Today I headed over to my parents where we had a family lunch with my brother, his wife and my young nephew. After lunch we all headed over to the park to get out of the house a bit. It was a stunningly beautiful day, 27 degrees and without a cloud in the sky. The […]
Enrolling Into French…Again
For the last few months, I focused on having conversations with two friends who are fluent in French. Every Monday, Thursday and Friday for an hour, we chat – 30 mins in English and 30 mins in French. I wanted to take a break from the Alliance Francaise courses because at times, I found them […]
Petit Nicolas
It’s a public holiday here in sunny Melbourne. Another beautiful cloudless sky and no breath of wind. It’s a day to laze around and relax before the onslaught of work begins again tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’ve taken Tuesday & Wednesday off (I work three days a week), which means an extra long time to do the […]
In Love With Stranded Colour Work
I’ve always loved fair isle jumpers. They’re the ones with the stranded colour work around the shoulder, sometimes on the sleeves and around the bottom on the rib. Northern Europeans seem to love them. In Australia, if you’re seen wearing one, you’re likely to be mocked. “Did your mum buy you that jumper?” If you […]
Le Mot
Wow! Le situation est grave! Pourquoi? Regardez! Aujourd’hui, un surprise sur Twitter. Benjamin m’a envoyé un defi. Wordle est en français! La semaine dernière j’ai bloqué le mot “Wordle” sur Twitter parce qu’il avait trop de tweets. J’étais submergé par tous ce jeu! Mais maintenant, je change d’avis. Peût-etre Wordle en français m’aidera avec la […]
Le Renard
On Thursday I have my first gathering with my French class. Nathalie takes a French class every week at a nearby cafe. Our homework was to watch this short program about the animals of the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris and share our own experience of these gorgeous creatures. Here is what I will say […]
My French Learning Journey – What’s Next…continued
I’m still deliberating what to do next year in my French learning journey and come to the realisation that at an intermediate level now, I’m STILL not speaking enough of it. On the other hand, I’m listening to a lot more (and proud to say understanding most of it – when they’re not speaking slang) […]
Writing French Stories
I am writing short stories using a French picture dictionary for inspiration. For exercise, I flip open the dictionary and look at the pictures and definitions (there’s no English) so then I concoct a story in French using those words. It’s a way to contextualise the vocabulary I’m learning and in my mind’s eye, I […]
Learning a Language Through Coursera
About a few weeks ago, I found the Etudier en France course on Coursera that is at a B1-B2 level. I hadn’t completed a Coursera course for many years and when I saw this, I thought it was time to get back into it again. If you do a search on MOOCs (massive open online […]
More French Resources Then Some
It’s fair to say that I have spent HOURS on learning this language over the last 18 months but I figure that I can’t stop now. It’s a skill that I need to work on consistently and continually. Use it or lose it. Utilisez ou perdez. As such, this last ten weeks, I deliberately didn’t […]
The Immersive Language Experience At Home
I’ve been writing about my language learning journey with French (click on the Search box above and type in ‘French’ to see the list of blog posts) over the last 18 or so months and one of the things that I’ve been deliberating is whether “language immersion” works and whether we need to be IN […]
What Did You Miss in May?
Blog Posts Alone in My Car (on Digital Minimalism) Time to Get Serious About the Next Phase (of My Life) Loving the Crafty Side of My Network (on preferring to read about the lifelong learning pursuits of my personal network rather than anything to do with their actual work because it’s what they do outside […]
What Did You Miss in April?
Here are my collected posts and YouTube videos for April 2020. Blog Posts What did you miss in March 2021? (Collected blog posts and videos from March) Completing the 30 Day Speak Your Target Language (French) Challenge Enjoying the Moment [on self-reflection] Enjoying My Birthday Future Fit [on importance of having a digital profile] Creating […]
30 Day Learning Challenge
Recently I found a tweet that had a language learning challenge over 30 days that I wanted to try out: I decided to give it a go and see how it all pans out. A few French speaking people have been helping me along – most prefer to give their feedback through Direct Message as […]
Qu’est-ce que j’ai fait cette semaine?
Learning to write French requires practice and lots of feedback. By doing writing a blog post in French and then seeking feedback from my French speaking network, I’m able to correct the written phrases. Here’s what I got up to this week. A BIG Merci to Rotana Ty (@rotanarotana) for this weeks corrections! Cette semaine […]
Qu’est-ce que j’ai fait cette semaine?
Big thank you to my friend Céline Schillinger who helped me out with the French corrections this week in purple. Big thank you to Kevin Le Vaillant once again who has helped me out this week in the blue writing. Learning to write French requires practice and lots of feedback. By doing this, I’m learning […]
Learning Languages Ruined My Life
Phoenix shares his story of how he found a book in a bookstore called, “The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent” (a book by Lionel Trilling) and how it made him think about how learning languages makes you intelligent BUT it comes at a cost. They are both painful. Painful in the sense that it gives […]
Qu’ai je fait durant le weekend?
Je vais utiliser ce blog à ecrire pour ècrire ce que j’ai fait sur durant le weekend. Je vais dire ces paragraphes à durant ou lors de mon cours d’Alliance Française ce lundi. Chaque semaine, j’ajouterai une autre encoure nouvelle histoire. Je ne sais pas si ces phrases ont sont raison correctes, mais il faut […]
Speakly – A New Language Learning App
I’ve been watching this YouTuber’s videos about language learning for over a year now. I stumbled upon his videos as there’s tons of polyglots out there on YouTube land all trying to outdo each other when it comes to learning multiple languages. I love his videos because he takes a genuine and authentic approach to […]
Tips on Seeking Feedback in Language Learning
For the last year, I’ve been trying to learn French. Last year, much of it spent housebound in lockdown and unable to go outside into the world, I had more time to focus on picking up a new language skill and devoting lots of hours towards it. This year with the Christmas break in-between, the […]