Assimil L'Espagnol Spanish

Assimil L'Espagnol and FNAC

Here is a bit about my last FNAC experience in Paris, back in July 2011.

I lurve FNAC. Apart from clothes, shoes and handbags... it sells everything else I love: books and electronic gadgets. (it also sells concert and theatre tickets and other random stuff).

It's the kind of shop you can browse in for AGES. Now in Geneva where I live now there is also a FNAC (or several) but the books they sell are pretty much the same as the ones they sell in France except more much expensive! However, on the other hand, the electronics (such as cameras) are cheaper... weird, huh?

But be warned there are ALWAYS long queues to pay in FNAC. It's the kind of store that's almost always crowded especially during lunchtimes...

Anyway, so on my recent trip to Paris I wanted to go to FNAC to buy this beauty (pic above). I found Assimil immensely helpful for learning French and during my last last trip to Paris before this current one (July 2011) I bought the German one, hoping and planning to pick it up... Unfortunately, it never took off because I couldn't find the motivation to do it. :( I just don't like the language at all. Meanwhile, Spanish and Italian sound much nicer and are much easier for me having learnt French just before.

I ummed and erred for ages about which language to pick up but Spanish won easily since I LOVE this country, I love travelling there, the people, the food, the weather, the lifestyle.. if it weren't for the high unemployment rate I could happily live there, I think. And the other thing is that Spanish is the second most widely spoken language after Chinese Mandarin. So in the end it was an easy choice.

I have been easing myself into it very slowly (since now I work full time and I didn't when I started learning French) and have a very busy social life and hobbies, etc... I've been starting on Pimsleur and listening to Roxette songs in Spanish to the point where I can sing a lot of them off by heart now (but half the time I don't know what I'm actually singing LOL).

The Assimil L'Espagnol on the FNAC website is for the MP3s (1 CD with MP3 recordings). However, I bought the white one (pictured above) with 4 Audio CDs. Last time with the German I bought the  MP3 one but found it broke up the tracks into lots of pieces (which made it really annoying to listen to on my ipod.. why the heck did they do that?! so this time I actually left the queue to pay, went back to the shelf to grab the white one instead and hope that this time the tracks are intact!

Also, when I bought the German one it was on sale but the Spanish one was marked full price 65,90€. However, when I went to pay there was also a discount on it! Bonus :)

The interesting thing (and challenge) is that last time I was using Assimil to go from English--> French. This time I'm not going from English--> Spanish but from French-->Spanish (since you wouldn't be able to buy the English-->Spanish version one in France anyway). Although it seems like a challenge, I actually think it's easier since there are so many similar words between French and Spanish.

I remember this post that Jennie wrote "Learning a third language through a second" (way back in August 2010!). At the time I hadn't even moved to France yet and it didn't mean much to me but I still remember the post and the principle.. and now I will actually apply it.

Wish me luck! :D

12 weeks of learning French

12 weeks! Gosh, I'm almost at the 3 month mark too now, almost a milestone. I think I did quite a lot this week plus I started FSI. With FSI I'm going to use it as my Pimsleur substitute as an audio-only program. You mostly only have to read the text in the first part of each lesson (1.1, 2.1, 3.1, etc). The rest I use as an audio 'test' where I have to fill in the blanks before the second person. Before I figured this, I was just reading along with the text in the PDF (which wasn't really all that helpful, except maybe for pronunciation). Now that I realised I don't need to look at the text, I can actually use my brain to figure out the patterns in the drills and come up with the answers myself!

I am also doing 2 Assimil lessons per day because I want to progress as fast as I can. Pimsleur started teaching the past tense which was a little scary and I started hearing words and phrases that I had no idea how to spell, including

"J'ai été élevé..." which means "I grew up in (a place)". I googled various possibilities and I didn't know what they were saying. I thought it was 'était' and 'alaver' or 'elaver' or 'laver' in the end I had to ask!

So far I have:

• Done up to the end of Pimsleur French - Level III Lesson 10 (70 of 90 lessons)
• Done up to the end of Coffee Break French - Lesson 30 (of 66 lessons)
• Done up to the end of Assimil - Lesson 41 (of 113 lessons)
• Done up to the end of French in Action - Lesson 10 (of 52 lessons)
• Done up to the end of FSI - Lesson 11 (tape 2.5) (of 189 lessons)

Oh and also... I have been speaking and typing to a real life French guy I 'met' through LiveMocha. I even had a Skype video conversation which was pretty embarrassing because I was so nervous and so slow at talking so now I just prefer to type to him. LiveMocha is awesome as now I have my 'team' of teachers who correct my work and that I know do a good job. I've even had some write (all in fluent French) great slabs of grammar notes and pronunciation tips for me! Hahaha. I've been learning so much from doing the written exercises on there.. so I recommend you give it a shot.

And after trying to come to grips with that nasty passé composé I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere. Yay! I re-read Le Chat au Chapeau and actually understand it a lot better now.