maxshroomtv

[jolly thorn]

Please be patient

Our volunteers look into many questions every day; sometimes it takes them a little while to answer.

Pro tip: you can rename the thread title with `.tr <thread name>`

Make it descriptive, including relevant context, but also to the point. This way you improve your chances of getting a more relevant and specific answer.

[blissful prawn]

What might be throwing you off is that it uses passé simple, which even most natives don't know how to fully conjugate (though they can understand it fine)
It might be helpful to get a general idea of how passé simple is conjugated (no memorization needed, but just familiarizing yourself with common verbs and what they look like)
Try a few different methods and see what feels the most comfortable to you. Feel free to post in here if you're ever stumped on anything specific, and we can help you pick it apart. And remember that it's okay to not understand everything

[subtle sable]

tysm! i knew abt the existence of passé simple but i thought it wouldnt happen in a kids book for some reason? idk

[blissful prawn]

For the most part it's used anytime a book is in third person + in the past. Books written in first person are more likely to avoid it, and obviously present tense stories won't really have it, but passé simple gets introduced pretty early on to native speakers

[swift geyser]

Basically, if your book is not first person nor written in the present, the passé simple will appear

[blissful prawn]

Lmfao

[swift geyser]

so close

[subtle sable]

that makes sense actually, tysm for explaining/warning me!!

[stable walrus]

for me a bilingue would usually be for me to read in the target language and if I get stuck occasionally; to refer to the equivalent English

personally I was never able to work with bilingues though in my early reading experiences

and by a bilingue, I mean the type of books that you have there

it's like learning how to ride a bike and asking a friend to be around and sometimes even hold the bike for you (but they always let go 🥲)

[alpine kernel]

I just want to mention to @subtle sable that I took maybe the exact same approach a month or so ago and had a similar experience lol. I think the thing about kids books is that, usually, there's a parent there to explain a little XD Although that is a great approach and I highly recommend it. A paragraph is a ton! Even just a sentence a day is a pretty fun time imo.

Anyway, it's gotten a lot easier for me as I've developed the sort of "vision" to see what's likely a subject, verb, object, plural, modifier, etc. to figure out word-by-word what information is coming. So as you learn Je/tu/vous, que/quand/qui, ce, se, mon, ma, etc. All this grammatical linkage. Once you are a bit more familiar with the super common "utility" grammatical linkage words, it gets a lot easier. "I don't understand" -> "I understand exactly what they're saying except the literal definition of these two pairs of words that I think are a noun and an adjective"

so basically, I think your approach will be infinitely more effective when you can tell vaguely which words are performing which function. Because certain words will come up constantly in every story and others are evocative of more specific ideas