emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5541 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map
| Message 17 of 1317 01 March 2012 at 5:58pm | IP Logged |
songlines wrote:
As far as the French DVDs go, I take it there are no French
language captions (for the hearing impaired) available to help you? Here in Canada,
that's often an option: French soundtrack, and French captions. |
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French soundtrack and French captions are both pretty common in the US, but I often
find them a bit frustrating: The captions almost never match the audio, and the voice
acting varies tremendously in quality. To give a random example, season 1 of Babylon
5 has excellent French captions and a painfully bad French soundtrack, and there's
almost no relation between the two.
So I'm trying to find amusing French movies with French captions. I'm not really
looking for quality French cinema—which I enjoy best in small doses—but rather
reasonably intelligent action movies. I do like Amélie, but given the choice,
I'd just as soon watch Bon Cop, Bad Cop. :-)
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emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5541 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map
| Message 18 of 1317 01 March 2012 at 8:34pm | IP Logged |
During lunch, I read two stories from immigrants, an excellent bande
designée about the immigrant experience in France.
The book
A review
One story was about a former African politician who now works nights in a French hotel,
struggling to master the language at age 55. The other was about a young Muslim girl
who loved books, and who discovered an entire world outside of her conservative family.
I love to find good books, ones which surprise and delight me. The classics are often
wonderful, but there are countless other books hiding (sometimes in plain sight),
waiting to be read. Learning French has opened up a world of cool new books, and I'm
filled with a sudden, happy greed at the possibilities.
Edited by emk on 01 March 2012 at 8:36pm
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akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5417 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh
| Message 19 of 1317 01 March 2012 at 9:07pm | IP Logged |
emk wrote:
Je dois écrire plus en français ici. C'est plus difficile
pour moi à écrire en français que pour moi à parler. Je ne suis pas
encore doué avec la dictée! Mais si je voulais passer l'examen pour niveau
B1, je dois apprendre comment épeler.
Vous pouvez me corriger, si vous voulez!
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Deux petites suggestions :
- "C'est plus difficile pour moi d'écrire en français que de parler". Il n'y a pas besoin de répéter "pour moi".
- "si je voulais..., je devrais..." ou bien "si je veux..., je dois..." selon que tu envisages vraiment de le passer (je veux/je dois) ou si ce n'est qu'une hypothèse (si je voulais/je devrais).
J'aime beaucoup Jules Verne également et je te souhaite de lire beaucoup de ses livres.
Bravo pour ta motivation et bon courage pour la suite !
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emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5541 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map
| Message 20 of 1317 01 March 2012 at 10:57pm | IP Logged |
akkadboy wrote:
- "C'est plus difficile pour moi d'écrire en français que
de parler". Il n'y a pas besoin de répéter "pour moi". |
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Merci pour ton conseil! Serait-il mieux que j'écrive:
Quote:
Il est plus difficile pour moi d'écrire en français que de
parler. |
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Je pense que les prépositions françaises sont aussi difficiles que les prépositions
anglaises. :-)
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akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5417 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh
| Message 21 of 1317 01 March 2012 at 11:07pm | IP Logged |
:-)
Je pense que j'utiliserais "C'est plus difficile pour moi de" et "Il m'est plus difficile de", la deuxième formulation étant d'un registre plus soutenu que la première.
"Il est plus difficile pour moi de" ne me vient pas naturellement mais je ne saurais pas dire pourquoi...
Edited by akkadboy on 01 March 2012 at 11:09pm
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emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5541 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map
| Message 22 of 1317 02 March 2012 at 12:07am | IP Logged |
Je ne vais pas m'inquiéter excessivement à propos le registre soutenu quand j'étudie pour
le niveau B1. ;-) Mais merci pour ton conseil; c'est très utile pour moi, et je suis très
intéressé par les "petites" règles de grammaire.
Pour anglais, j'ai The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, qui est écrit
par des linguists, est qui a 1,800 pages des règles difficiles à expliquer. Oui, je suis
parfois une peau bizarre!
Edited by emk on 02 March 2012 at 12:10am
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emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5541 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map
| Message 23 of 1317 03 March 2012 at 4:15am | IP Logged |
Things have been busy this week, and I'm still only 66% of the way through Le Tour
du Monde. But I hope to read more this weekend.
At lunch today, I tried some L/R with Harry potter à l'ecole des sorciers. I
already had the French book and an unabridged recording, and I bought an English copy
of the book at a used bookstore.
So far, I can understand about 90% of the written French, and fragments of the audio.
After a few passes, I can understand nearly all the text and about 80% of the audio.
It's a pretty exhausting exercise—the voice actor is fast and idiomatic, and he often
moves faster than I can read.
I haven't done any L/R since I finished Assimil 3 years ago. It feels like a powerful
technique—I'm essentially tricking my brain into understanding input well beyond its
current level.
What techniques work well for people at this stage? I'm prepared to put in lots of
study time, but I'd like to use it effectively.
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emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5541 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map
| Message 24 of 1317 03 March 2012 at 8:19pm | IP Logged |
75% of the way through Le Tour du Monde (which still contains quite a few hard
passages), and several more pages of intensive L/R with Harry Potter. Conversation is
going really well today—I'm speaking quickly, and I'm activating some passive
knowledge.
Once I make it through a couple of chapters of Harry Potter, I'll have some great
material to listen to in the car. It's amazing how much more sense the audio makes
after reading it in French, checking hard sentences against the English, looking up a
few words, and listening to it several times.
Oh, and the other two DELF B1 books finally arrived. Here's what I now have:
* Préparation à l'examen du DELF B1 from Hachette
* DELF B1: 200 activités from CLE International
* DELF scholaire: Niveau B1 from Didier
The last is actually for the student-level exam, which I'm obviously not eligible to
take. Oh, well. Maybe I can use it for some review or something.
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