Topcho

I am going through the same right now... I think I am beyond rusty right now, lol... I think you won't need to start from scratch. Well my plans are - and I think my situations is a bit worse than yours XD is to start reading more books and watch movies in the languages in question. I need to regain my "touch" and "feeling" for the language first. Thanks to some topics here I discovered and downloaded some free apps, I haven't tested them yet, but I hope they will prove useful. So these are my personal plans. It is not much, but it is a start for me. If you still have people around you speaking Spanish, I guess the best thing would be to engage yourslef once again in communicating. Anyway, I am pretty sure you will make it So share anu thips you find on your way to regaining the lost fluency!

Mmm, how about felt? But who would burn something like a cute felt toy, lol? It can be a verb for when I look, and I see and when I am on guard But the one on my wrist is old, silver, leather and scarred.

I just realised I have this downloaded on my tablet as an app! I got it some time ago, right after purchaising it, while simply browsing Google Play in search for different useful or cute applications to fill it. And I love owls, so... the moment I saw Duolingo's cutest green owl - and spoted that it's free - I was downloading it! I still haven't tried working with it tho. I need to pick a language, I will probably choose French. Anyway it sounds like fun!!

Thank you both for explaining it all! I was really wondering about the karma And now I know what the applaud button is for Knowing who awarded us would be cool! But with so many things going around in the forum, I bet there is lot to do, so no pressure! We are happy anyway! :grin:

Hello everyone! Have you taken any of those exams? DELF - Diplôme d'études en langue française and/or DALF - Diplôme approfondi de langue française? When I was in high school I took the DELF levels B1 and B2 and it was a good thing I did it before my last year of High school because I became so busy studying for university entrance exams. The next two levels - C1 and C2 are in the DALF... Have anyone taken those? I've been thinking of trying to pass those after I finish university, but some people keep telling me that I will be good with B2. It is not that I have some plans or anything. Well, I have at least three more years to be too busy studying med to think of another exams lol. Are DELF and DALF good in all the countries where they speak French, or only in France? What are your thoughts of it and the other French language exams? The only other I know is TFI, but DELF sounded better back then

Oh, oh, oh! These news make me so excited! I love the medal system (hah and I am a proud owner of 3 medals already) but I bet the new one will be even greater! And maybe this is not the right place to ask, but what is this karma thing? I saw today that I have a +1 karma which is a good thing I guess, but is this related to the number of posts too?

Wowtgp, why don't you try some adapted works? They can often be great reads for beginners. My first books in French were adaptations of stories by Georges Simenon and novels of Le petit Nicolas series (but I didn't enjoy them that much for they were too childish). But Simenon was great! Or you could try reading in French a book you've already read in your own language. It makes things easier and you can compare both versions. But there are many other members in the forum with greater French skills than mine, so they will probably provide you with better recommendations!

When I was very little, my grandmother was studying it and was buying tons of french magazines. Back then I couldn't even read in my own language, what is left in French! But I loved them all - the French cuisine magazines, the Fashion ones, and most of all, of course, the bandes dessinées like Pif. And later I entered French high school and this is how things went for me.

Oh, I was jus about to post a simialt thread, so I will use any recomendations too! The last books I've read in French were of the Harry Potter series. Since I read them before in Bulgarian (and the last book in English too) they were quite easy but still very interesting at the same time. I loved how they changed and translated all of the names. Well, almost all of them, Rogue as Snape didn't strike me as good one (X-men, anyone?) bur Pouffsouffle as Hufflepuff I loved Another thing I read lately - but rather a rereas, since I love the story so much I keep reading it in different languages - was Cyrano de Bergerac. I had some hard parts, but I imagined the movie and the actors saying the lines so it was ok :grin: Aaand the rest of my French reads is made out of manga and comic books. Yay and long live Asterix - and Inuyasha too. So I will use your reccomendations too I read almost everything except for ultra modern prose

Well I can say my whole online experience is all about this! I connected with people I would never coult otherwise. The fact that I am here in this forum ans speak with you is because I learnt English. I exchanged mail and packages with people from Romania, USA, England, France, Ireland, Portugal. The excitement of revieving a real letter from abroad is like nothing else, and seeing the handwriting of the person on the paper even more! I dare to call some of those people friends, even if I may never meet them.

I have to say that most of time I completely ignore what the spell checkers say. I don't know whym but most of the times the one of my computer simply underlines everything. Evrything. Aah, and it is even more fun when I try to integrate English words into a text in Bulgarian or vice versa. The thing is going crazy. So I never had the time to actually pay attention if the spell checker is set on American English or British. Actually I've been told I that when I write and speak I mix them both together. Shame on me I guess, but I can't really help it. Most of my "practical" English I learnt from reading blogs - and the authors were from all over the world.

This one sounds cool! I have never heard of it. Is it good for Android?

This game sounds fun as well. I played something similar, but without the 5 letter rule. But I would like to try myself in this one as well! Another game we used to play was this: First player gives a word - for example PAINT The second player gives words, starting with each letter from the previous word - like: Pear, anchor, ice, nails, treasure. The next one picks one of the words and so on. More challenging version of the game was when you had to build a sentence containing words starting with the letters. Like, from PAINT - Peaches and Apples on the Island could Not be sold To strangers. For mildly hard level you could mess the order of the letters, but for extra hard you have to follow the right order. This game has resulted in some crazy sentenses!

Sadly no, still sruggling. I don't count my native language Bulgarian of course, so I can say that I know well only one foreign language - English. I am the same like several people who commented before me - while studying, I was pretty good in French and in Russian, but as the years passed I let it drop. Now I am able to read a book in French, and to read and listen in Russian, but I will hardly make a conversation.

So today I was working on my personal craft blog and going through some really old posts and dig up these pictures I stitched them for my French classroom teacher years ago, for her birthday. She was a great teacher and a lovely lady :grin: Anyway, have you done this type of exercises in class? We did so often, and I liked them, especially compared to the ones with verbs and tenses, blah! I also liked the ones with comprehension reading, as the articles were often quite interesting themselves. When preparing for the DELF exam, I remember we worked with one article about the french rock group KYO and I felt pretty proud that I was the only ones who knew the meaning of the word manga By the way, I checked the group later and they turned to be quite good. So, what do you thick of the different types of exercises found in our notebooks that help us learn

I actually don't dare to say I know French. I studied it in high scholl and have my levels, but ever since I got into university, I haven't practiced it. Apart from few articles I read for research, that's it. I am in need to start at least reading and wacthing movies or I will get completely out of track.

Yay, great for you! Your first lesson sounds like fun! :grin: I hope the rest of them will be too, so keep your motivation even through some nasty grammar exercises

Well I wanted to underdstand more, to communicate with different people, to share what I like with people all around the world and to find out more about the things that interest me. I enjoy the opportunity to be able to read a book or article before it's translated or to share tips and become friends with someone from another country. This is why I learn languages. As I stated somewhere else, with small exceptions, for me languages are the means, and not the goal.

I think music can be great tool, as it is something you enjoy. I haven't used it for learning tho. I guess I prefer reading for this, or movies with subs where you can compare what the actors are saoying with the translation. My father however, liked using songs as a learning tool. I collected and printed for him loads of lyrics, mostly old songs and some Poets of the Fall (since I love them) and he proceeded to translate and study them

Yup, Ariel, this is exactly what I had in mind! (tho I'd take The Lonely Ranger for an answer too As for yours, I'd go for... blinds? And here's a new one: I use it for my hobby, which is to sew, But you can find it everywhere in this forum too.

I just started it :laugh:http://linguaholic.com/general-discussion/experimental-game-d/ I hope my clues are good, because I'm getting pretty sleepy right now and kept thinking about book and movie references XD I was even tempted to describe the word like "it's not one of Harry's best friends".

Hello everyone! So, in this discussion a game was proposed - http://linguaholic.com/forum-suggestions-requests/game-section/ :grin: I hope you like it - the rules are pretty simple - it is just a guessing game. One member gives a few clues for a word and the next ones gives his answer along with a new question for the player to follow. Multiple answers are possible, as long as it fits the given description. For example: "It rhymes with a table but is not one of Aesop's works" To this the next player can answer with stable, or label or cable (I bet there are many others) and ask the next one. Rhyming is not necessary, I just used it here like a clue. You can point other things too to navigate the answer, like number of letters, if it is verb, noun, etc. As I said in the original topic, I liked playing this game (tho I never played in any other languages different from Bulgarian, because sometimes you can see unexpected but still correct guesses on the clues you've given. So I start the game: It rhymes with danger but is not always so dangerous So don't you have your mind set, before you've even met. Sorry if my clues are little clumsy, maybe I should have waited till morning (it's past 1 am here ) but I got excited about this game. So you're welcome to jumo in the fun!

Mmm, I don't know the rules about this 5 word game, but how about a guessing game? Like "It rhymes with a table but is not one of Aesop's works" To this the next player can answer with stable, or label or cable (I bet there are many others) and ask the next one. Rhyming is not necessary, I just used it here like a clue. You can point other things too to navigate the answer, like number of letters, if it is verb, noun, etc. I liked this game because sometimes you can see right, yet unexpected answers :grin:

Yes it was part of my education ever from first grade, even if my school profile was never English orientated. But I have to say that in my case it wasn't of much use for me. In this case it wasn't the system's faoult exactly. Just teacher kept coming and going and with everyome we started from the beginning. We started from the alphabet like 7 times, which was quite annoying! Later in high school we had 5 hours of English per weekcompared to 3 to 5 hours of French per day, so the focus was on French. And again, the constant change of teachers...

Oh, I have many but here I want to share one of my most favourites - I have it on my Shelfari profile, above my book shelf: Outside of a dog, book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read. Groucho Marx I love it, especially as it can't be translated in a way to fully keep the play with the words