look up a bunch of words to do those, because of course I don't know all the vocabulary. When I want to work on a specific grammar point, I don't like being distracted by a bunch of other stuff.

But on the up side, the explanations are decent, and I particularly like the repetitive exercises. Often I just need to drill something to get it and this series is good for that.

[Lianne]

Day 87:
1 hour, 17 minutes listening to audiobook, Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
46 minutes watching Au service de la France

I'm not sure if the audiobook is helping. I feel like I'm understanding very little.

Netflix very annoyingly somehow let me skip an episode by mistake. And since I'm always a little confused while watching Au service de la France, I didn't notice that I was extra confused because I'd missed important plot points.

[Lianne]

Day 88:
1 hour, 49 minutes watching Révélation (Breaking Dawn) part 1

Day 89:
1 hour, 45 minutes watching Révélation (Breaking Dawn) part 2

Thus ends my watching of the Twilight movies in French! I honestly had forgotten how much I love those movies. And they lose a lot of their cheesiness when watching them in French, making them arguably even better. I watched the first four movies in French with French closed captioning (subtitles that actually match the audio), and must admit that I relied primarily on the subtitles for comprehension. But the last movie had decent-but-not-perfect subtitles, and I was still able to follow along no problem. It's funny, my oral comprehension is at this weird point where if I read and listen simultaneously, I can generally match up the sounds and the words no problem. But just listening, I'm like, what the heck are these sounds? But like, it's possibly getting better. Slowly.

Also, I am now 1/4 done the movie side of the Super Challenge! I just started in January so I am actually right on schedule! I didn't start reading until February, so I'm still a wee bit behind on that part, but not worryingly so.

[Lianne]

Day 90:
30 minutes reading La vie compliquée de Léa Olivier: Rumeurs

Day 91:
30 minutes reading La vie compliquée de Léa Olivier: Rumeurs

Day 92:
44 minutes watching Au service de la France

Day 93:
24 minutes watching Au service de la France
10 minutes Memrise reviews

Honestly I'm totally guessing on what I did for days 90 and 91. I should really write my updates daily, because my memory sucks. I know I'm very careful to get my half hour in every day, and I'm sure I didn't watch anything since I've accounted for all the episodes of Au service de la France, so I can logically assume that I read my book those days. I might have done more than half an hour though. *shrug*

As for Au service de la France, I went back and watched the episode I missed, and then rewatched the following two episodes. They made more sense this time! Now I'm done season 1! I hope they end up making a season 3, because I'm really enjoying this show! Luckily I do have a few other shows lined up for after I finish season 2, including a new Netflix original called Osmosis, which looks pretty good!