Fastest way to read in a foreign language (French)

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Re: Fastest way to read in a foreign language (French)

Postby tomgosse » Fri Nov 06, 2015 9:08 pm

Here are a few links that will help you get started in parallel reading-listening. I have started a dual reading and listening to Jules Verne's Around The World in Eighty Days. I found the English text here, and the French text here. The audio of the French text is here.

First I read the text in English, then read the French while listening to the audio. I did have to slow down the audio using Audacity.
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Re: Fastest way to read in a foreign language (French)

Postby sfuqua » Fri Nov 06, 2015 9:17 pm

Nice thread. I seldom hear French in California, but I'm interested in it for all the literature and movie reasons.
I have _Assimil French with Ease_ lined up to start as soon as I reach 10000 pages read and 10000 minutes watched in Spanish.

Maybe if I learn French, I'll finally be cool, although my students tell me it's hopeless. :)
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Re: Fastest way to read in a foreign language (French)

Postby rdearman » Fri Nov 06, 2015 9:22 pm

I was told once by a Frenchman that in French there are only exceptions and no rules. I have since decided he was correct.
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Re: Fastest way to read in a foreign language (French)

Postby AlexTG » Fri Nov 06, 2015 11:46 pm

I suggest reading through a course as you would a novel. Don't repeat lessons, don't listen to audio, just bash through it and enjoy the lesson texts. This is the quickest and most efficient way you could get through it and is perfect if your goal is reading novels. Then perhaps do the same with another course.

When you feel comfortable, probably before you finish the first course, start reading native parallel texts. The dover dual-language collection is good for this. I also like to buy both the English and L2 versions of regular books and hold both as I read, creating make-shift parallel texts. There are lots of other techniques for getting parallel texts, mostly involving reading on a computer. I use the English as a very quick and convenient dictionary and to help me understand longer bits I'm having trouble with.

Keep reading books like that and then, eventually, the parallel texts will start to be a hindrance and you can throw them away and read with the help of a dictionary or by skipping over words you don't understand.

Btw, French orthography isn't as insane as it seems at first. Just learn the basic rules, and you'll be fine. Pronouncing a word according to the rules when it's actually an exception sounds far superior to pronouncing it according to random anglophone intuition.
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Re: Fastest way to read in a foreign language (French)

Postby daegga » Sat Nov 07, 2015 12:15 am

An easy to read course would be "Le français par la méthode nature". Just ignore the exercises. It has the advantage that you need neither translation nor glossary.
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Re: Fastest way to read in a foreign language (French)

Postby aokoye » Sat Nov 07, 2015 3:25 am

emk wrote:
James29 wrote:I have the French for Reading book and it looks good. I had heard about the member who used it, but I was never able to find his log anywhere.

I dug around a bit and found his log on the old site. As you can see, he was able to transition from French for Reading directly into a history book he really wanted to read, which I found pretty impressive.


Thanks for digging this up. I just checked out French for Reading from my university's library and am rather excited about getting started.
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Re: Fastest way to read in a foreign language (French)

Postby aabram » Sat Nov 07, 2015 8:57 pm

I did my own French reading crash course a year ago. I'm not being able to speak, far from it, but I do read, not for full comprehension yet, but still.

My method is two step way. First is to read some stories in parallel texts just to get the feeling of the language, repeat some stories over and over again until I can track most of the components in the sentence and then -- and that is my personal silver bullet -- move over to reading on Kindle (keyboard edition) with dictionary. I swear by my Kindle Keyboard which is godsent for looking up words. Touchscreen models are nowhere near efficient though they are much faster and iPad or any other tablet just does not come close to the precision and comfort of that little clickety-clicky four-way selection button. I powered through few books this way, slowly at first and faster as I went and it helped me immensely. I have trouble reading Discworld series, for example, with all the jokes and puns and whatnot, but I can read and reasonably enjoy the story. It's even easier with non-fiction.

I did exactly the same with Spanish some years ago with great success and I'm planning to do it again with German, when I have time for that.
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Re: Fastest way to read in a foreign language (French)

Postby Xmmm » Fri Dec 04, 2015 1:32 am

lingvist.io

look at their native language selections under "reading". Some of them are 40 page blocks taken from French novels.

If you do an hour a day on lingvist, starting from scratch, you can read French* in two months. I tried that app out and loved it. Sadly, it is only available in French and they seem to be in absolutely no rush to release other languages for English speakers.



*Usual caveats about the kind of book you choose. Long descriptive passages taking place on 18th century sailing vessels, not good. Modern thriller, good.
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Re: Fastest way to read in a foreign language (French)

Postby James29 » Fri Dec 04, 2015 2:18 am

How does lingvist work? It does not explain anything on the website.

For what it is worth I decided to use French for Reading and I have been very impressed.
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Re: Fastest way to read in a foreign language (French)

Postby Xmmm » Fri Dec 04, 2015 6:52 am

James29 wrote:How does lingvist work? It does not explain anything on the website.

For what it is worth I decided to use French for Reading and I have been very impressed.



Well I'm not using it anymore because I decided I didn't have an interest in French, but it's pretty clever. The UI has changed a bit since I used it (it's still in beta) but ...

1. You stay on the main page and learn words in order of frequency. Each word is presented in a representative sentence and pronounced etc.
2. A graph will show you your progress and what percent of "normal" text you can understand.
3. Once you've got a couple 2000 words under your shaky grasp, you go to "readings". The readings start by being very short and very artificial, basically written for Lingvist. But each reading has a little percentage indicator, which shows what percent of the words in the reading you know. You are encouraged to read each reading when you know more than 90% of the words in it. Towards the end there are 40 page chunks from Les Miserables and so on, which I was able to read without a dictionary (they are carefully chosen 40 page chunks). And I only used the program for about two months.
4. And here's what's really cool, the same thing for audio. The audio recordings start off as artificial little scripts but graduate to radio interviews pulled from real radio programs, etc. And they have the same percentage indicator, and you're encouraged to listen and try to understand when you know more than 90% of the words that are going to be used.


For an all in one program, it's pretty ingenious. Pity that they spend their time on making French for Russian speakers, English for German speakers, etc. And the only language for English speakers is French. They promise lots of other languages are coming soon, but they said that a year ago and no progress.
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