Le groupe français 2016 - 2019 Les Voyageurs

[Rebecca]

Congratulations to eveyone on some teriffic French learning this year!

My year did not go exactly to plan. My end of year summary is in my log if anyone cares to read.

A big thank you to Tomgosse for leading this thread and making a space we can all share our highs and lows.

Here's to a great 2017 for Les Voyageurs!

[Carmody]

Highly recommended:

Geography Now! France

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0QrBph ... 455fe93291

[geoffw]

Happy New Year everyone! I honestly can't remember anymore whether I ever officially joined this group or just lurked and commented on rare occasion. In any event, I haven't intentionally focussed on French this year, and I finally gave up on trying to keep my own log for anything. But that doesn't mean I don't have French-learning end-of-year confessions/achievements to share, and this seemed the place for it.

My significant milestone for 2016, is that I am finally at the point where I can read a book in French that was written for an adult audience, that I haven't read before, comfortably, and at a reasonable speed. I am looking up some of the unknown words I come across (in the present book, ~0-3 per page), but I don't tend to get confused if I don't bother. The book I'm reading right now is Brandon Sanderson's "Mistborn: The Final Empire" (L'Empire Ultime). Over the last week I read the first 230 pages or so (out of 900). Translations tend to be a little easier, and later I may decide to graduate to reading French books that are not translations.

I started learning French about 4-5 years ago with Assimil, did a decent bit of extensive reading and listening over the next two years, and have not made much concentrated effort to improve French since then, simply using it occasionally. Someone with a single-minded desire to master French should be able to reach this point a good bit faster, I expect.

[tomgosse]

Happy New Year everyone! I honestly can't remember anymore whether I ever officially joined this group or just lurked and commented on rare occasion. In any event, I haven't intentionally focussed on French this year, and I finally gave up on trying to keep my own log for anything. But that doesn't mean I don't have French-learning end-of-year confessions/achievements to share, and this seemed the place for it.

Hi geoffw,

I added your name to the group's list. When you start a log let me know and I will add a link to it.

[tomgosse]

Bonjour mes amis,

Bonne année et santé à vous. Well, I did not accomplish most of the goals I set for my self at the beginning of 2016. And, I'm all right with that. I did the best I could.

For 2017 I'm setting the bar very low. Here are the tools I'm using this year:

• Grammaire Progressive
• Frencheezee
• Memrise
• Duolingo
• Pimsleur
• News In Slow French

Instead of using one big (gigantic) course (French In Action), I'm going to use a lot of small ones. My idea is to take a lot of small bites of many different programs. The ones listed above are my favorites. I'm not keep lists, or tracking time spent on them. I may or may not use each of them everyday. My goal is to do something everyday, but not necessarily each one.

I wish everyone a good New Year,
Tom

[Soclydeza]

Bonjour à tous!

I've completed Hugo French in 3 Months, I'm almost done with Pimsleur IV, just started on FSI and got up to lesson 101 in Assimil NFWE. Assimil is the staple of my routine but the difficulty has shot up drastically at this point and I'm starting to see it as more of a chore to try and use it, so I figured I need a break from it (I also finished 2 versions of Assimil German in the past so maybe I'm just Assimil-ed out for the time being). I'm looking for some alternatives or ideas that aren't too elementary but not too advanced either. Any suggestions on resources, routines, habits, etc?

[rlnv]

Bonjour à tous!

I've completed Hugo French in 3 Months, I'm almost done with Pimsleur IV, just started on FSI and got up to lesson 101 in Assimil NFWE. Assimil is the staple of my routine but the difficulty has shot up drastically at this point and I'm starting to see it as more of a chore to try and use it, so I figured I need a break from it (I also finished 2 versions of Assimil German in the past so maybe I'm just Assimil-ed out for the time being). I'm looking for some alternatives or ideas that aren't too elementary but not too advanced either. Any suggestions on resources, routines, habits, etc?

Wahoo, welcome to the Hugo French in 3 Months club. I know of at least a couple of us Voyageurs who've completed that course. I personally have two memories of it, fondness, and utter nightmarish fear. The fondness was during the beginning, and trembling fearful anxiety towards the end. I enjoyed it, but was crazy enough to actually do it in 3 months, among a bunch of other stuff during a forum challenge. I think I slept, woke up, went to work, came home and studied, and restarted the loop during that challenge. Fun times. But it was a good course, except that guy trying to lose the weight in one of the dialogs, his accent made me crazy.

With the solid work you've already done, have you considered perhaps some native reading, or graded reading, instead of starting another course?

[Soclydeza]

Wahoo, welcome to the Hugo French in 3 Months club. I know of at least a couple of us Voyageurs who've completed that course. I personally have two memories of it, fondness, and utter nightmarish fear. The fondness was during the beginning, and trembling fearful anxiety towards the end. I enjoyed it, but was crazy enough to actually do it in 3 months, among a bunch of other stuff during a forum challenge. I think I slept, woke up, went to work, came home and studied, and restarted the loop during that challenge. Fun times. But it was a good course, except that guy trying to lose the weight in one of the dialogs, his accent made me crazy.

With the solid work you've already done, have you considered perhaps some native reading, or graded reading, instead of starting another course?

Haha, I think I know exactly which dialogue you're talking about! (the guy trying to lose weight) I think Hugo is a great all-around course for vocab, listening/reading, grammar, etc.

Do you have any suggestions for graded reading? Preferably something with audio. I feel like native material might be a bit daunting for me right now (the French speak REALLY fast and I don't think my vocab level as of yet is very useful). The one thing I'm worried about is the fact that French uses a lot of idioms and I feel like I may get lost without guidance, so I'd prefer something with transcripts.

[Fortheo]

Haha, I think I know exactly which dialogue you're talking about! (the guy trying to lose weight) I think Hugo is a great all-around course for vocab, listening/reading, grammar, etc.

Do you have any suggestions for graded reading? Preferably something with audio. I feel like native material might be a bit daunting for me right now (the French speak REALLY fast and I don't think my vocab level as of yet is very useful). The one thing I'm worried about is the fact that French uses a lot of idioms and I feel like I may get lost without guidance, so I'd prefer something with transcripts.

There's a bunch of graded readers under the title "Alex Leroc" that I found useful when I was coming out of Assimil. They're not stories that will blow you away, but they're good to get you into reading french. Another series called "le petit Nicholas" is often suggested to people around your level and for good reason—the language is accessible and it's highly amusing. All of what I mentioned above has audio, by the way.

Some more conventional graded readers would be:

Enquete Capitale
https://www.amazon.com/Enquete-Capitale ... e+capitale

le blog de maia
https://www.amazon.com/Blog-Audio-Coute ... og+de+maia

Mystere sur le vieux port

https://www.amazon.com/Mystere-Vieux-Po ... vieux+port



My suggestion is to just find something you can get into comfortably and then go from there. I've probably put down more graded readers than I've actually read because they just weren't for me. Considering that you've finished Hugo's (I love hugo's) and you're nearly done with Assimil, then you're actually probably getting close to a solid intermediate level, but those graded readers above will help flesh out your vocabulary. One last thing, these podcasts are great for building up your vocab and practicing listening for A2-B1 level students:

http://www.podclub.ch/sendungen/l-avis-de-marie-f

http://www.podclub.ch/sendungen/balades-f

You can pretty much use both of those as graded readers.

Good luck

[Carmody]

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I was going to the French book store Albertine in NYC, and people asked for an update when I did so. Well, I went yesterday and here is my review.

It is located down the block and across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art on 5th Avenue so it is convenient if you are in that area. It is in a town house and is composed of two floors and each floor is the size of a large living room about 40ft by 40ft. Although it is a very small bookstore, the store manager mentioned that it was the largest in this country.

They are associated with Bookwitty that you may wish to check out:
https://www.bookwitty.com/

Here is what I got:
-2 books in the Langues Pour Tous series:
The Jungle Book, extracts
Along the Mississippi, extracts
This is a series which provides parallel text extracts with heavy annotations and which I had not heard of before and which I highly recommend. See:
https://www.pocket.fr/livres/langues-la ... us/page/2/

MAJOR ALERT HERE:
I HAVE CAREFULLY REVIEWED THESE 2 BOOKS AND DON'T FIND THEM SUITABLE.
BOTH BKS ARE HEAVILY WRITTEN IN A JARGON THAT DOES NOT TRANSLATE WELL TO FRENCH.
YOU MAY WISH TO REFRAIN FROM BUYING IN THIS SERIES

-2 Amelie Nothomb books
Metaphysique des tubes
Le Sabotage amoureus

La Pest by Albert Camus

Le lit Défait by Francoise Sagan

La carte et le territoire by Michel Houellebecq

Histoire du lion Personne by Stéphance Audeguy

The Langues Pour Tous series noted above are of course more my level than anything else but with patience and time, I will grow into the other books.

Note:
I had a list of books that I wanted but found that many of them they did not have or were coming in shortly, so Bookwitty or Amazon are probably two sources to try before a special trip to the store.

If you have questions feel free to ask.