Welcome to Day 8 of the French Revolution, one man's goal to learn as much French as humanly possible in several hours a day for 30 days. If you're just coming to the Revolution, treat yourself to the project's introduction first!
Today I slept in pretty late, then went and tore myself up at the gym. I went out of my way to destroy my arms to the max: after all my regularly scheduled upper body work, I went back to the bench and did high-rep work with low weights, gradually lowering the weight until I finished with a 30-rep set with just the bar (which was really hard by then since my arms were in agony). Now my arms are still quivering and trembling as I gobble down salmon and tuna to get some protein. Damn I love working out :)
RADIO CANADA
I finally got around to checking out Radio Canada for some fresh new French input. Here's the channel I'm currently listening to: Espace Musique. The music seems very ambient and relaxing, if a little oldschool. Best of all, there's lots of French. Worst of all, there's some occasional Christmas music (in English). Of course that's a seasonal thing...
REVIEWING SCHEDULED CARDS
Today I did the cards in this order: first, audio pronunciation cards; next, pronunciation rule cards; finally sentence cards.
Somehow, there were only 2 cards scheduled in the audio pronunciation cards. Probably because of how, if you rate a card "hard" two days in a row without failing it, Anki pushes it 2 days forward. Combine that with the fact I didn't mine any new audio cards, and we see that it makes sense for there to only be 2 cards scheduled today. Of course, that's optimal in the long run. "Long run" meaning, much longer than 30 days. For now, I'm doing an artificial 30-day challenge, so I'll use Anki's "cram" feature to do some other cards.
The "cram" feature is really interesting; this is the first time I've used it. Basically, all the cards become scheduled, but when you rate them, the spacing is moved down a scale. When a rating would schedule the card for 2 days later, now it schedules the card for 2 hours later. When a rating would schedule the card for 11 hours later, now it schedules the card for 11 minutes later. This is a pretty freaking sweet idea. It's like very small-scale spaced repetition.
It took about 10 minutes to go through all 18 cards in "cram" mode. Next, I went on to the pronunciation rules cards. These took 2 minutes to do. Finally, the main deck: the sentence deck. I reviewed 271 cards (180 old cards, 91 cards added yesterday). It took 57 minutes.
MINING CARDS
I spent about 40 minutes mining Tex's French Grammar, mining the sentences from the negation chapter and from the first couple sections of the prepositions chapter. I mined somewhere around 125 sentences, bringing the total to 900 sentence cards.
Then I took another 14 minutes to mine 13 more sentences from the French translation of Chrono Trigger. Speaking of mining RPG games, has anyone else noticed that they're always set in fantasy worlds where the entire world speaks the same language? What's up with that??
Finally, I took a few more minutes to mine audio pronunciation cards from Tex's French Grammar, getting 5 more and looking in as far as the "faire" section of the verbs chapter. It's hard to get good audio files from Tex's French Grammar because mostly the audio files are for very long dialogs. With text, I can easily break dialogs into individual sentences, but breaking up audio files would be very time consuming.
FRENCH THOUGHTS
I'm starting to find myself thinking fragments of French thoughts as I go about my daily business or as I lie in bed at night. Some of it is from the audio pronunciation cards, some is from the French music I've been listening to, some is from the sentences I've mined, and some is original. Of course this is a very good sign. When you begin thinking in the target language, even if the thoughts aren't particularly intelligent, it's an excellent sign that you're making progress on the language.
Previous Day in the French Revolution: Day 7
Next Day in the French Revolution: Day 9
You can also go to the French Revolution Table Of Contents...
...or to the French Revolution Introduction.
Here are some other things I've written about.
Examples Of Japanese Onomatopoeia
Introduction To Lucid Dreaming
Words Break My Bones, But Sticks & Stones Never Hurt Me
Why The Gym Is Good Even If You Do Manual Labor
Running On The Treadmill
Today I slept in pretty late, then went and tore myself up at the gym. I went out of my way to destroy my arms to the max: after all my regularly scheduled upper body work, I went back to the bench and did high-rep work with low weights, gradually lowering the weight until I finished with a 30-rep set with just the bar (which was really hard by then since my arms were in agony). Now my arms are still quivering and trembling as I gobble down salmon and tuna to get some protein. Damn I love working out :)
RADIO CANADA
I finally got around to checking out Radio Canada for some fresh new French input. Here's the channel I'm currently listening to: Espace Musique. The music seems very ambient and relaxing, if a little oldschool. Best of all, there's lots of French. Worst of all, there's some occasional Christmas music (in English). Of course that's a seasonal thing...
REVIEWING SCHEDULED CARDS
Today I did the cards in this order: first, audio pronunciation cards; next, pronunciation rule cards; finally sentence cards.
Somehow, there were only 2 cards scheduled in the audio pronunciation cards. Probably because of how, if you rate a card "hard" two days in a row without failing it, Anki pushes it 2 days forward. Combine that with the fact I didn't mine any new audio cards, and we see that it makes sense for there to only be 2 cards scheduled today. Of course, that's optimal in the long run. "Long run" meaning, much longer than 30 days. For now, I'm doing an artificial 30-day challenge, so I'll use Anki's "cram" feature to do some other cards.
The "cram" feature is really interesting; this is the first time I've used it. Basically, all the cards become scheduled, but when you rate them, the spacing is moved down a scale. When a rating would schedule the card for 2 days later, now it schedules the card for 2 hours later. When a rating would schedule the card for 11 hours later, now it schedules the card for 11 minutes later. This is a pretty freaking sweet idea. It's like very small-scale spaced repetition.
It took about 10 minutes to go through all 18 cards in "cram" mode. Next, I went on to the pronunciation rules cards. These took 2 minutes to do. Finally, the main deck: the sentence deck. I reviewed 271 cards (180 old cards, 91 cards added yesterday). It took 57 minutes.
MINING CARDS
I spent about 40 minutes mining Tex's French Grammar, mining the sentences from the negation chapter and from the first couple sections of the prepositions chapter. I mined somewhere around 125 sentences, bringing the total to 900 sentence cards.
Then I took another 14 minutes to mine 13 more sentences from the French translation of Chrono Trigger. Speaking of mining RPG games, has anyone else noticed that they're always set in fantasy worlds where the entire world speaks the same language? What's up with that??
Finally, I took a few more minutes to mine audio pronunciation cards from Tex's French Grammar, getting 5 more and looking in as far as the "faire" section of the verbs chapter. It's hard to get good audio files from Tex's French Grammar because mostly the audio files are for very long dialogs. With text, I can easily break dialogs into individual sentences, but breaking up audio files would be very time consuming.
FRENCH THOUGHTS
I'm starting to find myself thinking fragments of French thoughts as I go about my daily business or as I lie in bed at night. Some of it is from the audio pronunciation cards, some is from the French music I've been listening to, some is from the sentences I've mined, and some is original. Of course this is a very good sign. When you begin thinking in the target language, even if the thoughts aren't particularly intelligent, it's an excellent sign that you're making progress on the language.
Previous Day in the French Revolution: Day 7
Next Day in the French Revolution: Day 9
You can also go to the French Revolution Table Of Contents...
...or to the French Revolution Introduction.
Here are some other things I've written about.
Examples Of Japanese Onomatopoeia
Introduction To Lucid Dreaming
Words Break My Bones, But Sticks & Stones Never Hurt Me
Why The Gym Is Good Even If You Do Manual Labor
Running On The Treadmill
Posts
2 comments:
Oh watch out though! Canadian French is actually quite different from the French of France, especially pronunciation-wise. There are a few differences in vocabulary too...like while the French word for car is "une voiture", the Québécois variant is "un char." And to many French people, the accent's a little like nails on a chalkboard...sometimes the French will have trouble understanding the Québécois accent. So just be careful, I don't want you to get confused!
Wow, thanks for the heads up!
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