I Hit One-Third Mark of My French Dictionary!

A few days ago, I finally hit the one-third mark in my studying of French vocabulary from the Larousse French-Chinese dictionary. It took me 127 days to reach this point—if I extrapolate from this learning speed, it will take me roughly a year to finish the entire dictionary.

Studying a dictionary in its entirety is not a completely new undertaking for me. As far as French goes, I’ve done it twice already, each time resulting in a significant boost in my knowledge of vocabulary. However, as I have quickly forgotten most of the words I had learned, my vocabulary is still not sizable enough for me to read through French novels with ease, hence my decision to study numerous French words again from yet another dictionary.

By the way, during my first attempt, I created physical flashcards to study thousands of words, leaving piles and piles of cards stacking up in my living room. It was effective to some extent, but it was very time-consuming and labor-intensive, leaving me with relatively little time and energy to actually study what was written on those cards. Essentially, I was exhausted and close to burning out.

So, for my second attempt, I completely did away with flashcards, and focused instead on loosely glancing at the dictionary entries multiple times each day. It was a significant improvement on my previous attempt, and my knowledge of vocabulary expanded substantially. However, what’s truly regrettable is that I got complacent after this, and didn’t follow up with more studying, leaving my vocabulary to level off and stagnate over the next few years.

This time, I am determined to see my vocab learning through to the very end—when I finish studying my current dictionary, I won’t stop learning French words right then and there; instead, I’ll most probably switch to another dictionary and go over its contents from beginning to end. I’ll repeat the same process indefinitely until I get truly comfortable reading French novels, in the same way I feel reading Japanese and English books.

Incidentally, I am not focusing on growing my ability to express myself in French yet, whether it’s speaking or writing. As my ultimate goal is to become fluent in spoken French, I’ll need to tackle these aspects of language learning sooner or later.

Having said that, I’m not in a hurry at all—I believe that there will come a time when I feel compelled to start practicing speaking and writing, as well as improving my French accent. I won’t forcibly initiate some action before it’s suitable to do so; instead, I’ll let nature run its course through my language learning journey and develop my knowledge in a way that I feel most comfortable with.