PeterMollenburg wrote:Well, reading, would you believe, I know I know, it's shocking, IS included in my rotation now. And i'm doing only one lonely course, but believe me there's plenty more on that list, and since i've kept my routine to a 4 hour rotation, in theory I'll be doing that course most days of the week. I would love to be working on 5 courses, sorry 255 courses, at a time, but I simply cannot. Where reading gives me much needed extensive language exposure, courses it seems give you much needed intensive focus. So if I hear you've cut your list below 231 courses I'll have to get out that stick i've been beating Dutch into submission with and.. .umm... wave it around to see how it... umm... glides through the air?
Oh I know it is in your rotation. But ... if we are competing in hours, your courses/intensive against my extensive materials, then I need to get in nearly 2h day intensive to keep up with you right? And you probably need to do all 4 hours EVERY day to keep up with me
, so it forces more cycles out of you. See?
Your schedule does sound very reasonable though so don't let me rock the boat on what is working
I've actually decided to do only one course at a time. I am going to work through the grammar book smallwhite recommended me (because the GPdF avancé and perfectionnement sitting on my night stand needs a little more dust), then the Phonétique progressive du français intermédiaire, then the two conjugasion books, and finally switching back to GPdF before the exam, or at whatever point x-weeks before the exam that I decide to switch over to specific exam prep. I did look through the big red Delf/Dalf C1-C2 book and it doesn't look terribly intimidating at all so I plan to work on skills more holistically (albeit intensively) until I know I can sit an exam.
Oh and my French background that I didn't type out earlier --
I wanted to learn French when I was 7 or 8 and my mom found me a casette tape with a little booklet. I listened to that tape until it wore out but could barely make heads or tails of it. It covered formal greetings and ordering food at a restaurant. I can't still remember hours trying to say
très heureux, which I could only render as "Tri-zew-ur"
After that I went to boarding school for highschool and one of my good friends was a French expat. Her family rescued me from school many weekends and introduced me to the French expat community in NJ. They were all awesome, welcoming people and I loved listening to the completely French dinner conversations. With a background of Italian, I could pick up a fair amount by the time we graduated highschool, but I was too shy to really dig in and learn to speak while I had the chance. I spent most of my 20's regretting that. About 5 years ago, I decided I couldn't regret it forever and in frustration googled "How to learn a language" ... and guess which site came up?
Lil' ol' me had nothing to contribute to HTAL but I read a lot and studied on an off. It wasn't until about 2 year ago that I really hit my stride and have been studying and using French daily since then.
I really don't know what my level is right now. I do know my language is really unbalanced. I am hoping that if I fill gaps, I will quickly gain ground against the CEFR scale. I can now read as quickly and easily in English as French, although I will sometimes come across a novel that suddenly has 2-3 unknown words per page and that really shakes my confidence. My listening comprehension is decent. FSI is painfully slow where as Kaamelott feels very comfortable (although I definitely miss some jokes). Since writing on an exam has to be done with an actual pen, I'm pretty much doomed. I can't spell to save my life on paper. That applies in English too so I am not sure how I am going to fix it. Lots of work and I'll just have to do the best I can I guess. My biggest issue in speaking is needing to drill conjugations for verbs that I don't hear spoken often enough.
So yeah
But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.