schlaraffenland wrote:How do you prefer to learn and drill verbs?
I'm reasonably certain that I've come back up to the level of French comprehension that I had when I left school. Like, I wouldn't freak out if I saw "que vous eussiez convaincu" in the wild. But my ability to replicate such forms in writing and speaking is still not quite up to par. Especially when it comes to writing, I am apt to make small mistakes when the orthography changes to preserve pronunciation, since I am still pulling these once-learned things out of the depths of my memory.
I'm not averse to doing what could be considered rather mind-numbing drills, like copying out a page per day from 501 French Verbs by hand. But I wonder if that is indeed the most effective use of one's time. I lean a little more toward writing than toward typing for practice, as I simply enjoy writing by hand more, and I feel I don't remember as well what I type. And, it's a long story, but accents can be slightly more complicated for me to type: Linux, and a non-standard keyboard...
Is there anything cool out there I should know about? How do you practice? Do you repeat things out loud, or write out verb forms until your hand drops off?
If you're into creative writing at all, this is what I did with Spanish, and I plan on doing for French: write in Spanglish/Frenglish. The words you're learning, you plug in: the words you don't know, you look up later. I did use a notebook and pen/pencil when I did this.