Dreaming of France -- Learning French

Please join this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

I minored in French in college, so I have a basic grasp of French and I can make myself understood for most things. I have a harder time understanding what people say to me in return. And I still haven't figured out all of those "y" and "en" and "ce" and "ci" in the middle of a sentence.
With hopes of someday moving to France, I figured I'd better get serious about learning French better. That's why I downloaded Duolingo to my iPhone. It's also available on the computer. And it's free.

Before I started on duolingo, I had a chance to take a test to see how much French I already knew. Then it bumped me past those lessons. Believe me, there are still plenty of lessons to go.
The app shows the challenges I have completed in gold. Ones I'm working on are in color, and the future ones, ones I'm not ready for, are in a pale black and white.

I immediately recognized that the program uses a method similar to the Montessori three-part naming lesson. With the three-part naming lessons, new words or things are introduced, then the student is asked to pick out the word when they here it, then finally the students are shown the thing and asked to come up with the word on their own.

Duolingo mixes up the language lessons. Some of them are as simple as repeating a short sentence by pressing the microphone button.
Another lesson gives a sentence in French or English and asks you to translate it. Choose from a mix of words below. A touch of a finger to the word moves it up underneath the original sentence.

A more challenging lesson has the sentence in French or English and you have to type the words that translate it.

The hardest lesson for me is the one where duolingo says a sentence or phrase in French and I have to write it in French. There's a turtle button that repeats the phrase slowly, but it's still a challenge for me.

I had thought that I would be able to quickly master French and move on to Italian, but I was wrong. I still have so much to learn, and the program returns to some of the previous lessons, so I have to return to them and practice them.

 I have plenty of lesson left in adverbs alone. The program also gives lots of encouragement and reminders to get you working. Hopefully by the time I get to France, I'll be speaking French, and understanding it, better. 

Thanks for playing along today. I hope you'll visit each other's blogs too so you can enjoy other bits and pieces of France. 

Spelling Disgrace

I'm still grading papers madly, with Oct. 26 as the end in sight that I'll get a reprieve for a bit, so I thought I'd post a short thought about spelling.
Everyone knows that spelling isn't emphasized any more. As Alec Baldwin says in a commercial for Capital One, "Spelling, that's not a subject, that's an App, right?"
Well, I was on the App store the other day searching for "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me!" the NPR news show. I figured it must have an app that I could listen to.
As I typed in the letters, wai.... the app store began making suggestions of what I might be looking for.
Unfortunately, the most popular search that begins wai... waight watchers.

Competing With Myself

This morning, I discovered something new on my phone, and it can only mean trouble.
I signed onto iMapMyRun, an app that keeps track of my route when I run.
But, wait, that's not all. It also keeps track of my speed.
I really wish I hadn't seen that. Now I'm going to be compulsive about running faster times and trying to beat my previous times.
I learned a valuable lesson when I pushed the start button on my route as I walked out the door. That's right, I walked out the door instead of running, which slowed down my overall time. I usually walk the first two-tenths of a mile to the corner before I start running. When I saw my overall time, I was again cursing myself. That was throwing off my cumulative time.
For my next run, I'd give up the mileage and not start the route until I was ready to run.
It started to rain about a mile into my run, so I turned around (I have to protect my iPhone from the rain). I pushed the button to end my "route" as soon as I started walking so it wouldn't reduce my overall speed. Then when I pushed to finish, the app asked me if I wanted to post my run, make it public.
No, I can't imagine who I would want to share this with.
That's when the app flashed at me to start adding friends. What friends would I have who wanted to keep track of my runs and my speed? Unless they were simply planning to compete with me? Is that where we're going?
I get enough pressure competing with myself.

iPhone Coffee Apps

This weekend as I got to the point farthest from my house on my run, I felt a sharp pain in my right knee. I tried to run through it but the pain continued. So I started walking.
As I walked home, I thought of the Caribou Coffee shop just up the street. I could stop and get a coffee since I had to walk anyway. But I didn't have any money with me. All I had was my iPhone, which serves as an iPod while I run, tucked safely into my water bottle belt.
Then I wondered about Apps. Did Caribou Coffee have an app that I could download, load up with money from my bank account and use to buy coffee? I searched apps but couldn't find one. Then I found the Starbucks app. During that rather long walk home with the painful knee, I concentrated on adding the app to my phone. I downloaded it and saw that I needed to enter my username and password, which I already had since I'd registered my Starbucks card before. Next, I added some money to the card, and, Voila! I could use my phone to buy coffee at Starbucks. Unfortunately, the Starbucks was not on my walk home, so I would have to wait before trying it. When I left later that morning to drive to Trader Joe's, I drove through Starbucks and handed over my own cup to fill with coffe and my iPhone as payment.
I'm not sure why it is so exciting to hand over my phone to pay for my coffee. I guess it's just one less thing I have to remember when I leave the house in the morning.
I love technology.