The first week (or 1 and a half week..) of 2016 is over, so it's time for a first progress review.
Assimil New French with ease: leçons 8-11
I already started with Assimil last year, doing lessons 1-7.
My method for new lessons is something like this:1. Listen to new lesson 3 times and try to understand.
2. Listen a 4th time while reading the text and look at the translation of unknown words (as I am refreshing my french there are only very few words unknown at the moment)
3. Listen and speak along (loud) 3 times. Though at the 3rd time I stop after each sentence and repeat and also read the annotations.
4. Excercises. Understanding: Listen and try to shadow. Repeat on my own and try to understand. (Mostly they are easy to understand)
I don't normally write down the fill in excercises, but I kind of imagine the spelling in my head and compare to the solution.
5. Listen and shadow (or at least what I understand of shadowing: speaking along..)
At the moment I kind of do a new lesson each time I open Assimil, but there are days where I don't do Assimil, but other things (mostly because I have not much time and only watch tv or listen to the radio while having dinner).
My routine for older lessons:Before I do a new lesson on a session I repeat the 4 previous lessons only like following:
1. Listen
2. Listen and shadow.
Depends on the lesson whether I only do this once or twice.
So in total it would look like this:new lesson: 12
repeating older lessons: 8,9,10,11
next day: new lesson: 13
repeating older lessons: 9,10,11,12
Like this I repeat every lesson 4 times after my 'new lesson routine' before I leave them.
Yesterday I also recorded my voice on each of the lessons I did, just to see how this sounds and it was quite fun. I had not much a problem of hearning my voice, but I didn't like to listen to my accent
Output challenge (written only)
I wrote a post in the thread "
Cette semaine en français" of 64 words (I counted combinations like 'j'ai' as one word though. Not sure whether you normally count it as two words or one?).
Native Material:I started watching Harry Potter et l'école des sorciers because I can do so while having lunch and still doing something fun AND informative. Of course I know the story and often also the exact phrases (in german) which makes it easy to follow, however, I have the impression I don't really follow the language very much. Because I don't need to concentrate to get the action.
I belive this will be better for HP 3-7, because I haven't watched those movies that often ^^
Although I haven't started, I plan to read HP 1 as well. I only skimmed through the first two pages, and it seems quite hard. But I want to read something where I like the story. Graded reader's are sometimes nice, but I'm not sure I'd enjoy them very much... And I think my biggest problem is the tenses and some other grammatical expressions that I am not that familiar with. And I could look them up and learn them as I go (reminds me that I still have to get a practice booklet).
Other materialI found a 'grammar in pictures' at my library. I really like the concept, but I read that there were some flaws in the grammar there. It has been corrected in the newest edition according to Pons, but I think the version I have is the uncorrected one. That's sad, because I'm no expert to mention the flaws myself, I guess. I hope that at least my mini grammar by pons is flawless..
I guess that's my review of the first days in 2016. I learned everyday (starting on 2nd because I wasn't home on 1st ^^) until now, and I want to continue learning everyday. (I am using Habitica and the 'don't break the chain' method for staying motivated to make this a habit, by the way. The latter is good to make it visible. I think it works best with a few weeks of having developed a chain, because then you really don't want to break it so easily. But that depends on how you think about it.)