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Memorizing French Paragraph
FrostyAlphaWolf
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I have to memorize a kind of lengthy paragraph for an oral exam, but no matter what I try nothing seems to be working too well. I'm far from being fluent in French, so it's basically turning into memorizing a list of words I'm not familiar with. I tried taking just the verbs of each sentence and trying to make a phrase, but then I can never remember what the rest of the sentence is that goes with it, and it's only worse when I try to do the same thing with the verbs in English. I've also tried learning one sentence at a time and repeating it, then moving to the next one, but I can get as far as maybe 3 sentences (of about 15) before I totally blank or make some crazy error. Is there some method that would make this easier?
I should mention we're allowed to have an outline with us as we present, but it can't be "too detailed" or have more than 10 words in English.
I should mention we're allowed to have an outline with us as we present, but it can't be "too detailed" or have more than 10 words in English.
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Was the paragraph presented to you or did you somehow compose it yourself? My last three oral exams, myself and a partner had to put together a dialogue and it always centered around words we knew. Why are there words in there that you don't know? What's the paragraph exactly? I'm curious to see it.
Alors, d'habitude le matin, je reveillèr á sept heures. Je me leve ensuite aussi. Apres je me leve, je me douche et m'habille. Je mange le petit-dejeuner, ensuite je me brosse mes dents et me rase mon façade. A huit heures, je pars pour l'ecole. Habituellement je vais à la classe, mais parfois je vais au travail. Apres mon classe premiere, je recontre mon ami et dejeuner manger. Apres dejeuner, je vais a la classe pour trois heures, puis travailler. A cinq heures, je promene a mon appartement. Apres mon arrivee, je preparer le dîner pendant que je regarde la tele. Alors, je fais les devoirs pour un heure. Plus tard, je joue un jeu video avec mon amis; il est toujours tres amusant. Avant je couche, je me lave mon visage. A vers 1 heure du matin, je va dormir.
It's not so much they're verbs I don't know, it's just that it's so much easier to memorize things when they're in a language I use every day. I'm only in second level French so I'm not really used to creating entire conversations yet. I guess the main problem isn't the verbs themselves, but trying to remember to keep them in agreement with each other and keep it flowing semi-smoothly.
I'm fairly fluent in french, but I'd have no way of memorizing that past the first few lines - it would probably help if it was written properly? (no offense, obviously) Or would that be cheating?
We don't have to read exactly what we wrote; since we can't even have more than a basic outline, a lot of it will be making it up as I go. The main idea for writing out this section was to get a good idea of what I wanted to say, in the right order, and make sure I understand my subjects, direct objects and whatnot. I was thinking I'll just list the verbs on my outline and refer to that to make sentences as I go along.
I don't know, for mine, it's just repetition. Over, and over, and over.
Edit: Also yeah, it's definitely comprehensible. I understood the bulk of it and haven't studied French in years.
And yeah, the grammar is rough, but if you're just starting French that's not entirely unexpected and you'll definitely get better with practice. If they're asking you to present something orally it's more likely they'll be evaluating your conversation for accent and speaking skills, so saying this paragraph out loud often is really important.
The ones I've taken, the grammar is what they're really looking at right now. My teacher told me that while they do want a good accent now, that really doesn't come into play grading wise until the 3rd year. Enunciation becomes key then.
Like I said, we aren't turning in a hard copy so accents and silent grammar errors don't make much of a difference at this point, it's more about showing we understand what these verbs mean and how to make them agree. I think the main thing she'll be looking for is proper sentence structure and pronunciation.
It's not cheating to get help on this assignment, the only thing she told us we can't do is add in words or phrases that we don't know, and she may ask us to explain parts as a test. Outside that, we're welcome to try it out with a french-speaker to get opinions on what can be improved. If you think it'll be easier to memorize Apex, I welcome any corrections.
Haha, I went back and fixed that as soon as I saw it. I keep mixing that up, I guess because facade sounds like face?
I tried to keep it intact as much as possible
When he's talking about playing the video game, should that "a" have an accent grave over it? So that it doesn't look like a form of avoir?
Also, why all the "Je me"?
Yes, it should have an accent on it. There's a couple more mistakes in there, but as it's an oral presentation it obviously won't matter.
As for the 'Je me', it's because the verb has no 'target' without it. "je me rase" and "je rase" are equivalent to "I shave myself" and "I shave"
I know I'm fairly new to the whole French thing, but does it need a target? Can't the reader just assume by the context?
You'd have to imply the target otherwise:
Je me brosse les dents et je me rase.
Becomes
Je bross mes dents et je rase mon visage.
Thinking about it, wouldn't he want to use the imparfait when doing a narrative like this? J'etais bres mes dents?
Normally yea, but the assignment was to specifically use present tense. We had a choice between present, imparfait, and passe-compose, and we decided present would be the easiest.
French is a bitch to learn, but I love it.
If this was a one-time retelling of what happened, yes. But this sounds like a 'tell us what happens for you on an average day' kind of assignment, in which case you would use the present. French verb tenses are a goddamn nightmare anyway, so stick to the present! =D
"Je me brossait les dents" btw, Esh.
Thanks for all the help guys, hopefully I can get some kind of system down for this thing. I've already come to terms that it'll be an embarrassing failure, but as long as I get it done I'm happy.
My bad, but it's brossais. Brossait is the il/elle/on form.
Like
-me reveille
-me leve
-prend
-m'habille
-etc
so all you have to do is study your verb vocab and fill in a sentence around them
I'm pretty sure it's "brossait" much like, despite it being super confusing for native English speakers to grasp, "tu me manques" means "I miss you."
No, the conjugation for il/elle/on is brossait. Brossais is Je and Tu. I'm staring at my French textbook.
Also, here.
I guess I haven't gotten that far yet. Can you explain? Is it because he's say "Je me" that switches that way?
EDIT: Funnily enough, next week we're learning about this. I don't really see anything about changing the conjugation though.
I will be the first to admit that I'm terrible at writing French, so it's very possible that I'm wrong.
But, the way that reflexive verbs work (which is exactly what the "je me" bit is all about) if I remember correctly is that it's almost as if you are configuring the pronoun in terms of a third person singular verb. I usually try to keep it straight in my head with the example that I gave earlier - "tu me manques" means "I miss you." Notice that "manques" gets the second person (tu) conjugation. Reflexive verbs are kinda weird because we don't have a solid English cognate for thinking about them, much like it takes us a while to realize that "je mange" can mean "I eat," "I do eat," and "I am eating" depending on the context.
"You I miss". It is a weird way to look at things. Like saying "Nous le lui donnons" --> "We give it to them". We just learned how to speak succinctly and the order of the nouns.
I understand Manquer being conjugated that way, because it's referencing Tu.
Succinct is good for passing tests but if you actually want to speak French then you'll have to work on word play. When I took French I was good with pronouncing words and mimicking the accent. So good that my professor wanted to fast track me into AP level classes the following year. The only negative thing she had to say was that using quick and accurate language with no embellishment made me sound like I was always talking to a police officer or lawyer.
As for the memorization, the only thing I can tell you is to practice your ass off. The trick that helped me was to literally play around with the language. As in work out how to explain what you are doing, what you did, or what you plan to do later. Once I thought I had it worked out I would check the textbook or ask some of our foreign exchange students if what I'd come up with made sense. It's also a good way to learn new verbs, especially if you're doing something that can't be explained away with 'je fait______'. Once it becomes natural, you can just rattle it off the same as if you were speaking English. It just takes a while.
Oh good. Because I hate speaking succinctly. I understand it and have no problem with it, but it's just...meh.