On the Road

I’ve accomplished a little bit this week.

Pimsleur: I’ve completed Unit 6 of the updated Level 1 of French Premium.  I ended up repeating Unit 6 because I wasn’t happy with how well I performed.  But the second time was good enough.  On Fridays I repeat a random Pimsleur lesson that I’ve already taken (or that I have an earlier version of) rather than a new section.  Today I did Unit 2 of the 2009 Level 1 French.  It’s interesting to notice the changes to the Pimsleur course over the past ten years.  Mademoiselle is now rarely used.  Pardon has been replaced with excuse moi.  And comment allez vous has been replaced with vous allez bien, spoken as a question.

Duolingo: Now that they’ve changed from having the courses fade away over time to the crown system, I’m approaching the course differently.  Each day I’m attempting the following.  First, I’m taking one Strengthen lesson, which should aim at the places I’m weakest.  Then I’ll be working on the next set of lessons with no crowns, aiming to get to a single crown.  At this point, I’ve made it to Adverbs 2, and a total of 35 crowns.  (A few of the earlier sets have more than one crown.)  Once the entire tree is blue (has one crown), I’ll start over at the top.

One thing I’ve noticed different about Duolingo compared to Pimsleur is that Duolingo is far less formal.  You is tu in Duolingo, but vous in Pimsleur.

Podcasts: I’ve added some Podcasts to my listening for my drive home.  First, News in Slow French.  No, I don’t understand the vast majority of what they’re saying.  But it gets French in my ear, and if I ever complete the five levels of Pimsleur, I may subscribe to it for a year to increase vocabulary, etc.  I’ve also added a few RFI podcasts in English.  I’ve added an English daily news podcast and the Spotlight on France podcast.  These are more to understand what’s happening in France than to directly help my language skills.