Zentrope

un peu le français

Day 3

I think it’s pointless to blog these things every day. Why not just write this crap down in a moleskine if I want to feel special? (Actually, I think that’s a good idea.) Anyway, lesson 3 had a lot of repetition, which is great. Can’t get enough of that.They’re trying to introduce masculine vs feminine nouns. Ah, the joy of it.

Also, I can’t do this while driving.

Oh, and s’il vous plaît but no répondez.

After reading around the Internet, I’m getting the idea that listening to this series for three months, while great as far as it goes, is not optimum. It might be all I can handle, but I might be able to do more and I’d rather work according to my capacity.

For instance, I think I could be working on vocabulary. Flash cards. Thing is, I don’t want to memorize things I don’t clearly know how to pronounce and I can easily fool myself that I do. So, perhaps I can find an audio version of flash cards. Or if not that, listening to French broadcasts might help, at least for nouns.

Many suggest you should learn to read French, too, from the beginning. Harry Potter is a favorite. Don’t sweat the grammar (various tenses, etc) too much, but just get used to reading. Again, I fear that any success at decoding written words would just be me learning new spellings for English, not really learning French. I know how I am.

Priorities: 1) understand, 2) speak, 3) read, and finally 4) write. Nothing lower in priority should jeopardize anything higher.

Pardon, madame. Je suis américain, mais vous n’êtes pas américaine.