#i understand this site mainly consists on monolingual English speakers | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

rigelmejo · 5 years ago

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i really do mean this, if you’re a native english speaker and you’re the type to try being a polyglot, or you just would like to learn multiple languages, and ESPECIALLY if French is a language you want to learn:

it really IS one of the easier ‘commonly studied’ languages for a native english speaker to learn. (Theoretically, Spanish is too, so you may consider that instead if it’s the language you really want to learn).

A couple years ago, I took a french class in college. I took it because in high school I’d tried to take classes and/or study the following languages independently: Spanish (1 class, learned nothing), German (2 years of classes, learned some verbs and standard conjugations, basically learned A1 kind of stuff), Chinese (1 year learning the basics and the teacher was great but I promptly forgot almost all of it), Japanese (independent study, I learned the kana and some simple words). I basically learned nothing significant - not enough to USE any of the languages in the ways I wanted to even minimally use them. I figured I was bad at learning languages.

So in college, I picked a french class to explore 2 things: 1. To see if I could even learn a language at all, by trying again with a new language I had absolutely zero experience with. 2. Because I liked the idea of studying languages, and wanted to see if I got to choose to study it on purpose if I’d do better (compared to many college classes I was required to take and hated, compared to language classes being required therefore ‘disliked’ by me in high school).

So mainly, I picked French because I had no experience studying it and thought it would be a good test of if I could learn anything substantial. I had some reasons for learning French, but none really motivated me: I figured since I live by Canada French might be useful, I figured if I ever work for the UN I could use French as one of my languages for it. So basically, the usual ‘not passionate’ reasons.

Now I do actually think passion helped me to actually learn French. So I encourage you, whatever language you are studying, to find something in that language or to do with that language that drives you and makes you passionately CARE. For me, I found a couple books. I was in a thrift store, and found 2 French graded readers from the 1930s. One was a French history book, and I found it fascinating that it was how French people from the 1930s viewed their culture and history. The other book contained letters from a 19 year old french schoolteacher as her life was more and more effected by world war 2 ramping up and then eventually occurring and changing her life. I am very interested in history, and I am even MORE personally interested in how specific people view their positions within their own perspectives. Because every person’s perspective is different - how a French person from the 1930s views their country is different than how a French person in 2020 probably would, and how we see WW2 is very different than that 19 year old woman in France in the 1930s saw it starting in her own world.

She wrote that she was shocked and impressed America had elected its first congresswoman, when in France women had no voting rights yet - and those small lines changed my whole view of what her life must’ve been like! Along with just... the idea this girl younger than me, a 19 year old, was a teacher of a classroom writing to another girl teacher at University of Michigan! For some people these details might be boring, but to me they reveal so much about what life might have been seen as back then, in those places in those perspectives. Those books are what made me WANT to learn french, CARE about learning French, get MOTIVATED to learn. For me, wanting to read French perspectives in their own language, directly from the source, is what made me care about French. I definitely think if you are studying a language (or probably anything), you will have an easier time if you can find something to care about and motivate you to study and improve. As a bonus, this interest driving your passion can help you come up with tangible actual goals you wish to accomplish.

For example, the goal of ‘I want to be fluent in French/German/whatever’ is fine. But how do you test that? With a CEFR test? I hope so, or something like that, or else you might struggle to come up with a real goal to aim toward. If you’re learning for a test, like a certificate that will allow you to work in a certain country - well that’s a real goal to envision and that you can plan for, and that goal can motivate you. But if it’s just ‘learn to C1 level fluency’ but you don’t ever plan anything measurable or tangible, how will you know you’re making progress? Get specific. If your goal is ‘fluency’ and it’s not for a test/certificate, then what do you want to DO with fluency? Talk to native speakers? Read books? Write articles in the language for a company? Translate? Travel to a location and speak with the locals about their city and culture? Decide. Decide what you want to do with that language. That’s where you’ll find your passion. That’s also where you’ll be able to figure out what real goals you’re aiming for.

For me, the real goal was “I want to read these books.” That allowed me to realize I needed plans to improve my reading ability - plans to learn words, study grammar, learn the most common words, etc. And allowed me to study according to my needs for my goals. I really suggest finding your passion, then making goals and study plans from there.

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Okay, back to: why French is a good language to try learning, if you planned to study it anyway, and aren’t sure how to learn a language (at least in my experience).

French REALLY IS a ton like english. I can’t stress that enough. It has a huge number of cognates and that’s really the biggest reason French is approachable. So many words, at least written, look so similar to english you can guess them. The grammar is a bit different, but it is generally pretty regular so if you study it then it will be manageable. The grammar is also, while a bit different, very understandable from an english native perspective. Even when it’s different, it usually makes sense to a native english speaker. And - in reverse - if you speak French and mess up and use English grammar patterns instead of the correct french ones, often you’ll still at least be understood. The pronunciation is also quite regular and once you get used to it, sounding out new words is pretty easy (I had to learn some Russian at one point in my life and... French pronunciation/listening is such a cakewalk compared to Russian...)

When studying a language, you need a study plan. If its your first time making one, you’ll likely run into a lot of suggestions on the ‘best approach’ and a lot of different methods you can use. Look into them, try them out, and when you find what works for you, be CONSISTENT and stick with it. French is a nice language to do this experimenting on study approaches, because improvement is generally quite rapid when you find an approach that works for you. (Compared to a language very different from English - for example, it took me 2-3 months to start reading French articles online and French books and at least comprehending short sentences and skimming for some main points in simple texts like news articles/informational books. Japanese, it took me 6 months to be able to look at titles and short tweets and do the same thing, and 1 year to be able to look at simple comics aimed for preteens-teens and be able to skim those comics for main ideas - I still can’t approach an actual news article in japanese!). So a language like French, or anything more similar to English, is going to allow you to see if your study plan is working FASTER. Especially if it’s your first time trying to learn a language.

I have found, that a lot of the techniques I use to study Japanese and Chinese, I actually used successfully with French first. So now, even though my progress is much slower when I use them for Japanese and Chinese, I already know that I DO know how to do those study approaches and I DO know they give me progress over time.

One technique is to ‘switch to monolingual engagement with a language as soon as possible.’ With Japanese or Chinese, as you can imagine, it takes longer to attempt to do this because learning to read in these languages is difficult. With French? What I had to do to make this leap was: learn basic past/present/future tense (just look up “French Grammar Guide” on google and read a free one), look up a 500 most common word list (also easy to find on google), study those for a few months. Once I did that, I could start reading French materials and just occasionally looking up new words that kept appearing and confusing me. At that point, I still occasionally relied on bilingual dictionaries and grammar books. So at about month 6, I looked up French grammar guides IN FRENCH. Then I just started reading them, and that’s how I learned a lot of my more advanced grammar in French. At that point, I just continued reading french/watching french, studying French grammar in French. I still occassionally use bilingual word lookups for frustrating new unfamiliar words, but mostly I’m so lazy I prefer to guess the meaning from the context of the sentences. And if I wanted to, I know enough words to just switch to a monolingual dictionary. After about 1 year, I got comfortable enough that I can navigate french sites, french wikipedia, french books, relatively fine. I’ve had my Google account set to French since probably month 3, and so all my computers and devices always give french sites/results first, french wikipedia, french definitions, so I just got more comfortable with french over time. If I had to compare it to my english, my French now at about 2 years (only the first year actively ‘studying’ in the sense of reading vocab lists and grammar guides), is a reading level around where I was at age 12-13. Enough that I can pick up whatever and read it, its just that more complicated reading material may be a bit of a slog (like adult level fictional novels). I started practicing from month 2-3 with instructive non-fiction books, so my reading level for history books and linguistic/science books in French is a bit higher. Basically, it took me 2 years to get to where I wanted to be in French (which is incredible to me!). And when I did it, part of my study plan ended up resembling the method of ‘switching to monolingual engagement of the language’ quite a lot. My experience studying french showed me that, yes, it does work. And its very helpful for me as a study method, since I learn most happily when learning from monolingual context in the media I’m consuming.

I am well aware of where I fall short in French - listening (and pronunciation as a result of that), and writing. I can write, but the active vocabulary I can recall is very low since I haven’t spoken/written in a while and it takes a few hours of me ‘warming up’ to remember how to say the words I can read. I can write, but the grammar I can write is much WORSE than what I can read, since I didn’t do grammar drills and NEED TO eventually when improving my writing becomes a goal. Reading was always the goal, so reading is the main thing I studied for. I can text/write with french speakers, but I’m not grammatically smooth. My listening is weak, because again - I rarely practiced, it was not a goal of mine. I didn’t care about French videos or audio content, or speaking to french speakers. If that’s a goal I desire, I’ll study for it and work on those areas.

If using any kinds of study methods, I do think French is similar enough to English, that you will notice in a reasonable amount of time if your method is working for you and giving you progress. If it is, be consistent. There’s good weeks, and bad weeks where you’ll feel lost and incompetent.

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When studying Japanese I noticed, on a much longer timeline, similar progress being made from similar methods I used. Japanese had some unique challenges for me - the biggest simply being that I have to work harder to memorize new words since they’re not cognates to english like much of French’s vocabulary is. But my methods do work for me. So if you plan to study multiple languages, from my experience... French is definitely a good ‘testing waters.’

I had to crash learn some Russian to talk to some Russian people in my life for a while, and read Russian texts etc. And the study methods and goal setting skills I picked up when studying French helped me with that too.

My basic plan was:

1. Figure out your specific goals, plan accordingly. If you don’t care about learning certain areas within speaking, listening, reading, writing - then don’t make them the priority. If you do consider some or all of these areas priorities, then make specific plans for studying each area. 2. My goals have generally always included being able to read. So the following has always helped greatly:

look up the 300-1000 most common words in the language. These are the most important vocabulary to focus on learning first. The tumblr 300 word list, and the 625 word list floating around online, are my favorite starting places. Some nice lists on Memrise of common words are also good starting places. I can learn other additional words I look up, but these common words will help me improve fastest so they’re my priority.

look up “Language X Grammar Guide.” There are free ones for pretty much any language. Find one for the language I’m studying, and focus on the basic grammar points first - specifically verb and adjective conjugations, particles if the language has any (or that thing Russian has going on etc), genders, and simple ways the language does past/present/future tense. Basically, try to read the basic grammar points first, then also skim or read over more complicated grammar points as desired just to get an overview of things I’ll eventually want to notice later. My goal here is to get used to the patterns of the language, so when I look at sentences FULL of unknown words, I can at least try to identify which words are verbs/adjectives/nouns and other kinds of words that help explain what’s going on (like/the/and/or/for/to/with/’s). The quicker I can recognize at least the basics of what’s going on in sentences, the quicker I can figure out where words end in languages with no spaces between words. The quicker I can figure out which words are vital to the understanding of some sentences (if you know which words are nouns, and are reading News, then locating verbs helps next - to figure out whats Happening to the nouns). Knowing all this helps me prioritize which words I’ll NEED to look up when I’m trying to understand native content without me looking up every single word. Also, if writing/speaking is one of my goals, it helps me quickly learn some BASIC ways to express myself (simple past/present/future tense so I can communicate any idea basically with the help of a dictionary if i need to use a new word).

After that, make engaging with native content regularly a priority. If I want to learn to read, then make myself try to read native content as practice, and use graded readers as stepping stones etc. If listening is a priority, engage with listening materials regularly (and shadow what I hear, if I want to practice pronunciation). Basically - whatever your eventual usage goal is, regularly attempt to do it NOW (even though you aren’t fully capable yet). You will learn a little more each time, and improve specifically in that area you’re aiming to be able to eventually do. And you will have a nice gauge on your progress and what areas you’re falling short and need to adjust your study plan for. With French - from months 2-3 I started reading native content. It was a SLOG to read news articles and wikipedia. Eventually that was okay, but it was still a SLOG to read my own graded readers! Eventually I got decent, but it was still a SLOG to read french fanfictions! Eventually, that got decent, but it was still a SLOG to read french fiction novels for adults. Etc. I improved, but I didn’t start out perfectly able to do it - and I didn’t WAIT until I could do it, to start TRYING to do it. A lot of my improvement in reading... came from me practicing reading, looking up words over time until I learned them, until I got good enough to learn words from context, and still SLOGGING. But I wanted to read, so I kept trying to do it. I improved. It works that way with listening too, etc.

Finally, figure out what areas are not progressing toward my goal, and come up with additional study plans for those specific areas. If I need more grammar help or to do writing drills to improve my writing, maybe I need a textbook. If I want to speak to native speakers, maybe I need to find a group/people to speak to. If my listening comprehension is atrocious but its a GOAL, maybe I need to add listening study materials like podcasts/audio lessons/LISTEN to all new words when I look them up and add audio to my study flashcards. If I need to learn more words, maybe its time for me to update the vocabulary lists I’m using, maybe use SRS flashcards, Memrise, etc.

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A lot of that study plan I came up with for French, I ended up using when I started learning Chinese. And overall, it’s been a huge help. It’s still mostly what I stuck to. Hanzi and lack of cognates, mean that I do a lot more vocabulary flashcard grinding in the ‘knowing absolutely zero words’ stage. But the overall study plan is the same.

One thing I DID start doing for chinese, that I didn’t do before for other languages, was LISTENING from day one. I listened to Chinese shows, chinese youtube videos, chinese songs, and when I looked up most new words I looked up audio too. It wasn’t a goal for French so I don’t care too much that I never did it. But I can definitely say it helped me learn Chinese a lot EASIER than if I wasn’t doing it. I have a much better sense of listening to chinese and guessing the spelling, than I do for French. I have a much better ability to hear a word, and recognize it later when reading. Vice versa, in Chinese I’m much better at only reading a word and guessing its pronunciation based on pinyin, and it being close enough that when i HEAR a new word later I recognize it as one I’ve already read. These are simple skills but they’re super underdeveloped in my French - I struggle to do all these things in French. Now, my Chinese tone production is kind of shit - mostly because I need to do more tone drills, need to practice FULL SENTENCES more. But at least I can listen/read and link those two things in my head, and recognize them. I am certain it’s because I actively listened to Chinese from day 1 of learning, and kept doing so.

I also think, at least with chinese, the chinese subtitles that chinese content tends to have is immensely helpful. Seeing chinese subtitles especially in the early stages of study, helped me link the new sounds and words to the characters. And since I studied a grammar guide early on, seeing the chinese subtitles helps me make out the separation of words I hear, and helps me figure out which words I’m hearing are adjectives/nouns/verbs/grammar constructions etc. And, because I’m lazy, I’ll say that the DUAL english/chinese subtitles also helped me a fair bit. Again, because they helped me link the chinese sounds to the characters to the english words. When I knew no words, to even now that I know 1000+ solidly, they help me to learn new words constantly. In the very beginning, they helped a lot with me learning words/phrases that mean a few different things/have different nuance than in english. Like ‘ba le’ ‘suan le’ ‘xiang’ ‘kankan’ ‘meishi’ ‘meiguanshi’ ‘danxin’ ‘ni fangxin’ ‘bubi’ ‘xiaoxin’ ‘xing le’ ‘mingbai’ ‘dong’... just, so many super common words that have a few different english translations depending on the context of a situation and the translator’s choices.

If I go back to French and try to improve my listening comprehension, I’ll definitely be doing all these methods with French.

#rant #language learning

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