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French: Fresh, fun & effortless media

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emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5541 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
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 Message 1169 of 1317
06 November 2014 at 3:06am | IP Logged 
csidler wrote:
Did you ever put much time into trying an alternative to Anki, such as memrise?

Nope, I've never tried Memrise. I'm a huge fan of AnkiDroid, and I make all my own decks in any case.

I really don't enjoy using other people's decks, except for things like learning alphabets. I once spent three months with an L1<->L2 vocabulary deck, and it was the single most unpleasant language learning technique I've ever tried—and it wasn't even very effective for me. Later, I tried using an "Intermediate French Idioms" deck, and once again, it was mostly a depressing waste of time. This doesn't seem to be true for everybody, but that's how it works for me. :-/

My preferred technique goes something like this:

1. Track down awesome native media that I could happily read/watch a dozen times.
2. Pull out useful bits that I don't understand, and make easy-to-answer cards.
3. Delete aggressively.

This way, when I see a strange idiomatic expression in my deck (for example), I already know what context it occurred in, the age and social status of the character who used it, and why I care about knowing it (because it appeared in awesome media). And if a card annoys or bores me, it's gone.

Memrise doesn't really cater to this market, as far as I can tell. And Anki really works quite amazingly well for me in any case, so I'm quite happy to stick with it.

Edited by emk on 06 November 2014 at 4:14am

6 persons have voted this message useful



liam.pike1
Groupie
Australia
Joined 3763 days ago

84 posts - 122 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Esperanto, French

 
 Message 1170 of 1317
16 November 2014 at 12:37am | IP Logged 
Hey! I just came across this 'log', and I'm sure glad that I did :D Very inspirational... and since French is my target
language at the moment, I'll follow along. Thank you :)
1 person has voted this message useful





emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5541 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
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 Message 1171 of 1317
18 November 2014 at 5:37pm | IP Logged 
liam.pike1 wrote:
Hey! I just came across this 'log', and I'm sure glad that I did :D Very inspirational... and since French is my target language at the moment, I'll follow along. Thank you :)

Thank you for your kind words! You may find the first 20 pages or so the most useful; that's when I was making it from A2 to B2. For zero to A2, you might get a kick out of my Spanish log.

Spanish. I've been putting most of my effort into Spanish lately, as you can see in my other log, and things are going quite well. Spanish verbs are the biggest difference: verb endings take the place of pronouns, and Spanish has a lot more verb tenses than French. Gotta grow some new neural tissue to deal with all this. :-)

But for the hours invested, I'm really happy with the results. Using subs2srs feels a lot like using Assimil, but with a much more intensive focus on listening comprehension. In fact, I suspect that first-time language learners with an hour per day would really benefit from multitracking Assimil and subs2srs. Of course, the most important thing is to just get started with whatever you have on hand.

Egyptian. Taking it easy, mostly. I have a stack of new Anki cards to learn, and existing cards to review, and in a few weeks I'll need to make more cards. Just chilling, basically.

French. I'm taking it easy in French right now. I'm seeing a tiny bit of interference from Spanish—mostly because my brain is like, "Hey, wait, you're using 4 languages every day, which one do you want now?", and one or two instances when a Spanish word has blocked a French one (I kept getting espinaca when I wanted epinard).

But I've also been finding more time for long conversations in French with fewer distractions than usual, and it's really pleasant. Even on days when I'm tired and busy with other stuff, once I get into the groove, I can just talk. I have access to a very wide range of subjects.

Oh, it's nice to be able to compare my French to my Spanish. My French is still well below the level of my English (for obvious reasons), but it's absolutely amazing compared to my Spanish. I can do so many things in French, and so much of that automatically, without thinking.

An interesting fact. Even with all these languages, I'm still not the household polyglot.

Edited by emk on 18 November 2014 at 5:52pm

4 persons have voted this message useful



rdearman
Senior Member
United Kingdom
rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5245 days ago

881 posts - 1812 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin

 
 Message 1172 of 1317
18 November 2014 at 8:45pm | IP Logged 
emk wrote:

An interesting fact. Even with all these languages, I'm still not the household polyglot.


You live with Iverson?
5 persons have voted this message useful





emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5541 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
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 Message 1173 of 1317
29 January 2015 at 12:15pm | IP Logged 
Rebooting

January has been very rough: I had a consulting project that ate my life, then the entire family came down with a nasty strain of the flu (despite being fully vaccinated—there's a nasty H2N3 strain which isn't in the vaccine), and I'm still trying to piece the essentials back together (work, taxes, etc.) So my language studies have suffered. Here's where I stand:

French. Anki backlog: 149 cards. I've continued using French at home, and I spent some time reading a few chapters of Zola's Germinal a few weeks ago. As usual, when I'm not pushing my French hard, I can handle day-to-day tasks, but I lose much of the professional/intellectual register unless I have a long time to warm up and my brain decides to cooperate. For me, being able to intelligently discuss books in French is a bit like being in very good cardiovascular shape—if I take a few weeks off, I lose a lot. Also, "flu brain" is really hard on my French. I can still communicate, but I make a lot more mistakes and babble more.

Egyptian. Anki backlog: 218 cards. This is a painful backlog, because Egyptian cards are slow. Fortunately, my Egyptian progress has always been slow and steady, and I've dug out from under bigger backlogs in the past. It's unlikely that I've forgotten anything, though it make take a day or three of Anki reviews to drag Egyptian kicking and screaming to the forefront of my brain.

Spanish. Anki backlog: 437 cards. This is going to be really interesting, because my Spanish is very recent, and I learned it very quickly, so I'm theoretically like to lose it quickly. OTOH, the ear-worm power of subs2srs is terrifying, and I had several entire Avatar episodes which were fully mature, so it's possible I haven't lost as much as I might otherwise.

Given that I'm still overloaded and trying to reassemble the essentials of life, I'm going to have to ease back in gently. More details as my efforts progress.
1 person has voted this message useful



eyðimörk
Triglot
Senior Member
France
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Joined 4108 days ago

490 posts - 1158 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English, French
Studies: Breton, Italian

 
 Message 1174 of 1317
29 January 2015 at 12:25pm | IP Logged 
emk wrote:
I spent some time reading a few chapters of Zola's Germinal a few weeks ago.

How are you finding it? I picked up a copy at the annual village flea market, but I haven't touched it yet since I decided to approach my "read the French classics" project by working my way backwards through the centuries, and I have yet to leave the comfort of the 20th century.
1 person has voted this message useful



tommus
Senior Member
CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5875 days ago

979 posts - 1688 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish

 
 Message 1175 of 1317
29 January 2015 at 1:19pm | IP Logged 
Great to have you back emk. I missed your innovation and inspiration. All the best for a
speedy "recovery".
1 person has voted this message useful



Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5565 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 1176 of 1317
30 January 2015 at 12:31am | IP Logged 
Good luck with that daunting deluge of backlogs, emk. I have a few Egyptian reviews of my own knocking impatiently on their sarcophagi and demanding attention. By Thoth's teeth, they'll wait their turn... ;)

What's your lexical coverage for Zola's Germinal, by the way? I'd love to be at the level where I could understand 98% or above of the words in advanced texts. French is certainly more transparent than other languages due its similarity to English, but I find false friends have a habit of popping up every now and again and leading me astray.

Wishing you a much smoother transition into February, and I hope you and your family shake the tail end of this flu soon!



1 person has voted this message useful



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