Just some things I started doing for about a week or so.
Went back to reading l’étranger. Bought the audio version of book. I split the audio into chapters. Loaded the book and audio and synced it in LingQ. Now, I’m reading it from that app/site.
I am reading and listening each chapter several times. 1st time extensively without any look up and the 2nd time with intensive study of every sentence that I don’t understand, repeat as needed.
I am not sure if it is a good approach but I am just doing it this way so I can squeeze out as much learning out of each book because it is tiresome to prepare books for reading on LingQ. ( I have to edit audio, remove any music, split book by chapter, Adjust timing to sync text with audio perfectly, even trying to find a book where the audio and text matches 100% can be a challenge ).
Other than that, I am no longer transcribing texts using AI. I noticed that in AI transcription, there is too much hallucination and mistakes. Not good for beginners.
So, I am generally staying away from AI and use it with caution now. I’m going to stick with human audio and authentic text as much as possible, at least as a beginner.
Holy shit that’s some real effort! Interested to see if this helps you learn better! I mean it could have some real benefit since course books have a lot of listening-to-audio-and-keeping-up-with-written-transcript exercises.
And yeah I was super interested in how AI might help since language models are specifically trained with languages, but gave up on that awhile ago.
Tried it in my native tongue and was surprised it would suggest an old racist word as a synonym when asking for synonyms…
Yea, that is why I have to stick to one book for a while it took me half a day just to prepare that book. Although I think I can do it faster now, knowing all the tools process needed.
Even after reading so many graded readers, when I went back to L’étranger, there were still a ton of unknown words. Was a little disappointed, although I do get the gist of what is written. Maybe those graded readers were a little too easy.
AI was pretty good, but even a few mistakes were just too many mistakes for comfort, repeated sentences for no reason, and sometimes even transcribed whole sentences that the narrator didn’t say at all.
I think as a beginner, we should learn from material that we can trust to be close to 100% correct. Don’t want to learn wrong spelling, grammar, vocabulary, etc. French have a lot of words that sound the same but spelt differently with silent letters. Example mange, manges, mangent all are pronounced the same.
I’m eager to hear how that goes! Are you planning to take a test for a certain level at some point? Would be so curious how years of self learning has worked out and what you personally found the best way for you to learn!
L’étranger’s story is short but quite deep. Don’t get discouraged: one of my lang teachers said this once: you’ll reach a point where it feels like you understand based on the broader context but are missing words and will feel discouraged, but this is a wonderful part to be in while learning and means you are quite far already.
And 100% agree. I feel like asking AI some questions doesn’t really help me remember the answers. I prefer a course book and other materials.
I will just hire a tutor (some teacher I notice have background working at such test centres ) online to give me a mock test and an estimation of my level and get some advice and tutoring.
Official test are expensive will do them if I need a cert. If I just want to get an idea of my level, another way is to do a placement test at a language school and see what class they place you at, not sure if they charge any fees for that.
Thanks for sharing the advice from your teacher, that is useful, maybe someday everything will click. I tried to read old A1/2 stuff, things that used to be difficult for me, I realize how easy they are now. It is probably better to look at things in reverse. Instead of doing the easier stuff expecting it to make harder stuff easy we need to do the more difficult stuff so as to make the lower level content super easy.
Hiring a tutor sounds nice. Would allow you to also ask some questions that have been bugging you and practice speaking.
Yeah no the official tests are really expensive… I did a placement test for free at a local language learning center but not sure if they are always for free.
And I believe it’s exactly as you say: it will just click one day when you notice you can understand most if not all what was said! And I definitely noticed the same with going back (during a placement test) to basics and realizing how easy some stuff is.
I’ve gotten good results with moving on without getting stuck too - I still heavily depend on context but I can ask someone to explain a word that I don’t understand (very simplified explanation that requires gestures) and it has really helped me learn.
Just some things I started doing for about a week or so.
Went back to reading l’étranger. Bought the audio version of book. I split the audio into chapters. Loaded the book and audio and synced it in LingQ. Now, I’m reading it from that app/site.
I am reading and listening each chapter several times. 1st time extensively without any look up and the 2nd time with intensive study of every sentence that I don’t understand, repeat as needed.
I am not sure if it is a good approach but I am just doing it this way so I can squeeze out as much learning out of each book because it is tiresome to prepare books for reading on LingQ. ( I have to edit audio, remove any music, split book by chapter, Adjust timing to sync text with audio perfectly, even trying to find a book where the audio and text matches 100% can be a challenge ).
Other than that, I am no longer transcribing texts using AI. I noticed that in AI transcription, there is too much hallucination and mistakes. Not good for beginners.
So, I am generally staying away from AI and use it with caution now. I’m going to stick with human audio and authentic text as much as possible, at least as a beginner.
Holy shit that’s some real effort! Interested to see if this helps you learn better! I mean it could have some real benefit since course books have a lot of listening-to-audio-and-keeping-up-with-written-transcript exercises.
And yeah I was super interested in how AI might help since language models are specifically trained with languages, but gave up on that awhile ago.
Tried it in my native tongue and was surprised it would suggest an old racist word as a synonym when asking for synonyms…
Yea, that is why I have to stick to one book for a while it took me half a day just to prepare that book. Although I think I can do it faster now, knowing all the tools process needed.
Even after reading so many graded readers, when I went back to L’étranger, there were still a ton of unknown words. Was a little disappointed, although I do get the gist of what is written. Maybe those graded readers were a little too easy.
AI was pretty good, but even a few mistakes were just too many mistakes for comfort, repeated sentences for no reason, and sometimes even transcribed whole sentences that the narrator didn’t say at all.
I think as a beginner, we should learn from material that we can trust to be close to 100% correct. Don’t want to learn wrong spelling, grammar, vocabulary, etc. French have a lot of words that sound the same but spelt differently with silent letters. Example mange, manges, mangent all are pronounced the same.
I’m eager to hear how that goes! Are you planning to take a test for a certain level at some point? Would be so curious how years of self learning has worked out and what you personally found the best way for you to learn!
L’étranger’s story is short but quite deep. Don’t get discouraged: one of my lang teachers said this once: you’ll reach a point where it feels like you understand based on the broader context but are missing words and will feel discouraged, but this is a wonderful part to be in while learning and means you are quite far already.
And 100% agree. I feel like asking AI some questions doesn’t really help me remember the answers. I prefer a course book and other materials.
I will just hire a tutor (some teacher I notice have background working at such test centres ) online to give me a mock test and an estimation of my level and get some advice and tutoring.
Official test are expensive will do them if I need a cert. If I just want to get an idea of my level, another way is to do a placement test at a language school and see what class they place you at, not sure if they charge any fees for that.
Thanks for sharing the advice from your teacher, that is useful, maybe someday everything will click. I tried to read old A1/2 stuff, things that used to be difficult for me, I realize how easy they are now. It is probably better to look at things in reverse. Instead of doing the easier stuff expecting it to make harder stuff easy we need to do the more difficult stuff so as to make the lower level content super easy.
Hiring a tutor sounds nice. Would allow you to also ask some questions that have been bugging you and practice speaking.
Yeah no the official tests are really expensive… I did a placement test for free at a local language learning center but not sure if they are always for free.
And I believe it’s exactly as you say: it will just click one day when you notice you can understand most if not all what was said! And I definitely noticed the same with going back (during a placement test) to basics and realizing how easy some stuff is.
I’ve gotten good results with moving on without getting stuck too - I still heavily depend on context but I can ask someone to explain a word that I don’t understand (very simplified explanation that requires gestures) and it has really helped me learn.