Ok and Learning French now...
Totally at random I decided to start learning French on Saturday.
I started with the Memrise Beginner French course and an Anki deck with top 6k French words in sentences.
We'll see how this all goes. To be honest this is far more intimidating to me than learning Japanese. With Japanese I started from nothing and I had no firm deadline in mind. With French, I technically took it in school over several years. And, I want to be keep up with my daughter when she starts school. It is much more immersive here, even in the English language schools.
Also, while the Memrise stuff starts fairly basically, the deck is throwing me into the deep end. The target words aren't highlighted or singled out. I just get a whole sentence thrown at me in what sounds like a high speed female synthesized voice. I'm going to give it a week or so with that deck. I'll probably kick it and stick with something like Memrise or DuoLingo for the early stages of French learning.
There are two things to keep in mind here; I haven't stopped or even slowed my Japanese learning and I still want to keep the amount of time I'm spending on this manageable.
If those weren't factors here, I'd probably stick with the super hard deck regardless of the struggles. I'm reasonably confident that the fact that it is bat shit crazy hard for me would benefit me if I could devote it the time. But, devoting the time here means taking each sentence, understanding every word and conjugation and their pronunciation before I mark the card complete. It might also means adding another card front/back to the deck where I'm presented the English and need to translate it to the French.
Now, as far as timelines go... I'm not really under a terrible threat. Cara doesn't start school until September, at which point she'll be in JK. She isn't exactly going to be getting a ton of exposure in advanced French.
I'm probably fine to start with something like DuoLingo to build up my confidence and basic vocab and grammar skills. But, there IS a timeline of sorts. Eventually Cara WILL start learning more and more French. And, my goal is to be able to keep up, if not stay ahead of her. The long term goal is some level of comfort in talking with my brother's wife and kids in French. They live in Quebec and it is their first language. Again, not aiming for any crazy level of fluency here. I'd just like to conversational with a reasonably vocabulary.
I started with the Memrise Beginner French course and an Anki deck with top 6k French words in sentences.
We'll see how this all goes. To be honest this is far more intimidating to me than learning Japanese. With Japanese I started from nothing and I had no firm deadline in mind. With French, I technically took it in school over several years. And, I want to be keep up with my daughter when she starts school. It is much more immersive here, even in the English language schools.
Also, while the Memrise stuff starts fairly basically, the deck is throwing me into the deep end. The target words aren't highlighted or singled out. I just get a whole sentence thrown at me in what sounds like a high speed female synthesized voice. I'm going to give it a week or so with that deck. I'll probably kick it and stick with something like Memrise or DuoLingo for the early stages of French learning.
There are two things to keep in mind here; I haven't stopped or even slowed my Japanese learning and I still want to keep the amount of time I'm spending on this manageable.
If those weren't factors here, I'd probably stick with the super hard deck regardless of the struggles. I'm reasonably confident that the fact that it is bat shit crazy hard for me would benefit me if I could devote it the time. But, devoting the time here means taking each sentence, understanding every word and conjugation and their pronunciation before I mark the card complete. It might also means adding another card front/back to the deck where I'm presented the English and need to translate it to the French.
Now, as far as timelines go... I'm not really under a terrible threat. Cara doesn't start school until September, at which point she'll be in JK. She isn't exactly going to be getting a ton of exposure in advanced French.
I'm probably fine to start with something like DuoLingo to build up my confidence and basic vocab and grammar skills. But, there IS a timeline of sorts. Eventually Cara WILL start learning more and more French. And, my goal is to be able to keep up, if not stay ahead of her. The long term goal is some level of comfort in talking with my brother's wife and kids in French. They live in Quebec and it is their first language. Again, not aiming for any crazy level of fluency here. I'd just like to conversational with a reasonably vocabulary.
Comments
Post a Comment