At the beginning, I gathered up to 20 different resources among which I can cite Assimil, TYS and FSI. I wasn't sure if them would come in handy but I didn't want to take the risk of not having anything to use as my main study material. The first day I reviewed many of them and I concluded that they weren't of no use to me. The only one I liked was Assimil but not for a my beginner level, if I get to study that material in the future I'd probably make a more detailed review about it, or at least the experience I'd probably have with the book.

The last days of 2020 I was in a hurry since I wanted to finish Harmony of Babel by Kato Lomb, before Jan 1st, to have a fresh start and a full immersion into French and I got some interesting ideas in the last hours I was reading that book.

Is mentioned throughout the book about different people that used the translation of texts into their native languages as a form of getting to understand their target languages. The second idea is basically to read a lot.

So this is what I did:

First, I used a Frequency Dictionary to check the most common used words in French. All of them were easy to learn and understand, since they're basic and short terms. Then, I chose the book Silk by Alessandro Baricco to start translating it. It's a pretty short book and I really liked it when I read it in Spanish a couple of months ago, the problem is that Alessandro writes in a quite odd manner, the way he expresses his ideas is really beautiful to me but at the same time it can be a little bit confusing and elaborated. Nevertheless, I really recommend that book.

In January 3rd I decided to drop the book. Then I chose a classic: The Little Prince.

This book catched my interest for two reasons: the author's wife was born in my country (she's supposedly an inspiration for the book) and a couple of years ago I fell asleep while listening to it (audiobook).

I didn't know what to expect so I started translating word for word, just ignoring the short ones since they were easier to understand. Still, it took me a couple of hours to finish the first chapter, which is quite short. The next day I made more progress, and the third day I was able to read more fluently. Every single word felt as a reward and that was amazing to me. Unfortunately I fell ill. I was pronouncing every single new word and I repeated that process for hours, I think I overworked my jaw, in addition to the fact I have some sleep issues, I didn't do anything for the next three days.

In Jan 10th I discovered coffee gives me headaches and I couldn't work properly. The next days I worked diligently, starting at 1 am (It wasn't my decision, I just started waking up at that hour, it's useful in terms of productivity so I can't complain about it). In my seventh day working on the book I went from Chapter 12 to Chapter 24 in the lapse of 7 hours, and I finished the book the next day after 8 days. It took me 37 hours in total.

What did I get from "The Little Prince"?

Confidence, a bunch of words and an amazing feel of accomplishment. Also, the book is quite entertaining, I even started an analysis about the book but I dropped it out.

In Jan 13th I started looking for a new book. A couple of years ago, just as with The Little Prince, I listened to The Stranger by Albert Camus, but I didn't like it. The problem is that The Stranger is a quite recommended novel for beginners in French. So, I just googled "B1/B2 books in French" and I got a 5-books list, since I didn't recognized any other author I picked up a Camus's book without knowing it was about a Pandemic (lol). The book is titled (in French) La Peste.

At the beginning it was tough, I barely advanced 3 pages in 2 hours, I think, I don't remember quite well. At that point I was wondering if it was a bad decission to choose a book that was so far away from my current level. But then, just as with the other book, I started making progress faster. Right now I have an average of 4 to 5 hours per hour.

My progress:

• I don't have the necessity of checking pronounciations, I just check if I have a doubt or if I want to refresh/reassure the correct pronounciation, but I'm able to recognize and predict the way words are pronounced.
• I'm learning a lot of vocabulary, I'm not focusing on learning grammar, I'll eventually put my attention on learning how verbs are conjugated. In fact, I can tell which are the "most important" verbs (the ones that are repeated the most) and I'm sure that will be useful when It comes the time of deciding which verbs I should focus on first.

• Yesterday, I realized I was already able to read fluently without stopping. It felt odd, I even thought "How come I'm reading in French???".

Final thoughts

Thanks to the fact that I can predict the pronounciations I'm saving more time now, I don't focus on breaking down the structure of all the sentences, just the general meaning, if I don't understand something I just skip the word since I'll probably understand it in the future. If a word is difficult I just ignore it, that's why I'm glad I didn't choose a finction/fantasy book, since probably I'd come across a bunch of vocabulary that wouldn't be useful for me. I think I'll keep using this method. This morning I tried to watch some history and geopolitics videos in Youtube and I was glad I was able to understand them (at least the subtitles, I'll need more time to get used to the fast-paced french speech) at least to a 85%. Probably in two weeks I'll make another post if I get more ideas/experiences.

I hope to get a lot of corrections, I want to start writing in English without thinking this much (it took me about an hour), I also hope to have avoided the mistakes I was corrected in before. Thanks for reading!