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lorinth
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Belgium
Joined 4283 days ago

443 posts - 581 votes 
Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin
Studies: Mandarin, Finnish

 
 Message 593 of 1317
06 June 2013 at 8:00pm | IP Logged 
Quote:
And this brings me to my final observation for today: If I want to get better at
something, it helps if I actually do that specific thing.


What you say may sound like a truism but it is, in fact, one of the most useful piece
of advice you could give. On another forum about Chinese, a very insightful member
called imron once said practically the same thing:

Quote:
If you would like to be able to read a newspaper and listen to the news [in
Chinese], here is what you have to do:

1) Read newspapers.
2) Listen to the news.


As we say in French: les grands esprits se rencontrent!
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
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 594 of 1317
07 June 2013 at 1:16pm | IP Logged 
lorinth wrote:
What you say may sound like a truism but it is, in fact, one of the most useful piece
of advice you could give.

The more I learn, the more my advice is starting to sound really obvious. :-) For example: The only way to get good at a language is to see and hear all the important things so often that you get used to them. Input isn't going to do you much good unless you understand at least some of it, somehow, even if it's only because of pantomime. To draw, you need to learn to see what's really there, not what you think you see—and to learn a language, you need to hear what's really there, not what your brain fills in. Brute force memorization of stuff out of context is horrible, so it helps to have lots of interesting context. In the end, it all probably comes down to time you spend wrestling with and enjoying the language.

Khatzumoto has succumbed to an even more extreme case of the truism disease: He's now saying things like, "You’re either touching Japanese or you’re not. If you are, you’re winning." As far as I can tell, he's right.

SensCritique

I'm not sure whether this message got through the first time, so let me jump up and wave my arms to get everyone's attention. Here:

"Oh, wow! Hey everybody! Look over here. SensCritique is, like, totally awesome!"

Things to check out:

My list of BD recommendations for students of French (in progress)
"Best of" lists for many kinds of BDs
My profile (to follow my recommendations, sign up and use "Ajouter comme éclaireur")
The media wish list I built in two hours of browsing



This is way more effective than browsing around Amazon, and for those of you who want to talk about books and movies intelligently in French, the review database will be an incredibly useful source of vocabulary. I plan to post some of my reviews on lang-8, too.
2 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
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 595 of 1317
14 June 2013 at 7:32pm | IP Logged 
Last Friday's lesson with my tutor was a bit of a washout, thanks to excessive fatigue, but this week rocked. We went really in-depth on a number of subjects:

Quote:
Landing page design
- Describe the service offered. (It's obvious, but people forget it all the time.)
- Make a clear call to action, e.g., "Sign up for your free lesson today".
- Testimonials.
- Why being too professional-looking isn't always a good thing.
- Long form vs. short form sales copy.
- Running experiments vs. going with the "highest paid person's opinion".
- Why a tutor wouldn't have enough traffic to run experiments.
- Freebies.
- Discussion of what three language tutors are doing right with their landing pages.

Other subjects mentioned in passing
- Domain names
- WordPress
- Inexpensive site themes at themeforest


I continue to rely heavily on my coping strategy of introducing technical jargon in English and then explaining it in simple French. In a lot of cases, neither me, nor my tutor, nor Wikipedia have the slightest idea what the appropriate French word might be. (Can anyone translate "long-form sales letter" to the appropriate French copywriting jargon? Thank you!)

When my tutor works with me, she types notes into a Google Doc. These include corrections, new vocabulary and various suggestions. Red text indicates that something was incorrect:

Quote:
Things I already knew, but messed up anyway

un personnage VS un caractère
la qualité
c’est facile d’oublier
ça a l’air d’être des tuteurs assez agréables
un outil VS utile

Things which were more-or-less new to me

après un peu de temps
un changement radical
la preuve sociale
la foule attire la foule
un témoignage (in the sense of "testimonial" for a product)
dans d’une manière
un service
un outil d’accroche
le bénéfice immédiat
un panneau VS un signe
ce n’est pas une matière question d’avis
le nombre de personnes qui prennent font une action
une ressource
12 dollars par année an
quelqu’un qui s’intéresse au marché
c’est biaisé
un commercial
faire prendre une décision
un essai gratuit ("free trial")
ces ventes sont tombées ont chuté de 40%
des gens ordinaires

I find this whole role-playing exercise to be enormously useful. I'm explaining complicated ideas quite fluently, with relatively little preparation. And my tutor is clearly thinking seriously about our discussions even when she's off the clock, which hopefully means I'm providing actual value!

Having these "consulting" conversations in French is a real eye-opener. Sure, my language skills put me at a huge disadvantage. But I also have access to an English-language knowledge base that's never really been popularized in French. It's really weird when Linguee, WordReference and Wikipedia return absolutely no results for an important bit of jargon. I'm sure most of this knowledge exists somewhere in French, but it's sure not easy to find.

Here's a nice essay on what it takes to be a copywriter in French. This would be a good place to start digging for the terminology.
1 person has voted this message useful



Swift
Senior Member
Ireland
Joined 4617 days ago

137 posts - 191 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French, Russian

 
 Message 596 of 1317
14 June 2013 at 8:49pm | IP Logged 
emk... your entries in this language learning log are amazing. They are full of detail,
but at the same time really interesting. Definitely taking some mental notes for when I
get my own language log going again in a few weeks ;) I remember reading this thread a
lot last summer when I was more active.      

Edited by Swift on 14 June 2013 at 8:49pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5175 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 597 of 1317
14 June 2013 at 9:15pm | IP Logged 
emk, I don't know if I told you about this, but I've been through the textbook "French for Marketing", which is fairly comprehensive, even though it is a bit dated. Maybe there is some insight for your role-playing session?
3 persons have voted this message useful



lorinth
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Belgium
Joined 4283 days ago

443 posts - 581 votes 
Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin
Studies: Mandarin, Finnish

 
 Message 598 of 1317
14 June 2013 at 9:31pm | IP Logged 
Salut emk, d'après ton profil et tes choix sur senscritique, je vois que tu es fan de s-
f. As-tu déjà essayé René Barjavel? Michel Demuth (le cycle "Les Galaxiales" a été mon
livre de chevet pendant longtemps...)? En BD "Valérian", de la s-f des années 70? Anki
Bilal (La Trilogie Nikopol par exemple)?

(For those who don't read French: that's just a few tips for those who want to read
sci-fi in French
)
2 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
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 599 of 1317
15 June 2013 at 6:04am | IP Logged 
Swift: Thank you! I'm really looking forward to your next log.

Expugnator: That's a really great find, especially for ~$40. Does it include any information on advertising, as opposed to marketing?

lorinth: Merci pour la liste ! Tous ces livres m'intéressent, et je les ai ajoutés à ma liste d'achats sur SensCritique. Oui, ça fait beaucoup. :-) Mais il me faut toujours un tas de livres intéressants en français. Sinon, c'est trop facile de trouver un livre en anglais.

Edited by emk on 15 June 2013 at 6:35am

1 person has voted this message useful



Expugnator
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Brazil
Joined 5175 days ago

3335 posts - 4349 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento
Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian

 
 Message 600 of 1317
15 June 2013 at 1:05pm | IP Logged 
emk wrote:


Expugnator: That's a really great find, especially for ~$40. Does it include any information on advertising, as
opposed to marketing?.


Not only that, but also on press, distribution, it is quite extensive on both adminstration and communication
concepts.


2 persons have voted this message useful



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