Fictitious Croissants

La Campagne Française

La Stratégie

It's time that I begin my French studies in earnest. I will use this post to chart my progress with the French language. It should be rather exciting to see the details and patterns of language acquisition that emerge as I go about my studies; moreover what I note down will duly serve its duty to motivate (or reprimand) me should complacence or laziness start kicking in.

My current aims are as such:

1) By the end of September 2010:

a. Acquire a vocabulary of at least 3000 words (i.e. words that aren't merely English equivalents, like vaisselle, ouvrir, cheval, brouillard, feuilleter, etc);
b. Import all of the The Ultimate French Verb - Review and Practice's exercises and answers into Anki, and begin drilling through the various conjugation patterns.
c. Understand French verb conjugations (at least broadly).

2) By November 2010:

a. Complete both The Ultimate French Verb - Review and Practice and French Grammar Drills, and be in the self-correcting phrase with Advanced French Grammar;
b. Go through enough verb conjugation exercises to be able to conjugate most verbs with ease, if not in speech, then at least in writing.
c. Know all French words listed by Glossaria in Smart.fm, at least passively.

3) By December 2010:

a. Understand spoken French (i.e. formal and colloquial speech -- ultra-slang is for much, much later);
b. Shadow a number of texts;
c. Complete FSI French, French in Action, and Assimil (the 1940 "French Without Toil" series), and the podcast series.

4) By January 2011:

a. Acquire a good 'standard' Parisian accent;
b. Be able to write/type grammatically-correct sentences and short essays with 'relative' ease.

5) By the end of 2011:

a. Be 'fluent' enough to be able to enjoy literature and engage in substantive conversations that go beyond mere pleasantries.
b. Pass a recognized French proficiency test.
c. 'Reach' C1 (or at least B2) according to the CEFR levels.

I do realize that my aims aren't very modest, but bear with me on this one.

Still, hopefully, in one year's time I'll be able to look back at this post and laugh in amazement as to how insane I was to attempt all of the above and succeed. (Or, the alternate and highly plausible ending: I grimace at how I had failed so horribly and how pathetic I was to even consider the above accomplishments. )

I must mention this though: I know what I'm doing. (Well, somewhat.) I've been learning Japanese for a while now, and I'm guided by the successes and failures that I've endured through it. French may be something new to me, but many of the linguistic concepts it presents certainly aren't, and it's not as if I'm pushing a cart up the hill for the first time. (i.e. This time around, I've equipped my cart with a motor engine.)

La Chronologie

Note: Some of the following days are unfilled or empty, because I'm mostly likely focusing on Japanese that day. (Nevertheless I try to put at least an hour or so in French every day.)

September 5, 2010.
- Bought these four books: French Grammar Drills, The Ultimate French Verb - Review and Practice ("UFVRP"), Advanced French Grammar, and Collins-Robert French Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged. Will focus on completing UFVRP first.

September 6, 2010.
- Finished chapter 1 of UFVRP; learned sentence structures that use the present tense of regular verbs, and disjunctive pronouns.

September 7, 2010.
- Finished chapter 2 of UFVRP; learned about irregular verbs and negative sentences. Memorized words: mostly verbs.

September 8, 2010.
- Memorized words: climate, seasons, passing of time, and mostly verbs.

September 9, 2010.
- Memorized words: clothes and everyday items.
- Learned French numerals.

September 10, 2010.
- Finished chapter 3 of UFVRP; learned further about irregular verbs, sentence structures that combine verbs with infinitives, and how to form questions. Memorized words: the human anatomy, and basic adjectives.

September 11, 2010.
- Finished chapter 4 of UFVRP; learned about imperatives, and the somewhat difficult topic of sentence structures that utilize indirect objects, direct object pronouns, indirect object pronouns, and object pronouns that go with imperatives.

September 12, 2010.
- Finished chapter 5 of UFVRP; learned about the passé composé, a form of past tense in the French language. Very challenging topic, because of the rule of making verbs agree with gender and number; had to flick back through the pages to re-read explanations, and had to redo the exercises just as many times. Also learned how the French passive voice works.
- Memorized words: mostly verbs.

September 13, 2010.
- Finished chapter 6-10 of UFVRP; learned about imperfect tenses (in comparison with the passé composé), reflexive verbs, double object pronouns, future and conditional (probable and contrary-to-fact) tenses, cleft sentences, future perfect and conditional perfect tenses, and subjunctives (what they are, and how they're used). Went through the grammar explanations in detail, but skimped on the exercises for now as I intend to scrutinize the exercises properly only once I've completed the book.
- Went online, read explanations on the various moods (indicative, subjunctive, imperative, etc), and searched for verb conjugation exercises.

September 14, 2010.
- Finished reading all of The Ultimate French Verb - Review and Practice!
Finished chapter 11 and 12 of UFVRP; learned more about subjunctives, complex/compound sentences, present participles, infinitives and their various uses, and the literary tenses (passé simple, imperfect subjunctive, pluperfect subjunctive). I now have a fairly broad understanding of the French verb conjugation system, but I still have to do tons of grammar exercises and lexical drills before I truly understand what I've learned.
- Also ran google searches for grammar terminologies, so that I can better understand explanations of French and English grammar (respectively, and comparatively).
- Copied half of UFVRP's exercises (about a thousand or so sentences) into a spreadsheet; will copy the other half ASAP.

September 15, 2010.
- Copied one chapter of exercises from UFVRP into a spreadsheet.
- Learned how to tell time in French.

September 16, 2010.
- Copied all the remaining chapters of exercises from UFVRP into a spreadsheet. (The short appendix exercises will be copied tomorrow. Copying all these exercises really improved my touch typing skills in French.)
- Studied to the end of Part 2 of French Grammar Drills.

September 17, 2010.
- Completed copying all of The Ultimate French Verb - Review and Practice's exercises into a spreadsheet!
- UFVRP's exercises will be merged with my French deck in Anki, via a 5-fact model (i.e. 'Index', 'French Expression', 'Answer', 'Instructions', 'Notes'). For now I'd like to familiarize myself with identifying and producing conjugations, though much later I'll also make a reverse deck.
- Imported Chapter 1 of UFVRP exercises into Anki.

September 18, 2010.
- Imported Chapter 2-6 of UFVRP exercises into Anki. (Approximately 1,175 exercises.) Trying to get at least 2 or 3 more chapters worth of exercises into Anki by today. (Preferably, it'd be nicer if I could import all of the book's exercises by the night's end, but I've a function to attend.)

September 19, 2010.
- Finished importing all of The Ultimate French Verb - Review and Practice's exercises into Anki!
- Spent about 12 hours today (almost straight) at the PC, going through Excel, Notepad2, Anki and regular expressions, all at the same time. (God bless dual monitors.) I now have 2515 UFVRP cards, and I will begin drilling through the exercises starting from tomorrow.
- Listened to half of Unit 1 of FSI French Phonology. (About 10 minutes.)

September 20, 2010.
- Completed French Phonology: Chapter 1.
- Watched French in Action up to Episode 10.

September 21, 2010.
- Watched French in Action Episode 10.
- Completed French in Action audio, up to Episode 1.

September 22, 2010.
- Completed French in Action audio, up to half of Episode 2.

September 23, 2010.
- Anki reviews of UFVRP now up to Exercise G, Chapter 1.
- Completed French in Action audio, up to the end of Episode 2.
- Re-watched French in Action episodes 2-5. It surprised me how much I now understand, something like 90% of what was going on, without even having to translate inside my head. (I think the figure bumped up 95% once I did start translating.) Though the dialogues were going on at the natural speed of speech, it didn't feel as fast as it used to be.
- A quick note: I shadow almost everything I hear, and repeat to an almost sacrilegious extent until I arrive at (what I believe is) an exact copy of the shadowed voice, pronunciation and prosody-wise. Also, if the voice is too high-pitched (e.g. if a woman is speaking), I bring my voice down one octave lower while maintaining the relative pitch pattern of the speech.

September 24, 2010.
- Rewatched French in Action, episodes 7-10.
- Watched French in Action, episode 11.

September 25, 2010.
- Watched French in Action, episode 12.
- Completed French in Action audio, up to half of Episode 3.

September 26, 2010.
- Completed French in Action audio, Episode 3 and 4.

September 30, 2010.
- Completed French in Action, episode 13.

October 1, 2010.
- Completed French in Action, episode 14.

October 2 , 2010.
- Completed French in Action audio, episode 5. Listened to the early parts of episode 6 (and was completely floored by the fact that the audio lessons, and even the instructions, will be entirely in French from this episode onwards.)
- Planning to re-do episodes 1-5 of the FIA audio, but with the workbook this time around.
- Completed French in Action, episode 15.

October 4, 2010.
- Cleared pending UFVRP deck reviews.
- Completed French in Action, episode 16.
- Continued French in Action audio, episode 6.

October 5, 2010.
- Did several exercises in UFVRP through grammar drills.
- Watched French in Action, half of episode 17.

October 6-13, 2010.
- Taking a week off to settle my real-life workloads (study + work), and to focus on my Japanese studies. I need to clear up my pending Japanese deck first, then I plan to burn through a few thousand more cards, giving greater focus to listening and speaking -- easily possible thanks to my new iPod Touch.

January 22, 2011.
- What ought to have taken a few weeks took 3 months, but I'm back now, for good. I've gotten my work, my postgraduate studies and my Japanese studies all in line, so that I can now give proper focus to my French. I'm a bit rusty though, and to pick up from where I left would be rather difficult, so I'll instead wade my way back in with something simple first: vocabulary. I'll focus on amassing as much forgotten and new vocabulary as I can in the next few days, (about 2000-3000, both in terms of recognition and production), before I return to my normal grammar/reading/listening studies. After all, I still have to live up to my New Year's resolutions for this year!

July 8-15, 2011.
- Went through French in Action (FIA), textbooks 1-14.
- Started listening to FIA audiobooks.
- Rewatched several FIA videos, this time with increased comprehension due to having read the textbooks.
- Burned through the Anki decks, now learning French vocabulary at an accelerated (but comfortable) pace.
- Weekend plans: Read the FIA textbooks and watch its videos up to Lesson 26.

July 16-18, 2011.
- Went through French in Action (FIA), textbooks 15-17.
- Spent about two hours just for listening with FIA episode 16,
- Tons of new vocabulary via Anki.
- Couldn't go through with the previously-mentioned weekend plans; it was rather impossible, what with the other events that came up. Still planning to proceed with the textbooks as far as I can this week, however.

Labels: French, Journal