#LearningFrench #sstellestudiess 3

#LearningFrench #sstellestudiess 3

📓 websites for french learning

Completely in French:

TV5 MONDE Apprendre le français - has a lot of good listening exercises

Le Point du FLE - redirects to a lot of good French content and comprehension exercises

RFI Savoirs - there are a few collections here that look interesting

Links I found on Quebec’s website:

Banque de dĂŠpannage linguistique (BDL)

Banque d’exercices de français (bank of French exercises)

For English speakers:

Lawless French - covers a large variety of basic subjects

Français interactif (from University of Texas at Austin) - includes a textbook

Tex’s French Grammar - grammar lessons and exercises with fun characters

More Posts from Sstellestudiess and Others

1 year ago

How To Romanticise Language Learning

TL = Target Language

Buy a new folder, highlighters and journal all in a specific colour for your TL

Find a drama/series to fall in love with

Create music playlists for different moods (e.g. aggressive rap/upbeat pop/sad songs/old classics)

Cook a traditional meal from the country of your TL

Make a summary sheet of some big historical event that shaped the country of your TL

Learn about the traditional dress (and colour significance) from your TL country

Compose a song in your TL

Research into famous art from your TL country (e.g. Japanese Irezumi) and try to recreate it in a sketchbook

Find a classic tale written in your TL (e.g. War and Peace in Russian)

Make an aesthetic Pinterest board that summarises your TL

Research into classic architecture built in your TL country

Designate a special area to study your TL (and make that area minimalist/pretty)

Make an aesthetic Pinterest board about travelling to your TL country

Write a poem in your TL

Write a short story in your TL

Keep a diary in your TL

Find a favourite YouTube channel in your TL

Write up a list of reasons why you're learning this TL and pin it up on the wall (read whenever you need motivation!)

2 years ago

i love you physical media ❤️ i love you cds ❤️ i love you vinyl ❤️ i love you cassettes ❤️ i love you dvds ❤️ i love you blurays ❤️ i love you paperback books ❤️ i love you comics ❤️

1 year ago

accepting that you’re objectively weird & owning it is infinitely better than being constantly desperate to appear normal to people who don’t even matter to you

2 years ago
The Calm Feeling Of Wandering Through An Old And Empty Bookshop ♡

The calm feeling of wandering through an old and empty bookshop ♡

2 years ago

what “feeling better” can look like after using a coping technique:

beng able to get up and walk around safely

thinking/talking more clearly and lessening of brain fog

a willingness to re-engage with a situation/emotion (even with some reluctance)

ability to do a task you did not want to/could not do before

being able to plan and problem solve (even if you still don’t know what to do)

improved concentration/focus

more understanding of a situation

calmer and slower thoughts (rather than scattered thoughts/rumination)

slower heartbeat and breathing

faster heartbeat, if doing exercise, and momentum that gives you a chance to do a task before you sit down again

being able to sleep easier

an ability to look at the big picture and not get lost in the details

feeling that you can “manage”

ability to control outbursts/destructive behaviour or pause before acting

managing to stop crying

I think people tend to assume their mood is what will improve after trying coping techniques, however, your mood is not the full extent of your mental health, and it doesn’t totally define whether or not a technique has helped you. When disorders cause symptoms like chronic emptiness and low mood, it’s worthwhile to pay attention to your body and your abilities to look for signs of improvement, which can then have an affect on your mood in the long term.

2 years ago

#michi

sstellestudiess - stelle
11 months ago

'lazy' study activities

Yes, this is an extension of the big monster 'study plan' post I am working on. The big study plan post will link more tools and articles to use, this is more like a short suggestion of study activities you could try.

(Scroll to the bottom to see the SUMMARY)

If you already watch cdramas, continue to do so. Download Google Translate app on your phone (and Pleco, and any other translation app you like). Watch cdramas that have hard chinese subtitles on the videos - many youtube cdramas already are like this (you see chinese hanzi subs on the videos). Keep watching with english subtitles on too. Every 3-5 minutes, look up a word or phrase you're curious about. Google Translate allows you to type in words or phrases with pinyin, so if you see 小心 or 你放心 or 他死了 in the cdrama, you can type what you hear 'xiaoxin' or 'nifangxin' or 'tasile' to get the translation. If you don't hear the pronunciation clearly, or don't know pinyin letters-pronunciation well, then you can also do writing input and write in the hanzi you see on the hard chinese subtitles. I'm left handed and didn't know the stroke order as a beginner, my handwriting is usually incomprehensible to writing recognition software, and google translate still usually figured out which hanzi I was writing. So yeah, just watch what you'd normally watch and look up a word/phrase every 3-5 minutes as curious. This activity will ADD up. In a few months you might know a lot of words. If you are a beginner, maybe start with this activity and just keep doing it for a while. Eventually you'll start to pick up dozens of words, maybe even a few hundred. You'll probably eventually get curious about what grammar you're looking at, how to parse the sentences, how to remember hanzi better, and you can use that curiosity as motivation to push you to do some of the more 'intensive' study activities like learning about hanzi and grammar.

Not the laziest activity, because it does require reading an education material: but all you have to do is read it. You don't need to memorize, or study intensely, just read leisurely through it once. Read this dong-chinese pinyin guide, when you have decided you're a bit annoyed you can't figure out the pinyin to type the words you're trying to look up in cdramas. Or read it when you're eager to try typing with a chinese phone keyboard so you can type in hanzi instead of using writing-input, since typing the correct hanzi will make looking up new words easier. (To type hanzi you just type the pinyin, then pick from the hanzi suggested). Reading through this will take as little as 15 minutes, to as long as several days if you're just reading 1 section of it a day in 3-5 minutes. If you enjoy re-reading and reviewing, you might spend a few hours total on this pinyin guide. But if you're lazy? Just read through once, and know you can always come reference it again later if you're confused and want to clarify something. If you plan to learn zhuyin, you can check out the zhuyin guide at the top-right tab of the linked page.

Also not the laziest activity on here, as it will require reading educational material for 20 minutes to 2 hours depending on your reading speed and if you split it into different days and if you personally enjoy reviewing or not. Again, just read through these once when you have a few free minutes to spare. If you're a beginner, you'll appreciate the basic information about hanzi and how they work.

Part 1: Chinese characters in a nutshell

Part 2: Basic characters and character components

Part 3: Compound characters

Part 4: Learning and remembering compound characters

Part 5: Making sense of Chinese words

Part 6: Learning and remembering compound words

If you are a beginner and don't know much about tones, you may also want to spend 20 minutes to 2 hours on some days/weeks you have free on these informational things on tones:

Four Tones Explanation (great explanation video)

Tone Combination Practice (with some useful notes in it)

When Do Chinese Tones Change (good explanation, helpful 3rd tone explanation)

Accent Lab Mandarin Tone Pairs (I recommend this tool for listening practice, and later in your study to check on increasing your listening skills)

And finally, 2 textbook explanations of tones that I've found useful here and here.

Learning new words: if you find the pace of learning slow from just shows, are getting eager to learn more words FASTER so you can understand more? There's a few options.

There's SRS apps like Anki (or Pleco app's flashcard area), and if you enjoy flashcards or can focus on flashcards better than me, then if you do SRS apps 15-30 minutes a day the studying WILL add up. I cannot focus on such apps though, and once my focus burns out it takes me 1 hour to study 5 words... when for most people, they take 5 minutes to study 20 words or more in these apps.

If you're like me and can't focus long term on doing something like flashcards. Option 1: you can still use an SRS app like anki. Just cram 'new words/sentences' ONLY for a few days or weeks (so when you can get through as many words as other people you try to get through as many words as you can in 30 minutes to 2 hours), and when you start to feel the focus fade then switch to only review cards (and only New review cards until you've reviewed everything once). Quit reviewing when the focus is totally gone. You may finish reviewing everything, or you may not. Doesn't really matter. The initial 'new words/sentence' cards were to get an initial exposure of this means X, just like watching shows gives you that initial exposure the first time you look up an unknown word. You will 'review' these words more by seeing them in cdramas and other things, especially when you're still a beginner who needs to learn a few thousand common words. Option 2: same activity, but use a word list (or word list with sentence examples) online or printed on paper. Read through the list once over a matter of days until focus fades, then try to read through the list a second time (review) until focus is lost.

Option 3: Audio flashcards my beloved. If you REALLY do not want to look at flashcards for 15-30 minutes a day, or like me you REALLY can't focus at all on flashcards sometimes (because if 5 minutes take an hour to study like for me it's not very time effective ToT), audio lessons and audio flashcards will be your friend as a beginner. If efficiency is not your highest priority, I suggest you go to the Hoopla or Libby library apps, and looking up 'chinese lessons' or 'learn chinese' and try out some of the audiobooks and audio courses. Also go on Spotify and look up 'learn chinese' and try out some of the podcasts (I used to listen to Coffee Break Chinese), look up lessons on youtube (and things like "chinese sentences english translation"). ANY lesson that speaks chinese sentences, then speaks the english translation? Perfect, you can use it. Anything that tells you the chinese, then the english translation, is making sure you understand the chinese being used enough to start learning it. If you want to be particularly efficient with your time, you'll want to prioritize listening to audio that has MANY new chinese words per lesson. I listened to the chinese spoonfed anki audio files, chinese/english sentence audio, with new words or grammar in every sentence, but also a lot of words re-used in new sentences so i'd get some 'review' of words I'd heard before even if I only listened to new audio files until I finished. Those audio files have ~7000 sentences and probably a bit less words but still thousands. Immersive Languages (library audio lessons you can use) and Chinesepod101 would probably also have fairly information dense lessons.

Why are audio lessons and audio flashcards lazy? Well, particularly when it's just english/chinese sentence audio, you can listen to it while doing your regular daily schedule. Fit 30 minutes or even hours of listening a day, into when you're driving, commuting, walking, cleaning, cooking, grinding in video games, exercising, doing busy work you can listen to something in the background during. I tested this by doing it myself, and even if you are not paying full attention and just in-out of listening in the background, you will learn new words. So listening in the background while you play video games you would anyway? Easier, versus trying to focus on flashcards (very hard for me lol)? As far as 'intentional study' of educational materials, listening to audio lessons and audio flashcards is the easiest to do while continuing your regular daily schedule (aka not needing to carve out extra study time). The main drawback is it is very listening focused, so if you aren't working on reading skills with cdrama subtitles, graded readers, or webnovels eventually, then your reading skills will fall behind.

As an extension to the 'listening is easy to add to a daily schedule' idea: if you are an upper beginner, you can listen to learner podcasts entirely in chinese or graded reader audiobooks. If you're an intermediate learner, you can listen to audiobooks of webnovels you've read, or listen to audio dramas of stuff you've read subtitles for before, or if it's comprehensible enough for you then just listen to new audiobooks and audio dramas. You can listen to cdramas you've watched before playing in the background, or condensed audio (audio of shows with the silence cut out). Not only that, but when it comes to stuff like this, where you know SOME words but not all words? Or where you can read the words, but can't understand them when listening? Re-listen to the audio a LOT. I'm talking 10-20 times, or at least 5 times. Play chapter 1 of an audiobook on loop in the background while you clean your room, or while you level grind in a video game, or while you mull through doing a spreadsheet or lifting boxes at work (if you can work fine while listening to audio), or while you commute. You will, genuinely, notice your comprehension improving the more you re-listen even if you only paid half attention and didn't follow the plot the first few times. It is one of the easiest study activities to do, once you're at the point you can listen to audio materials. Just keep re-listening until you're bored and want to pick another, or until you feel you've understood as much as you can in that audio file (although I bet you if you've listened 5 times and think 'that's all I'll understand,' if you let yourself listen 10 times you'll be surprised how much MORE you end up understanding by then).

If you're getting ansty (as a beginner) about not understanding the grammar of the sentences you see in cdrama. Use that as motivation to spend 5 minutes to 30 minutes a day (or if you enjoy reading just read for 4 hours one day and be done) to read through some chinese grammar guides. You can either look up "basic chinese grammar" and read a few articles, or find a chinese grammar guide and just work your way through reading it. I personally suggest that, if you're bored by it or unable to focus: either JUST read the grammar point TITLES and then read more into the topics you've been seeing in cdramas that you want to learn more about. Or you just read HSK 1-4 grammar points, since they're the basics. Or you skip to the 'grammar point example' and read the examples to get a visual of what's going on. Or only look up specific grammar points as you watch cdramas, if something seems confusing.

I personally felt... it was easier in the long run, for me, to just read a whole grammar guide as a beginner. Did I understand everything? NOPE. I didn't understand like 2/3 at all. But skimming through an entire grammar guide made me aware of all the ways to expect past tense: 去 过 过了 了 以前 etc, ways to expect the future and ability and desire 会 要, how to ask yes/no questions 吗 and suggestions 吧, 有 没有 i have/dont have and how have can be used to express past tense things, 不 don't/not, how 的 地 can make descriptive phrases (地 is like english -ly) (and how in chinese a sentence clause-的 usually goes in FRONT instead of in the middle like in english), how 得 is both 'must' and also has several grammatical functions to look out for (that I didn't get used to until I read a lot to be honest), and 着 has grammatical uses too (the first of which was it seemed similar to the english verb ending -ing to me). These were basic things, and a lot of their more particular aspects went over my head.

But knowing roughly how to pick out 'that's a verb' and 'that's probably a descriptive' and 'that's a clause' and 'that's negative' and 'that's past tense' or 'that's present or future tense' helped me start guessing the overall main idea of sentences and paragraphs WAY sooner than it otherwise would have took me. If I'd only looked up 1 grammar point occassionally... it could've taken years to recognize these basics. Instead it took a month of reading a grammar guide, then several months of seeing that grammar in cdramas and webnovels just to fully recognize what I saw. I did still look up a particular grammar point when confused, but usually I already was vaguely familiar with the grammar point to look it up (like seeing ㊊ in the sentence and knowing THAT is what i should look up because it's confusing me). So yeah: feel free to do it the way you prefer, as we all will have different preferences and things that work better for us. But for me, it was worth just reading 4 hours of a grammar guide in 15ish minute chunks over the course of a month.

Unfortunately the grammar guide summary i read (chinese-grammar.org) no longer exists. So I will link some options I've found, but if you find more concise and simpler grammar guides please share them! Introduction to Basic Chinese Grammar. AllSetLearning Chinese Grammar Wiki (way too long to read easily in my opinion but I used this to look up specific grammar points later in learning a Lot), Basic Patterns of Chinese Grammar: A Student's Guide to Correct Structures and Common Errors (this one is a print book but the only modern book I bought for grammar), and Wikipedia's Chinese Grammar Page (which is the grammar guide I'm currently reading through to consider as a resource - i think as far as summarized it may be one of the shorter options).

Whenever you feel ready to learn hanzi? Honestly the sky is the limit on options. If you like SRS apps like anki, Skritter is an app I've seen recommended for hanzi, I used some "chinese hanzi with mnemonics" anki decks (while I could focus lol). I personally found the easiest way for me to start was to just read through this book (which is for free as an ebook in many libraries/library apps, and can be found in free download book sites):Learning Chinese Characters: (HSK Levels 1-3) A Revolutionary New Way to Learn the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters; Includes All Characters for the AP & HSK 1-3 Exams. I liked this book because it made up a story to help me remember meaning, pronunciation, and tone. Along with providing example words. It's only 800 hanzi, and all I did to study it was read a few pages every couple days until I finished it - it took me around 3 months to finish the book. I didn't review (though you can re-read and review if you enjoy that).

But the mnemonics really helped form that 'initial recognition' memory and so when I started reading graded readers (once I'd studied 300 hanzi in the book), the graded readers helped 'review' those new hanzi and I learned them fast. For the 1000 hanzi I learned on my own after this book, I utilized the mnemonic story strategy that this book taught, and it was fairly doable to just keep picking up hanzi by looking them up when reading, coming up with a mnemonic story in my head, then moving on. As I kept seeing hanzi again, I'd eventually remember them. (And they say it takes 12-20 times of seeing a word to remember it, so at worst that's how much I was looking up new words... sometimes only 1-2 times though).

I would suggest that if you don't use SRS apps like anki or Skritter for hanzi, use some tool with mnemonics like a hanzi book with mnemonic stories (like the one I linked or a few others that exist). And when you look up new words in cdramas, and later graded readers and webnovels, please listen to the word's pronunciation a few times. So you're getting a bit of initial recognition of the hanzi's components/visual AND the word's pronunciation. If it takes 20 times or less to learn new words, then you'll want to get that much reading AND listening exposure.

When you have some basic grammar knowledge (or if you're really tolerant of ambiguity), keep watching cdramas as you have been. But try to pause the show every 3-5 minutes and read a chinese subtitle sentence. You can use the english subtitles to try and parse the chinese word meanings, or look up keywords using your translation app, whatever you want. Since a LOT of cdramas have chinese subs, and you watch with english subs, you can utilize these dual subtitles to start practicing reading skills and practicing guessing new words from context (in this case the context is the scene, the chinese words you already know, and the english translation). Later in your studies, when you stop using english subtitles sometimes, this will have been good practice of getting used to trying to read chinese. This pausing every 3-5 minutes to try and understand a chinese sentence should not take much time, maybe adding 5-10 minutes of watch time to a cdrama episode (depending on how long you pause). So it should be fairly easy to work into your schedule.

So yeah. The big summary of all this is:

If you want to make progress at a pace most people are going to find not too slow, I suggest 1-2 hours on average of doing stuff with chinese a day. (Or more hours a day on average if you want to get through the beginner phase faster). It'll take thousands of hours to learn chinese. Your pace will be extremely slow if you do less than 1 hour with chinese a day on average.

If you already watch cdramas, then keep doing that and just start looking up words (and eventually trying to figure out some sentences) once every 3-5 minutes as curious.

Spend 5 minutes a day reading articles on chinese writing system, and pinyin, and basic grammar, for a few months. You don't need to memorize or review, just get a basic initial exposure.

Approach other educational materials that way: if and when you start more 'intensively' studying, you can just get an initial exposure to the ideas (like a hanzi book, a grammar guide, reading word or sentence lists if you like to do that). You don't need to memorize or review, you don't need to understand everything. Just get an initial impression. (If you enjoy memorizing or studying though, go wild lol)

Audio lessons and audio flashcard study materials will require no time to fit into your schedule, you can do those while you do daily activities that you can listen to audio while doing. As an intermediate learner, these can also be used the way extensive reading is used - to pick up more vocabulary, improve grammar understanding, improve comprehension speed.

New words take (lets rough estimate) 20 times of seeing to remember. So you'll be looking up new words up to that many times when watching cdramas, or later when reading, and that's okay. It'll take a while to fully solidify this new information and you can just keep watching cdramas and doing things in chinese, and the information will eventually be learned. Especially as a beginner: you'll run into the few thousand most common words CONSTANTLY, you will eventually learn them as you keep looking words up and doing stuff in chinese. You do not need to do any special scheduled review (like SRS anki cards, skritter, pleco flashcards) unless you personally enjoy doing it, or want to speed up your progress and are okay with carving 15-30 minutes of time specifically for doing that.

The process of transitioning to graded readers, cdramas with no english subs, and webnovels is it's own beast - which I can cover if you want (and will in the bigger post's step 3). But the short of it is: if you keep doing activities until you've learned around 1000 words, you should be able to start reading easy graded readers and gradually increasing their unique word count until you're reading graded readers with 1000+ unique words. (And you can start graded readers knowing only 200 words if you want! Mandarin Companion has books for beginners if like me you'd like to practice reading ASAP). At that point, you should be able to transition to easy webnovels (using Pleco Reader/Clipobard Reader, Mandarinspot.com annotation, Readibu app, or highlighting and right clicking and using google translate in a webpage) and to watching cdramas you've seen before or with simple plots in chinese only. How many words you look up, or if you look up zero, is all fine: as long as you grasp the main idea of the plot. If you look words up, and can grasp at least the main idea? Then you can watch/read as long as you look words up (and you'll learn the other detail words from context) If you can grasp the main idea without looking any words up? Then you can watch/read without looking words up (and learn new words from context). The first few months (or even year) of transitioning to webnovels and cdramas with no english subs will feel hard, even if you know all/most of the words. It's just part of adjusting to actually comprehending all the things you've studied. I suggest following Heavenly Path's Reading Guide as soon as you're ready to start trying to read - first graded reading material, then webnovels once you've learned around 1000 words.

10 months ago

YT Rec for Mandarin!

I feel bad that I haven't been able to deliver on some post I've promised because life has been hectic lately, so I wanted to share a learning resource in the meantime~

Mandarin Melon (and her second channel for shorts!)

I really love her videos and find that they're a great resource for how to speak in a casual, natural manner. The video I linked below is great for learning common phrases—not simple phrases! It's not about how to say "Hello", but how to say phrases that are common in conversation like "Thanks anyway!" or "Fingers crossed!"

Also, I really love her video production. Her editing is really eye-catching without being distracting and improves so much from video to video!

1 year ago

How to learn a language

Tips from a language major:

•When learning new vocabulary write the meaning in your language once and the new word at least three times

•If you are learning a new writing style (I.e. Hanzi, kanji, Sanskrit, etc.) write the character at least three times, the meaning and the pronunciation once. -do not write the pronunciation above the character, write it to the side, otherwise you won’t even try to read it. -Learn! Stroke! Order!

•when reviewing vocab try to use the word in a sentence.

•do not pay attention to the technicalities of the grammar. Do not attempt to compare it to your own language. This will seriously mess you up for 80 years. Just pay attention to the sentence structure and make similar sentences.

•if you are learning a tonal language (I.e Chinese) or language that has sounds that don’t exist in your language watch videos of people pronouncing things and try to match their mouth movements.

•if all else fails on your tones just speak quickly.

•watch TV shows in that language and yes watch them with subtitles. But please be aware that may not be how people speak in real life (I’m looking at you, Japanese/Chinese/Korean learners)

•DO NOT BE AFRIAD TO MAKE MISTAKES of you mess up during a sentence just correct yourself and keep going.

•flash cards, flash cards, flash cards. Real and digital.

•spend at least an hour a day on it (OUTSIDE of class), if you’re trying to learn on your own you’re gonna need more time.

•talk to yourself in that language, take notes in it, set your phone to it. You probably look crazy but that is a-ok.

•listen to music in that language, while it probably won’t do much for your ability in the beginning it will help you distinguish sounds once you get pretty good.

•and lastly, don’t give up. It took you like ten years to grasp your own language it’s gonna take awhile to grasp another.

-How I learned 2 ½ languages at once.

2 years ago

#love

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Here to learn languages and to feel a little less alone on this journey :) 25 - she/her

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