Constantly Confusing Words in French. When will it End??? Help??

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issemiyaki
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Constantly Confusing Words in French. When will it End??? Help??

Postby issemiyaki » Fri Aug 18, 2017 2:48 am

My French comprehension has come a long way, thanks in part to much of the advice I've gotten here.

However, I'm still having trouble mishearing things, and it's concerning me.

For example, I was listening to a speech by Emmauel Macron and I misheard quite a few things.

Macron said: "La nature du défi qui est le notre," and I heard: "La nature du défi qui l'un et l'autre."
Macron said: "Nous devons aller de l'avant," and I heard: "Nous devons aller à la vent."
Macron said: "tous ces incohérences qui nous minent," and I heard "tous ces incohérences qui NOMINE." (as in nominer)
Macron said: "ce qui lui a permis de relever tant et tant de drames et de ne jamais s'affaisser," I heard: "ce qui lui a permis de relever tant et tant de drames et de ne jamais CESSER.

I'm wondering if maybe I learned French the wrong way, if there is a wrong way to learn a language.

I tried to learn French in the "Krashen" spirit. I started with Assimil, and then pretty much never looked back. I immersed myself in authentic materials. But when I see the mistakes I'm wondering if maybe I would have been better off going the more "old-school" way and doing a million and one exercises on de + les = des or de + le = du.

So, I don't know. Any ideas. I guess more reading and listening at the same time?

Not sure if this is worth noting, but I didn't know what miner or s'affaisser meant when I first heard them during this speech.
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Re: Constantly Confusing Words in French. When will it End??? Help??

Postby Speakeasy » Fri Aug 18, 2017 3:50 am

In my experience, the problem that you are describing is quite common, even for people who have the benefit of daily contact with their L2 language, over an extended period, in a truly full immersion environment. One begins by capturing snippets of a conversation. Over time, this level of skill expands to where one grasps the gist of a conversation, while still missing out on some details that are either of no consequence at all or absolutely essential for full comprehension. In the absence of an extended, full immersion contact with the language, true mastery of a foreign language can take many years and, for some people, it may never occur at all!

As difficult as it might appear to be, at times, even a single syllable pronounced in a manner with which we are not accustomed, or even minor shifts in stress and intonation, can be enough to “throw us off”, causing us to misunderstand a word that is essential to a complete understanding of an utterance. When you think about, this happens in our own languages: accents, fatigue, inattention, vocabulary, cultural cues, register, and many other issues play a role in our misunderstanding an utterance, n’est-ce pas? Furthermore, we should try to bear in mind that, to a large extent, native speakers, and others whose listening skills are at a similar level, do not need to listen intently to every utterance. That is, as they are so highly familiar with the language that they have the ability to "anticipate" certain words that should, under normal circumstances, follow a logical progression in the expression of certain ideas and, in many cases, will "hear" such words even though something else was actually said. You possess this ability in your native language and you can mimic it to a certain extent in French, but you are "not quite there yet." One syllable, one pause, one ellipsis and you're toast! You need not be concerned, keeping trying and you'll get over it.

So then, what’s the remedy to this type of problem? Well, part of the solution will depend on the level of skill you have already attained in French. While you haven’t specifically mentioned this, based on the “real life” examples that provided, allow me to assume that you are presently in the Intermediate to High-Intermediate range and that this is due principally to your exposure to native materials. To move beyond your present level of skill, into the truly Advanced range, you will have to increase your exposure to a wide variety of native materials. Furthermore, with a view to maximizing the benefits, this activity should be engaged in a highly-directed manner; otherwise, there is the risk that you could waste your most precious resource (your time) in less-than-optimal efforts.

While there are a myriad of paths to follow, the most direct route that comes my mind is a sixth-month subscription to either FluentU or Yabla. To begin your programme, using these materials as a basis for evaluation, try to estimate your present level of skill in French. As to working with the materials, I would recommend that you alternate your approach as: (a) concentrated listening and practicing/shadowing, et cetera, and (b) binge-watching, the more the better. Try to vary the types of videos that you'll be working with. Remember, your subscription is valid 24 hours per day; so, any time that you are not working with these materials is wasted ... time, not money. BURN the language into your mind and, when you’ve completed your six-month-long marathon, in the final week of your subscription, re-conduct your self-evaluation. Upon completion, let your subscription slide and move on to new business.

EDITED:
Tinkering.
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Re: Constantly Confusing Words in French. When will it End??? Help??

Postby Arnaud » Fri Aug 18, 2017 5:00 am

issemiyaki wrote:Macron said: "ce qui lui a permis de se relever de tant et tant de drames et de ne jamais s'affaisser," I heard: "ce qui lui a permis de relever tant et tant de drames et de ne jamais CESSER.

Not sure if this is worth noting, but I didn't know what miner or s'affaisser meant when I first heard them during this speech.

- Firstly, that sentence doesn't mean anything: Macron should have said: de se relever de..., but he's probably tired after 1h of speech. The transcript at that moment (around 1h) is not very precise either, words are missing, so I suppose the official transcripter is also more or less tired.
- Secondly, if you don't know certains words, it's normal that the brain try to replace them by known words, and as french is full of homophones it's particularly easy to do: you could have written: nous devons aller à l'avant. The fact that you hear "à" instead of "de" is probably normal: if you don't know the fixed expression "aller de l'avant", you can interpret it as "aller à l'avant" that is more frequent ("aller à" is super frequent). In general, when I correct transcripts on Italki, I see that people make a lot of mistakes with prepositions: either they simply don't hear them, either they "interpret" them badly.
- If you hear "nominent" instead of "nous minent", perhaps you have a problem of discrimination of minimal pairs: o/ou for exemple. Just a hypothesis.
- "La nature du défi qui l'un et l'autre." : where is the verb ? In general, is your grammar solid enough to "detect" that the structure of a sentence is not correct: so either the speaker made a mistake or you didn't hear correctly.
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Re: Constantly Confusing Words in French. When will it End??? Help??

Postby DaveBee » Fri Aug 18, 2017 7:13 am

issemiyaki wrote:I'm wondering if maybe I learned French the wrong way, if there is a wrong way to learn a language.

I tried to learn French in the "Krashen" spirit. I started with Assimil, and then pretty much never looked back. I immersed myself in authentic materials. But when I see the mistakes I'm wondering if maybe I would have been better off going the more "old-school" way and doing a million and one exercises on de + les = des or de + le = du.

So, I don't know. Any ideas.
There's a Kato Lomb quote I quite like: "A foreign language is a castle. It is advisable to attack it on all fronts at once".

If *you* think it would be helpful to go through another course book, do that too!
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Re: Constantly Confusing Words in French. When will it End??? Help??

Postby tastyonions » Fri Aug 18, 2017 7:48 am

Eventually you will get to a point where you think you heard things one way at first, then your brain will quickly make an automatic correction upon realizing that its first interpretation made no sense.

Also, it should be "toutes ces incohérences."
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Re: Constantly Confusing Words in French. When will it End??? Help??

Postby MamaPata » Fri Aug 18, 2017 10:36 am

I wouldn't worry about it too much - this happens to me loads in English, which is my native language! I spend lots of my time thinking 'he said what?! Seems odd/doesn't make sense/a bit rude/not like them...' Before I work out what they actually said!
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issemiyaki
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Re: Constantly Confusing Words in French. When will it End??? Help??

Postby issemiyaki » Fri Aug 18, 2017 10:38 am

I knew I could count on you guys.

Thanks for your advice. I went to a site I had in my back pocket. It's new, but it looks very effective!

It's called Ilini French https://fr.ilini.com/

I think it's better than things like Fluent U because with Ilini, you not only listen to the video clip, but you have to fill in the blanks.

That task of having to recall the word and do something with it makes the exercise a bit more interactive, and you have a sense of accomplishment when you're finished.

And it's not just a few words you have to fill in ... you have to fill in roughly 30 words, and that's just for a 1 minute video.

So, I'll use that for now for my "targeted listening," something that will force me to verify that I have heard something correctly. Also, this is "hard core" French for serious learners. Many of the videos are presidential speeches, interviews of prominent and educated personalities, etc. But you also have some lighter material, as well.

And for my binge watching, well, there's always Plus Belle La Vie, and the podcast from France Info, France Culture, RFI, etc.
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Re: Constantly Confusing Words in French. When will it End??? Help??

Postby DaveBee » Sat Aug 19, 2017 1:14 pm

issemiyaki wrote:I went to a site I had in my back pocket. It's new, but it looks very effective!

It's called Ilini French https://fr.ilini.com/

I think it's better than things like Fluent U because with Ilini, you not only listen to the video clip, but you have to fill in the blanks.

That task of having to recall the word and do something with it makes the exercise a bit more interactive, and you have a sense of accomplishment when you're finished.

And it's not just a few words you have to fill in ... you have to fill in roughly 30 words, and that's just for a 1 minute video.

So, I'll use that for now for my "targeted listening," something that will force me to verify that I have heard something correctly.
I came across a Fluent-in-3-months article on listening skills
If you can’t find software courses in your target language then, where possible, make an active game out of an audio recording that would typically be used for passive listening.

Rather than listen to a podcast in the car, listen to it at your desk with a pen and piece of paper (or a computer) and start to transcribe what you hear.

Write down what you do understand and see if you can fill the holes by guessing the missing information from context. Or try listening to a short section of the audio a number of times to fill in the blanks.

This type of training isn’t as effective as high stakes active listening [conversation] but it will take you much further in a short period of time than passive listening alone.


EDIT
I wonder if there is a least-bad kind of passive listening? Does listening to a subject that interests you make your listening more of an active participation variety?
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Re: Constantly Confusing Words in French. When will it End??? Help??

Postby reineke » Sat Aug 19, 2017 3:18 pm

DaveBee wrote:
issemiyaki wrote:I went to a site I had in my back
So, I'll use that for now for my "targeted listening," something that will force me to verify that I have heard something correctly.
I came across a Fluent-in-3-months article on listening skills
If you can’t find software courses in your target language then, where possible, make an active game out of an audio recording that would typically be used for passive listening.

Rather than listen to a podcast in the car, listen to it at your desk with a pen and piece of paper (or a computer) and start to transcribe what you hear.. .

This type of training isn’t as effective as high stakes active listening [conversation] but it will take you much further in a short period of time than passive listening alone.


EDIT
I wonder if there is a least-bad kind of passive listening? Does listening to a subject that interests you make your listening more of an active participation variety?


Issemiyaki, as I mentioned in one of your other threads, you are doing great. Remind yourself that last summer you were considering whether to bring Assimil with you to Paris.

From the above-cited article:

"The reverse situation is passive listening. If you are listening to a recording or watching a movie; it is simply way too easy to lose focus. When you are feeling relaxed and your stress levels are low your performance and your ability to improve will drop away.

When you are listening passively, there is nothing on the line. There is no consequence of not understanding what you have heard. "

" ... I needed to improve my knowledge of the language in general.

No amount of passive listening was ever going to solve this problem."

I think it's very easy to find many posts here by forum members who are fretting about not being able to follow films and TV programs. I disagree that you can't learn grammar through listening and I also strongly disagree that" just" listening to native materials "won't even help your ability to understand" .

The founder of the site failed the listening portion of the C2 Goethe exam. He passed everything else, I think. I think he's a very capable language learner but he made the mistake of reducing "passive" listening to background noise. Later he used this experience to make a case against passive listening.The article was entitled "Shocking truth about passive listening" and the above article links to it.
https://www.fluentin3months.com/passive-learning/

A simple forum search will give you plenty of active listening ideas. I also recommend Paul Nation's free book about language learning:

https://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/paul-nation
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Re: Constantly Confusing Words in French. When will it End??? Help??

Postby Jbean » Sun Aug 20, 2017 2:52 am

The Illini site looks interesting.

I was going to recommend dictées to help with the homonym problem. Becherelle used to have free dictées for practice, but they seem to have disappeared. However, the practice books are cheap. I found that they were pretty helpful.

http://bescherelle.com/recherche?search ... ext=Dictée
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