“Be Brave enough to suck at something new”
This week I struggled with differentiating sounds and meaning of similar words and numbers. I decided to focus on pronunciation first, with Doulingo and this new source by “French Truly” for conjugation of “avoir”, which I needed to keep revising longer than other verbs to remember well. Even my app gave up on me as Doulingo popped a message at some point writing “we’ll get back to this later” signaling me to move on and not get stuck on one part. I like that this app has such a useful feature- I’m the kind of person that can keep at it until I get it but I did not stop to eat or breath- and Doulingo proved to be useful at teaching the content and also at making me be productive and switching things around when I need it.
I than decided to go over numbers here at another blog by “Transparent Language”, a fun learning French blog. I love how it has a vocal and written clarity- was a super helpful source! Learning vocally and visually is key for me.
Fun fact: in French numbers are spoken by doing math! to say 80 you say 20X4! And it gets more complicated: 90 is 20X4 + 10! Haha this will take time to get used to… good thing I love math!
Hope you enjoyed this week’s blog and let me know- what are you willing to suck at to be a beginner with as you learn something new?
Colorfully yours
Maya
Hello Maya!
Reading your blog is reminding me of my experience taking French 100 last semester! It was my first time attempting to learn a new language and it was definitely a reality check. It seems like you have some good resources going, I will just say that making my own Quizlet’s was a life saver. I am not sure if it is something that you could incorporate but it might be beneficial for the things that you get stuck on! You could make a set of the things you may be struggling with and then Quizlet can read it out loud in French and then you could type in the English word or reverse it and have it read English and then you type in the French word. I did this for learning my numbers and it worked really well for me.
Thanks Kassia! I’ll happily take any advice you have- this is a challenge for sure! I was thinking in English, saying it in French, and moving back and forth. Quizlet may help in doing so more beneficially, thanks for sharing! I’ve never heard of it before but checked it now- and I love how they say at the front page that Quizlet is for the “I’ll sleep when exams are over” students, because I always say this haha! Your message motivates me to keep practicing with whatever works – even if I sound funny 🙂
Thanks a bunch!
Maya
Hey Maya,
It is awesome that you are using this class as an opportunity to become more familiar with another language. French was the subject I liked the least in school, and I don’t think I have the drive as an adult to learn another language so good on you! Is there a reason that you decided on French as opposed to another language? Good luck with the rest of your learning!
-Branden
Hi Branden,
Thanks for your message! Yes, there are a few reasons, thanks for asking! This got me thinking about it and gave me ideas for the next blog!
I decided to learn French as I had a brief encounter with it when I traveled to Switzerland many years ago and I then practiced it for a bit. It was an adventure and a struggle but I loved how the language sounds. As an Israeli, it sometimes fits my accent better than English.
Also there is a lovely French community in Yukon and I find that as an Israeli, even though I came to Canada 10 years ago, there is a familiar feel to the French culture that reminds me of home (Israel and France have so much in common) and I’d like to engage with them more, as I have done in the past in a limited way.
So I guess I find it brings me a reminder of home and also is useful in some schools and around town. Will see how I feel about it now though that it starts getting harder and numbers require math haha! 😉 I can see how this will be a difficult subject and bigger challenge than expected!
Such a neat way of looking at learning the French language. If you are still trying to remember how to conjugate “avoir”, my 4th grade teacher showed us this song that I will NEVER forget. It will get stuck in your head, guaranteed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYEDDzCwO2E
Also, so funny how we say numbers in French. It is very interesting how math comes into play there. In an education class I once took, I learned about Inuit mathematics. While we operate on a base-10 counting system, Inuit counting is base-20. As 90 in French is (4×20)+10, in Inuit, 19 is represented as 20-1. A cool connection there! Thanks for sharing a fantastic update on your learning with us! Chat soon.
Hi Haley,
Thanks so much! I appreciate any tip, I’ve been stuck on “avoir” for ages and this is much appreciated. I always have a song stuck in my head – when I work in Kindergarten it’s Baby Shark and this week when I work with grade 8 it’s a bunch of Queen songs haha… So this will be the next one 😉
And I love what you wrote about the counting systems. I forgot about that- I learned a few years ago in MATY101 that the Mayan, Roman and Babylonian had different counting systems and it was so interesting- this makes me look at it in a fun rather than just hard way!
Always appreciate your input- you have a way of making things feel more colorful!