Learning to understand numbers in the real world

Français
#1

In one of my recent live lessons, there was a really cool exercise where the tutor read train station announcements, and the student had to respond in the chat with the train number, the time of departure/arrival, and the track number.

The exercise was great, but I bombed :grin: I’m just really, really slow at processing numbers in “real time”. My tutor was super patient and kind, but I was quite upset with myself for being so slow! I realized that getting a lot more listening and testing experience was the only way I was going to get better.

So today I hacked up a little web page that generates various train announcements in a somewhat realistic voice, and present you with a quiz. You can replay the audio as many times as you like; when you get the right number of the train and the platform, you’ll hear the lovely little SNCF chime and be able to advance to another quiz. I figure if I do 20 of these a day, maybe I’ll have a shot of understanding them for real.

You can try it here: https://nombre.games/

It needs some serious design love (sorry), but I thought I’d share it early in case it’s useful for others. Time of departure is also missing in the quiz; I was just tired of fighting css tonight :grin:

(PS to folks at Chatterbug corp: I hope this doesn’t run afoul of any community rules. If it does, let me know and I’ll delete this post asap. I understand the sensitivity around self-promotion. This isn’t a business or anything; just sharing a study tool, and I’m happy to share any technical details if it’s at all useful.)

11 Likes
#2

This is so cool @mgm!! Congrats on this great idea I’m sure it can help many students!
I love this exercise too, I always try to use a “train station voice” to make it sound more real :sweat_smile:

Two little things about the text of your announcements (if you can edit it?) :
*votre attention (always singular) + partira *de la voie X ou partira *voie X (but not "partira la voie X")

I love that you put the SNCF jingle after each correct answer haha! :star_struck: Actually I recently made a stream about “les voyages en train” in which I talk about a David Gilmour (Pink Floyd!!) song that uses that jingle!!
If you don’t know it, here it is: :upside_down_face:

6 Likes
#3

Thank you so much @Amandine! I really appreciate your feedback, and I just updated the site with the proper announcement grammar that you gave me. I figured I got some of that wrong :joy: so thank you for getting me back on track (pun intended).

Wow, I had no idea about the David Gilmour song sampling the jingle! That’s amazing. The jingle is such a happy little tune - I had my first ride on the TGV in 2011 and immediately fell in love with everything: the train of course, the jingle, and also the sleepy/happy cell phone icons in the traincars:

1920×2560 970 KB

I watched your stream a few minutes ago! It was wonderful - thanks for pointing that out. I recently switched phones and forgot to reinstall Streams, so I’d missed it previously. There’s getting to be a lot of French content on Streams now - awesome! :tada:

4 Likes
#4

Wow! I’m definitely not there yet :sweat_smile:, but this will be super helpful to practice for the exercise you mentioned! I know the German version from my live lessons and I feared something like this might come up in my French LLs as well… :grimacing:

Great job @mgm, thanks for letting other students have a go at it too!

3 Likes
#5

Hi @mgm, I passed this on to the team and we’re super impressed with what you’ve created! What a great idea! Thanks for sharing this with other French learners here in the community. :clap:

Keep it up, you’ll be fluent in French in no time! :fr:

2 Likes
#6

Thanks very much @Toby! I hope it will help you prep for the LL a bit! I’ve noticed a slight improvement in my ability to recognize numbers already, which is exciting…but I still have a long way to go!

2 Likes
#7

Thanks @kjanina - that’s very kind of you! It’s definitely a bit quick-and-dirty, but I plan on polishing it up and improving it soon. I’m going to add other types of numbers as well (cash amounts, phone numbers, measurements, etc) to get more common patterns down.

Thanks for your feedback and support of my learning! I need it :yum:

2 Likes
#8

Wow @mgm I just love it :heart_eyes:!! Especially with the jingle each time, thats awesome :ok_hand:!!

Bravo et… let’s take a TGV for your last miles in A1 :rocket:! Ready? :notes:ta-ta-ta-tata (SNCF jingle) :notes:!

2 Likes
#9

So great @Amandine :star_struck:!

I didn’t know this song!

I don’t know how I feel about it. I love it - I love Pink Floyd - but I’ve been travelling so often with the TGV that my body is expecting to take action whenever I hear it :sweat_smile:!

3 Likes