Bonjour!
Ca va? Je suis tres bien, merci! Je voudrais parler avec vous sur apprendre à parler français.
Okay, basically...I am learning to speak French at the moment and I thought I would share this journey with you kind folks?
First off before I forget, can any of my readers speak French? If so, please comment below and encourage me / practice with me if you so wish. I need all the help I can get!
I have wanted to be bi-lingual for a long time now and always feel ashamed that the Brits have such a reputation for not having / bothering to learn other languages "because everyone speaks English already", it's lazy and I don't like it!
A pipe dream of my husband and I's at the moment is to "one day move to France and live in a gorgeous chateau in the French Alps". However far fetched this seems at the moment I believe it is important for everyone to have dreams and goals that they wish to work towards, this is ours. Ergo, the need to speak French has arisen.
With fluency in French being our ultimate goal we have set ourselves several tasks to carry out which will hopefully help us achieve this:
- We are attending an evening beginners and improvers fast track French course at an adult college.
- We are also using the Michel Thomas Total French CD course to speed up our learning.
- We also purchased an Easy French Reader book to again, add more to our learning each week.
- I have purchased one of my all time favourite books "Twilight" part un which is called "Fascination" en France. I figured that knowing the plot and kind of being able to predict what I am reading would help. I am going to read a couple of pages a day armed with a dictionary and figure that by the end of the book, surely my French will be good, right?
Short from being able to completely immerse ourselves and live in France for a year and only speak to French people we really are doing all we can!
I am on the third Michel Thomas audio CD out of seven and it certainly gets you talking from the word go. He gives you lots of rules that will allow you to speak hundreds of words immediately just because the endings are pronounced differently. For example, any word in English ending in ary is pronounced aire, necessary is necessaire *said with French accent*.
If you would like and find it useful, let me know in the comments below and I shall provide reviews and updates on the course as I go through the CD's?
This is all I have to report at the moment and please please wish me luck, I need it!
What methods have you tried to make yourself fluent in a language? What has worked for you?
I used to be a French teacher! I spent every summer in France when I was a kid because my dad worked out in the Alps so I'm pretty fluent. It's a bit rusty now when I speak, because I don't very often, but my understanding is fine and my accent comes back when I get going.
ReplyDeleteI definitely recommend the reading a book you already know - don't spend ages looking things up either, just read and absorb. Also, I recommend watching films/tv series if you can. I don't know if you like detective/crime thrillers, but Spiral is on BBC 4 every so often and is wonderful, if you like that sort of thing.
No way that is so cool! We love the rhone alpes area!
DeleteProblem with reading the book is i dont understand most the words, how much would you recommend i look up? Worried its a waste of time if i only know one word in 10?
We have tried watching french films and shall try to find some french programs. Again, do you think it matters if i dont understand much?
Think i need to find a skype buddy that can speak french & english that can help practice with me, so want to get fluent & willing to put in the hours.
Hm... I think with books it depends how well you know the book in the first place. Children's books can also be really good - I had some translations of Winnie the Pooh and things like that when I was learning.
DeleteI think with tv and films, if you have subtitles to start with, you'll realise after a while that you're understanding bits before the subtitle comes up.
Thank you so much for the great tips. It is very difficult but we are determined and I already surprise myself when I can think of saying something and know how to say it in French, it is very exciting!
DeleteI was just thinking today - do you like musicals? If you do, the French soundtrack to one you already know well is amazingly helpful. I listened to the French Les Miss soundtrack very intensively, and singing along to songs I already knew (so knew the meaning even if I didn't know all the individual words) was great for my vocab and pronunciation, especially the speed of pronunciation too. I did the same when I was learning German, the German versions of Miss Saigon and Les Mis were really helpful.
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