Meyers. [TAC’15] Formidable French.

[Meyers]

Well, I’m back again.

I thought I’d have a small break from posting while my girlfriend was visiting from France and while the whole HTLAL saga played itself out. Now that it seems that the majority have migrated here, I thought it would be a great opportunity to refresh my log and start fresh. So far this year I've accumulated 148 hours 49 minutes 21 seconds. I'm really enjoying French in Action at the moment, however I would like to add one of the following Assimil courses into the mix, these are Assimil French Without Toil or Assimil Using French. As of now I haven't decided which one to go with next.

Courses
French in Action [in use]
Assimil French without Toil [pending decision]
Assimil Using French [pending decision]

Books

Le livre des etoiles 1. Qadehar le sorcier.
Tom-Tom et l'impossible Nana
Astérix : le cadeau de César



For the curious my old log can be found http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=39898&PN=0&TPN=1.

[PeterMollenburg]

Hi Meyers,

I found you as well (as some other team members). How's things? How's your French coming along? Note I've also restarted the team thread too.

PM

[Meyers]

Hey PM,

things are well, the last month has been a bit busy with my girlfriend here from France, Uni, work, and some travel thrown in! The majority of the past month I've spent practicing my oral skills with my gf, watching movies and reading the books I mentioned in the above post, so not too much time was spent on FiA.

This week I've started back on FiA and in the process of deciding whether I should start on Assimil FWT or UF (maybe you have a recommendation?). After listening to your recordings I felt myself a little bit inspired to say the least, and have been spending some time focusing on sharpening up my pronunciation skills, so thanks for that I guess

Meyers

[extralean]

The majority of the past month I've spent practicing my oral skills with my gf

I like the direction this log is taking, and will definitely keep checking back in for updates...

[Meyers]

What have I been up to the past couple of weeks I hear you asking? Well, nothing too much really. I’m currently in the last 4 weeks of the semester and the unfortunately the workload is hectic, therefore I’ve been dedicating most of my time toward research projects. I haven’t done much at all of my course books (FiA) lately, but I have been reading a few books.

I recently acquired three books. A used edition of D’accord: La Prononciation du Français International Acquisition et Perfectionement for $25, a kids book called Le Moyen Âge, and L’histoire de France which were both gifts.

books1.jpg

book2.jpg

I love reading history books, mainly those concerning ancient Rome and Greece, the Middle Ages and the Second World War. Even though Le Moyen Âge is meant for kids between 6-9 years, I think it will be a good starting point before I delve into more advanced books on the same subject plus it has plenty of illustrations and photos, which are both something I prefer in books. I decided to get D'accord, because I thought it would be worth investing in a decent textbook dedicated towards pronunciation, so I'm hoping to get some benefit from it.

[Meyers]

Weekly Review

This week I've been working my way through le moyen âge, which I'm throughly enjoying! I've also been watching some Pokemon on Netflix, French VO and subs, I originally wanted to watch Tintin, but unfortunately it doesn't have french subs, so I'll watch Tintin sometime later down the track. I'm enjoying Pokemon, it was the craze when I was growing up in the 90's, so it almost like reliving part of my childhood.. In other news, only 2 weeks left of classes until the end of semester and then I'm done with university.

Salut!


Week 38 Sept 28th - Oct 4th

Min time spent: 15 minutes 36 seconds.
Max time spent: 2 hours 11 minutes 52 seconds.
Average time per day: 1 hour 8 minutes 48 seconds.
Weekly total: 6 hours 52 minutes 48 seconds.
Yearly total so far: 155 hours 42 minutes 9 seconds.

[Meyers]

Alright, I'm back! I've been a bit quiet lately.. Mainly due to it being the end of the semester and I've been busy studying for my exams. Thankfully now all my exams are over. Wonderful, freedom.. Well not really, straight into paying off my student loan. I've decided to work through D’accord: La Prononciation du Français International Acquisition et Perfectionement before continuing FiA. Why? Simply because I had an urge to sort out my pronunciation, better to get it right now than later in my opinion.

Today at work I got to speak French. I work at a car rental company and an old french couple came to rent a car, however they couldn't speak any english and luckily enough for me I'm the only person at the company that knows any French, It went well, considering I haven't learned much vocab related to hiring a car in French!

So now that I'm back into the swing of things here, I'll be posting a weekly update every week!

[Meyers]

Weekly update

Week 45 Nov 16th - Nov 22nd

Min time spent: 25 minutes 55 seconds.
Max time spent: 1 hours 35 minutes 55 seconds.
Average time per day: 1 hour 8 minutes 42 seconds.
Weekly total: 8 hours 1 minute.
Yearly total so far: 163 hours 43 minutes 9 seconds.

[Meyers]

Weekly update

This week I picked up some books illustrated by Stephen Biesty (A bord d'un vaisseau de guerre : une bataille navale vers 1800,
A l'assaut d'un Château Fort and La vie quotidienne dans l'antiquité : En Égypte, en Grèce et à Rome). One thing I've learned about myself is that I'm a very visual learner and I've been trying to find some books with lots of pictures and illustrations. Unfortunately the majority of books aimed towards adults tend to lack pictures, illustrations. Nevertheless I enjoyed reading these books as a younger lad and thought why not give them a read in French.

During this week I managed to practice with some native French speakers here in Christchurch. My brother and I went to have a few drinks with one of his workmates who was French. This guy's parents were visiting from France and spoke no English, and his flatmates all happened to be French to my pleasant surprise. All in all it was a great night and I got to speak a lot of French. Even got some nice comments on my accent.. maybe all this pronunciation work is slowly paying off!


Week 46 Nov 23rd - Nov 29th

Min time spent: 30 minutes.
Max time spent: 1 hours 25 minutes 5 seconds.
Average time per day: 47 minutes 30 seconds.
Weekly total: 5 hours 32 minutes 31 seconds.
Yearly total so far: 169 hours 15 minutes 40 seconds.

[Meyers]

Weekly update

This week I've been going over the sounds in French, and working through the book D’accord: La Prononciation du Français International Acquisition et Perfectionement (which I highly recommend) and watching various videos from the LRC Michigan youtube channel. The book has been really useful in helping me distinguish the slight differences between various sounds.

So far I've been working on my /R/ which I've never been happy with, I can pronounce it okay in a lot of words but most of my problems tend to arise when it occurs in the middle of a word like Sarah for example. Another weakness for me has been producing the /u/ and /y/, at the moment I can't consistently produce the correct sound.. /y/ is okay but the trouble lies with my /u/ which tends to transform into a /y/ during a normal study session. So this coming week I will spend more time trying to be more consistent with these sounds so I can nail tu - tou, su , sou etc. all the time... and not 50% of the time.


Week 47 Nov 30th - Dec 6th

Min time spent: 30 minutes.
Max time spent: 2 hours 17 minutes 49 seconds.
Average time per day: 1 hour 4 minutes 29 seconds.
Weekly total: 7 hours 31 minutes 26 seconds.
Yearly total so far: 176 hours 47 minutes 6 seconds.