A story about "Water Lilies"

Water Lilies

by Céline Sciamma

I just finished viewing Water Lilies. Summary: teenage hormones run amok at the pool.

And the French word of the day is: un collier (necklace).

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tell no one

tell no one
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

I was feeling wiped out from a more than usually difficult work week, so I decided to completely kick back this evening and enjoy a movie. In fact, I wound up renting three. This felt incredibly indulgent, which was just what I needed, psychologically speaking.

I watched the first movie, "Tell No One", this evening, while enjoying a chocolate biscotti, some hot cocoa, and a big bag of popcorn. It's a good suspense/thriller. There are scary goons, thick-witted French cops, a dodgy criminal with a heart of gold, and, of course, Paris. There are some weird plot twists that I didn't always quite get. And there are some very large plot holes, but I didn't mind since I found the movie absorbing. Very entertaining!

relaxing!

This evening, I was feeling enjoyably fatigued after my afternoon hike. Tired enough to feel like kicking back and relaxing in a non-productive way. So I'm settling in to watch a French movie, Qui a tué Bambi?. I've made myself a nice cup of hot cocoa, topped with some delicious tiny marshmallows. I found the marshmallows at Whole Foods. They are branded "Bread and Circus Bakery", and they are soft, fluffy, and far superior to any other marshmallows I've eaten in my lifetime.

Watching a French movie is in keeping with my goal to learn French, so the evening won't be completely unproductive.

A story about "My French Coach"

My French Coach

by Ubisoft

I’ve been using My French Coach for just over a week. In that time, I’ve progressed from “Pre-Schooler” to “Third Grader”.

Overall, I’m still enjoying this and I do believe that I’m learning. However, I have a few complaints about things that begin to stand out after using it for a while.

1) When displaying French nouns, we are not given the gender (le or la). This is important, and I cannot understand why it was left out. I hope they will start including it in future lessons, but I doubt it.

2) It is too easy to progress to the next level; just a few exposures to a new word in a few games and they claim that you have mastered it and can move on. However, I do not feel like I have actually mastered the words in each lesson unless I’ve already seen them before. I’m wondering how helpful this learning tool will be once/if I get to lessons where I don’t know most of the words already… that has just started to happen.

3) So far, the lessons and games are weak in teaching grammar and sentence construction. I want to know more than just a few nouns and verbs, I want to construct sentences.

Up to the current level, I feel like this is a good motivational tool to keep me studying French. It’s like a very entertaining and interactive set of flash cards. I’d never find it interesting to sit down and study a set of flash cards day after day, but "My French Coach" is effectively helping me to do that. I am curious about how the game works as you advance.

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A story about "My French Coach"

My French Coach

by Ubisoft

I’ve been using My French Coach for two days and I’m already up to the rank of “First Grader”. I think I’m progressing so fast because I wasn’t ranked correctly in the first place. I also think it’s too easy to progress. For example, I might be exposed to a word ten times in various games, and then I’m assumed to have “mastered” the word. In fact, that’s not really the case. I may be able to pick the correct translation in a multiple choice quiz, but if I were asked to translate the word without any hints, I might be unable to. And if I did get it right, I might still get the spelling incorrect.

Despite that, I’ve spent at least 4 hours over the last couple of days playing with the gadget. So far as motivation goes, it seems to be working.

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A story about "My French Coach"

My French Coach

by Ubisoft

I got a Nintendo DS for Christmas, along with Ubisoft’s My French Coach.

When initializing, the game tests you to start you at the correct level. I started at level 10, which sounds great! But they give that level a rank of “Pre-Schooler”. Oops!

I didn’t read the manual before starting, but jumped right in. I give the game kudos for how easy it was to start.

The software consists of learning modules and game modules. Mostly, I’ve been playing four games: word search (hunt for French words in a square matrix of letters); a whack-a-mole style game where you bop the critters holding the French word that matches the English word you are hunting; a multiple choice quiz game where you’re given an English word and a set of four French words to match it with; and a similar word match game called “Flash Cards” which isn’t really flash cards. In the Flash Cards game, you are given a French word, sometimes spoken and sometimes written, and then given a choice of four English words with which to match it. So the multiple choice game and the flash card game are similar, but differ in which direction you are translating to/from.

Will I become fluent in French by playing this game? I do not think so. However, I have found that my motivation in studying French is sporadic at best. In contrast, I know that I can obsessively play video games for hours. So much so, that I have stayed away from video games for many years, since I tend to be unable to play them in moderation. And indeed, in the last 24 hours of possessing this game, I’ve played it for about two hours.

My hope is that this will be a good motivational tool, to drive me to pick up my French text books more often. I think the interactivity will help in keeping me interested. Time will tell.

I have to be wary of the temptation to buy a “real” video game module for my new Nintendo DS. One of my nieces was playing MarioKart on her Nintendo, and I asked her to show it to me. It was quite a lot of fun! I can see myself ejecting “My French Coach” in favor of a mindless video game and never coming back to it. Maybe I could play just for a little while…

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Things to do in Val d'Isère

Candy at the market
Originally uploaded by Little duckling.

Since I was sick, I spent more time off-piste then I'd prefer. Fortunately Val d'Isère has some fun alternatives to skiing.

There's a cinema with movies every day of the week. Some of the films have subtitles or are shown in the original English-language version. Of course, we chose to watch purely French films, Je crois que je l'aime and Danse avec lui, to make the most of being in France! It is very entertaining to try to figure out what exactly is going on when there are no subtitles!

Then there's the open-air market on Monday, with sellers purveying traditional food like sausages and cheese, and really scary looking candy. It's fun to poke around there, but it won't distract you for more than an hour or two.

I suppose there are other interesting things to do, but I didn't take advantage of them. In fact, I spent far too much time in the apartment, hacking up my lungs and solving sudoku puzzles. But even that was fun!

French for today

I listened to Radio France's Français facile this evening. Here are some words I recognized:

• le climat - climate
• (une) ville sainte - holy city
• le corail - coral
• l'interdiction de - ban (on)
• acheter - to buy

Français facile has a nice feature: they print their transcripts so you can read along while you listen. I plan to play the broadcast a time or two, concentrating on understanding what I hear, before reading the transcript, in order to develop my French listening skills.

French practice

I've discovered that once I listen to a Radio France broadcast online over my dialup connection at home, I can cut my connection and replay the broadcast as often as I want, provided I keep the media player open. This is great; when listening to French broadcasts it's useful to play certain sections over several times to better understand what is being said.

Here are a few words that I picked up from a broadcast today:

• deuxième - second
• (le) renseignement - information
• les renseignements généraux - police department responsible for political security
• malheureuse affaire - unhappy affair
• ênquete - (police) investigation

I know most of these words and phrases already, but it helps to hear them spoken. "Les renseignements généraux" is a new one for me, and I'm not completely sure what it means still.

Les carottes sont cuites!

 I love that phrase, and I love my new Living Language French 2007 Calendar. I've been getting the calendars for a few years now, and I think that these calendars have contributed to the improvement in my French skills (despite my irregular study habits). I keep the calendar in the bathroom, by the sink, where I can glance at it while brushing my teeth twice a day.

I am going to get busy with some more intense French study, so that I'm ready for my ski trip to France next month! 

Learn French: Goal Two - Les Portes Tordues - Chapter 10

Finished Chapter 10. I got 10/11 correct in the chapter test. The one that got me was “qu’est-ce que c’est”.

I haven't really said what my goal is for Les Portes Tordues. I want to become fluent with all the content in it. The book has 46 chapters, so I've got 36 more to cover. Is it being too ambitious to think I'll get through them all by the end of the year? Possibly. That's more than one chapter per week. But I will aim for that. I'll revise the goal as necessary.

See more progress on: learn french

tag: French

Les Portes Tordues - Chapters 7, 8, 9

French progress: I reviewed chapters 7 through 9 of Les Portes Tordues, listening to the CD and going through the tests. I did pretty well on the tests, great!

I also made progress creating a website with all the tests from Les Portes Tordues. I've entered all the tests up to and including chapter 9 into a MS Access (ew) database, and I've created web pages in php that let me run through all the tests. The scripts need some work, but they're already in pretty good shape.

See more progress on: learn french

Learn French: Goal Two - Le Portes Tordues - tests

This morning I re-took the tests from Chapters 4 – 6. I did ok, up until Chapter 6, where I got almost half wrong (close-but-no-cigar errors).

Also to help in this effort, I am creating a little local web site where I can enter the answers to these chapter tests into a database using web forms. This way, I can practice the tests over and over again more easily. At least, I think it will help.

See more progress on: learn french

tag: french

Learn French: Goal One - words that end in -ie are feminine

French words ending in -ie are feminine. Examples (hopefully I'm getting all of the elisions correct):

• l'anomalie - anomaly
  
• la bonhomie - good-naturedness
  
• la boucherie - butcher's shop, butcher's trade
  
• la boulangerie - bakery shop
  
• la charcuterie - pork butcher's shop, pork products
  
• la fantaisie - whim, fancy, imagination
  
• l'harmonie - harmony (is this an aspirate "h", or not?)
  
• la librairie - bookshop
  
• la magie - magic
  
• la papeterie - stationery store
  
• la pâtisserie - pastry, cake shop
  
• la tapisserie - tapestry, wallpaper
  
• la taquinerie - teasing
  
• la vie - life
  

Learn French: Goal One - words that end in -ette are feminine

There is a rule that words ending in -ette are feminine. These examples were pretty easy to find. Note similar English and French words in several cases!

• la courbette - bow (as in curtsey)
  
• la courgette - zucchini (courgette in the UK)
  
• la chansonnette - little song or ditty
  
• la fillette - little girl
  
• la maisonnette - small house
  
• la maquette - model
  
• la palette - palette
  
• la pailette - sequin or spangle; speck of gold dust; flake (as soap)
  
• la pipette - pipette (dropper)
  
• la pirouette - pirouette
  
• la violette - violet
  

Learn French: Goal One - words that end in -esse are feminine

There is a rule that French words ending in -esse are feminine.

• la vitesse - speed
  
• la finesse - fineness, slenderness, shrewdness, or subtlety
  
• la largesse - generosity, or gift
  
• la caresse - caress
  
• la mâitresse - teacher (feminine of "master"), also mistress
  

Learn French: Goal Two - Le Portes Tordues

I went through the first three chapter tests of Le Portes Tordues, about 50 questions in total. The questions are all fairly easy, just translating some simple words. I got all but one correct. That's good; means I didn't forget much.

I thought it would be kind of neat to have these questions set up in a digital format. When I started working on the book, I wrote the answers down in the pages of the book (tsk), and now it's hard to avoid looking at my previous answers. I'll have to think about the best system for digitizing the tests.

Now I'm going to try tagging this post using Technorati tags... this is my post about learning french.

Learn French: Goal One - words that end in -isme are masculine

• le catéchisme- catechism
  
• le héröisme - heroism
  
• le naturisme - naturism
  
• le prisme - prism
  
• l'égöisme - egoism
  

In making up this word list, I just tried thinking of English words that end in "-ism". I thought of one English word that did not have a French twin in my dictionary: relativism. I wonder if there is really no similar French word, or if my dictionary is simply lacking.

Learn French: Goal One - words that end in -ier are masculine

First thing I thought of were the months janvier and février. Do those count? I guess so. Mostly I came up with things similar to English words...

• janvier - January
  
• février - February
  
• l'escalier - stairs (this word is plural masc.)
  
• le panier - basket (similar to the English word pannier)
  
• le courrier - mail, letters (plural masc.) (similar to the English courier)
  
• le croupier - croupier, identical to the English.
  

Learn French: Goal One - words that end in -ent are masculine

Most of the words I thought of have similar English spellings and meanings.

• l'élément - element
  
• l'emplacement - site, location
  
• le tempérament - temperament
  
• l'accident - accident