Hello again from Singapore! Hope you are having a nice and relaxing weekend.
I am pleased to let you know that I have just shot and uploaded my very first YouTube video in French. Please check out this video:
I've been meaning to shoot this video for the longest time, but I've put it off until today, what with my busy schedule and all.
For those of you who are curious about what I'm saying in the video, I am talking about how I've managed to improve my French over the last seven years, through among other things reading many French books for children, listening to French audio CDs for children, and doing lots of grammar exercises.
I'd be delighted if you could let me know what you think! Please by all means leave your comments, so I can improve myself in the future!
Enjoy the rest of the weekend!
Uncle Polyglot
Bonjour, tout le monde!
Aujourd'hui, j'ai finalement enregistré ma première vidéo en français sur YouTube.
Je suis toujours en train de perfectionner mon français, et je l'apprends tous les jours.
N'hésitez pas s'il vous plaît à laisser vos commentaires pour que je puisse améliorer mon français.
Je souhaite à vous tous un très bon weekend!
Meilleures salutations,
Uncle Polyglot
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
New Method for Mastering French Vocabulary!
Starting from this week, I am doing a little experiment with a new method of expanding my French vocabulary, using my French CD-Rom dictionary.
I've found this method quite useful and amazing, and so I've decided to share it with my readers.
I call it "the railroad map method."
What I do in this method are as follows:
First, launch the French dictionary "Le nouveau Petit Robert de la langue française" installed on my computer.
Then, randomly pick out a word that I like, and look at the French explanation.
For example, today I picked the word amorphe, and found the French explanation: sans énergie, sans réaction. Furthermore, I found some synonyms of the word amorphe: apathique, atone, inconsistant, mou.
What is amazing about this dictionary is that each of these synonyms comes with its own hyperlink which allows me to click and jump straight to that synonym itself.
What I do in the next step is jump to one of the synonyms (or anonyms sometimes) to find out its meaning, and if this synonym in turn shows its own synonyms, I will jump yet again to find out the meaning of the new synonym, and I will go on and on like this until I reach a dead end.
In the course of jumping from synonym to synonym, I make a point of writing down in my notebook the words that I have learned in the sequence in which I found them.
After doing this for about an hour, my notebook will look like this:
It looks a bit like a railroad map with the name of each station. Each of these words is a synonym of its neighbors to the right and left, and therefore in this chain of words, one word is closely related to the next in terms of its meaning.
What makes this "railroad map" particularly useful is that, it can help you understand and memorize the meaning of these words far more easily than if you pick out the same number of words randomly and try to get them into your head by rote memory.
In fact, moving along the line from one word to another does feel like riding a train, where you see the scenery that is gradually changing from one minute to the next.
In the example shown in the picture above, it starts with amorphe meaning "lacking energy", and along the line you will see words meaning "fading", "flaccid", "smooth", etc, each one with a slightly different meaning from the next. Towards the end of the line, you will see words meaning "disgusting", "stinky", etc, which are totally different from the first word! It's not unlike riding the Orient Express from London to Istanbul.
In the same way as witnessing a gradually changing landscape from a moving train, looking at the "railroad map" and tracing the line of words related to one another will definitely help me retain these new words in my memory. It also feels like reading a story with an evolving plot. Either way, it's a big change from the monotonous memorization of a group of words listed in alphabetical order in a vocabulary textbook.
The only catch with this method is that you need to install this Petit Robert dictionary on your computer (for those of you who are interested, you can get it here at Amazon France), and that your French needs to be at least at an intermediate level in order to comprehend the dictionary explanation shown entirely in French.
I really feel that with this method, the previously daunting task of expanding my French vocabulary has gotten a lot easier, and I am more motivated than ever to study tons of new French words. Hope in the coming weeks I will be able to improve and sophisticate this "railroad map method", so that I can eventually acquire an extensive French vocabulary!
Many thanks for reading this post. Wish you all a wonderful weekend!
I've found this method quite useful and amazing, and so I've decided to share it with my readers.
I call it "the railroad map method."
What I do in this method are as follows:
First, launch the French dictionary "Le nouveau Petit Robert de la langue française" installed on my computer. Then, randomly pick out a word that I like, and look at the French explanation.
For example, today I picked the word amorphe, and found the French explanation: sans énergie, sans réaction. Furthermore, I found some synonyms of the word amorphe: apathique, atone, inconsistant, mou.What is amazing about this dictionary is that each of these synonyms comes with its own hyperlink which allows me to click and jump straight to that synonym itself.
What I do in the next step is jump to one of the synonyms (or anonyms sometimes) to find out its meaning, and if this synonym in turn shows its own synonyms, I will jump yet again to find out the meaning of the new synonym, and I will go on and on like this until I reach a dead end.
In the course of jumping from synonym to synonym, I make a point of writing down in my notebook the words that I have learned in the sequence in which I found them.
After doing this for about an hour, my notebook will look like this:
It looks a bit like a railroad map with the name of each station. Each of these words is a synonym of its neighbors to the right and left, and therefore in this chain of words, one word is closely related to the next in terms of its meaning. What makes this "railroad map" particularly useful is that, it can help you understand and memorize the meaning of these words far more easily than if you pick out the same number of words randomly and try to get them into your head by rote memory.
In fact, moving along the line from one word to another does feel like riding a train, where you see the scenery that is gradually changing from one minute to the next.
In the example shown in the picture above, it starts with amorphe meaning "lacking energy", and along the line you will see words meaning "fading", "flaccid", "smooth", etc, each one with a slightly different meaning from the next. Towards the end of the line, you will see words meaning "disgusting", "stinky", etc, which are totally different from the first word! It's not unlike riding the Orient Express from London to Istanbul.
In the same way as witnessing a gradually changing landscape from a moving train, looking at the "railroad map" and tracing the line of words related to one another will definitely help me retain these new words in my memory. It also feels like reading a story with an evolving plot. Either way, it's a big change from the monotonous memorization of a group of words listed in alphabetical order in a vocabulary textbook.
The only catch with this method is that you need to install this Petit Robert dictionary on your computer (for those of you who are interested, you can get it here at Amazon France), and that your French needs to be at least at an intermediate level in order to comprehend the dictionary explanation shown entirely in French.
I really feel that with this method, the previously daunting task of expanding my French vocabulary has gotten a lot easier, and I am more motivated than ever to study tons of new French words. Hope in the coming weeks I will be able to improve and sophisticate this "railroad map method", so that I can eventually acquire an extensive French vocabulary!
Many thanks for reading this post. Wish you all a wonderful weekend!
Sunday, January 3, 2010
My New Year's Resolutions
Hello again from Singapore, and a Happy New Year to all my readers!
I am writing this post today to let you know that I have just made my New Year's resolutions as shown below:
First of all, I will continue to work hard at French this year, and am determined to improve my French to the point where I can read French novels without consulting the dictionary. I intend to achieve this target by means of studying thousands of French words, idioms and slang. I would also like to improve my ability to speak French, by making conscious efforts to form sentences using the words and phrases that I have newly acquired.
Secondly, I've decided to update this English blog more often, so that I can expand my readership overseas. Currently, I am blogging far more frequently in Japanese than in English, and due to the language barrier my readership is basically limited to Japan only. I want to change this situation by taking away this language barrier and reaching out to readers from around the world. Seeing as I cannot speak or write in English as fluently as in Japanese, this will surely present some challenge for me, but I believe that practice makes perfect and that the more I write in English the more comfortable I become in this language, so I've decided to take on this challenge anyway.
Lastly, I will be posting YouTube videos more often than last year, in order to improve my presentation skills, be it in English, Japanese, Mandarin or French. Given that I'm still not used to making speeches, posting YouTube videos is a rather difficult task for me, but luckily the 4 videos that I have posted so far have received some favorable feedback from my viewers, so I'm really encouraged to shoot more videos going forward. I am currently planning to shoot a video in French, so please keep a lookout!
I am determined to make good on my New Year's resolutions mentioned above, and make 2010 another wonderful year for my personal development.
Here's wishing everyone a wonderful new year ahead!
I am writing this post today to let you know that I have just made my New Year's resolutions as shown below:
First of all, I will continue to work hard at French this year, and am determined to improve my French to the point where I can read French novels without consulting the dictionary. I intend to achieve this target by means of studying thousands of French words, idioms and slang. I would also like to improve my ability to speak French, by making conscious efforts to form sentences using the words and phrases that I have newly acquired.
Secondly, I've decided to update this English blog more often, so that I can expand my readership overseas. Currently, I am blogging far more frequently in Japanese than in English, and due to the language barrier my readership is basically limited to Japan only. I want to change this situation by taking away this language barrier and reaching out to readers from around the world. Seeing as I cannot speak or write in English as fluently as in Japanese, this will surely present some challenge for me, but I believe that practice makes perfect and that the more I write in English the more comfortable I become in this language, so I've decided to take on this challenge anyway.
Lastly, I will be posting YouTube videos more often than last year, in order to improve my presentation skills, be it in English, Japanese, Mandarin or French. Given that I'm still not used to making speeches, posting YouTube videos is a rather difficult task for me, but luckily the 4 videos that I have posted so far have received some favorable feedback from my viewers, so I'm really encouraged to shoot more videos going forward. I am currently planning to shoot a video in French, so please keep a lookout!
I am determined to make good on my New Year's resolutions mentioned above, and make 2010 another wonderful year for my personal development.
Here's wishing everyone a wonderful new year ahead!
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Tweets: December 4, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
Tweets: December 3, 2009
- 01:53 やっと今日の仕事が終わりました！
- 01:58 As of now there are 14 followers of my tweets. The number has slightly increased from last week!
- 04:57 I've just booked an airplane ticket and a hotel room for my next vacation. I'm sure my vacation will be fantastic!
- 11:36 さっき起きました！今日はランチで人に会うので、これからすぐに身仕度をします。
- 14:09 ランチが終わって、スターバックスでゆっくりしています。午後3時から仕事です！
- 23:33 今日は苫米地さんの『年収が10倍アップする 超金持ち脳の作り方』を読み終えました！とても面白かったです！
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Thursday, December 3, 2009
Tweets: December 2, 2009
- 13:58 Finished learning today's portion of French idioms. Up till today I've learned about 250 idiomatic expressions. Will keep on learning!
- 14:07 今天早上，我聽了林憶蓮於1996年推出的『夜太黑』專輯。這張專輯我已經聽過無數遍，到現在還是覺得這是林憶蓮最好的專輯之一。另外，我也非常喜歡聽她在2005年推出的粤語專輯『本色』！
- 18:08 Am taking a one-minute breather from work now. Luckily today is shaping up to be a less stressful day.
- 18:10 Still haven't made the final decision on where to go during my vacation, which is coming up in just 3 days. I migh http://tl.gd/14e9k
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Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Tweets: December 1, 2009
- 02:14 What a day it's been! Just finished work and I can finally go home. I'm exhausted!
- 11:13 さっき起きました！これからフランス語の勉強です！
- 13:17 I've just finished learning today's portion of French idioms. Now it's time to update my Japanese blog with what l http://tl.gd/141mg
- 14:57 Arrived at the workplace. Will commence today's work in just a few minutes. Am feeling great as usual after a good night's sleep!
- 19:41 苫米地英人さんの『年収が10倍アップする超金持ち脳の作り方』を読み始めました。面白いです！
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