French learning and recent update

Some mini updates of the week first: it was a crazy one! It started with a three-day strike in Brussels and almost the whole city was in pause. But it ended rather great: my bestie and I watched the Zootopia 2 which is probably the best animation movie this year and we had enormous fun!

Black Friday still a thing?

And of course, it's the black Friday and great shopping season too! This year I'm rather kind of proud of myself as I only got myself a scarf during this rushing pushy shopping seasons. As I decided previously, I would like to stop my impulsive shopping habit and save as much as I can.

After calming myself from all those flashy jumpy ads, I found many stores just increased the price beforehand and then did the discount --> which means the actual price didn't change much. The last year me would definitely jump in the ads and break my credit card. But happily I managed to resist the temptation and only got a scarf, which I will probably return if not matching my clothes.

I still have a long way to go to reform my shopping habit, but I'm happy that I made some progress!

Recording myself for French pronunciation

This is an old technique I used when I was learning English and preparing my speech. The steps are simple:

1. For each paragraph, I hear the native speaker read it
2. I record myself to read the paragraph, during this reading I'd know clearly which words are difficult for me
3. Compare the native speaker's pronunciation and mine, sentence by sentence, and re-read it after comparison
4. Finally, read the whole paragraph again. (Sometimes I get lazy and not do it tho)

The idea is to correct the pronunciation bit by bit, rather than finishing reading the article. Sometimes I also lose patience but it's important to keep in mind that it's not finishing reading the article matters but the process.

So far, I just re-started this technique and I already benefit a bit from the pronunciation. I also found some of my old recordings which bring me back to the old time, it's an amazing feeling and I appreciate my old self worked on something so hard and seriously XD