Sep. 8th, 2004

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Quitting time rolled around as a surprise yesterday, and as I was giving serious thought to rolling up my stuff and making like a shepherd, Galina called to say her real estate office was remodeling and would we like to, um, adopt some of the, um, "debris" (partitions, desks, filing cabinets).

So, I stopped by her office on the way home.

After dinner, I did some "extracurricular" translation from The Office. Natalie came home as I was doing that work, and we caught up briefly afterward. Then she and Galina started watching the latest installment of The Amazing Race while I finally put the SmartFrench CD to work.

The first monologue I worked with on the beginner's level very nearly sank my confidence when I started out by playing the video. Even taking the obvious cuts in continuity into account, my comprehension level flitted near the bottom of the scale, as I well and truly had little idea what the talking head was saying.

The method of the approach is to listen to what is said several times while looking at a transcript of the audio. Along the way, the narrator points out some details to be aware of (e.g., how "il y a" -- which one learns as three syllables -- is often pronounced "ja," leaving off the "il" and combining the other two syllables).

There would appear to be about 30-35 such dialogs on the disk. Progress will be perceptible only after doing the exercises for a while, I guess. Or not.

Cheers...

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