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Writing problems in French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| miss_mariette Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie Canada Joined 3903 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: Russian*, Ukrainian*, French, English | Message 1 of 6 11 March 2014 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi! I would like to ask an advice about how I should study French now. I’m not sure about my level, so here is my situation. I started to learn French 2,5 years ago from zero. After a year of a language school, I went to a french college (sort of a premedical program). For now, I have finished three semesters of biology, chemistry, math and general classes like philosophy, everything in French. It was hard, however I had good competitive grades. The most difficult part of school is a French class. This is my nightmare, because I have to read a lot of novels and to write essays on them. Usually I score from 75 to 85 out of 100 only because of my ideas and structure, but I always lose 10-15 or sometimes even 20 points on French (20 points is maximum that I can lose). Finally, I felt myself burned out and took a semester off. Now I have 5 months before fall semester starts to master my writing skills. The only thing that I improved in a college is a level of speaking fluency and probably vocabulary. I understand well my professors, I can talk on any topic, however I’m tired of doing mistakes in every single phrase that I say or write. I just feel stuck at the same place with the same stupid mistakes. So here is what I think to do, but honestly I fill myself little bit lost and I’m afraid to waste this precious time.
1. Because of a huge workload at my school I had no time to revise grammar and I forgot the most basic rules. I decided to start from CLE International Grammaire progressive du français (niveau intermédiare). It is too easy and boring for me, but I have already found some gaps in grammar like feminine or masculine endings. I feel myself overwhelmed with rules and everything and, at least, it will be easier at the beginning to learn few exceptions then to memorize long lists of them. Then I will quickly move to niveau avancé, which looks interesting. Finally, I want to work with Grevisse Précis de grammaire français. It doesn’t have exercises so I want to combine it with exercises from my grammar book from Russia. Unfortunately, it has no answers for self-check. 2. Another big problem for me is spelling, especially les accents. I tried to make lists of difficult words, but almost all words are difficult for me and I am never sure about spelling. As a result, I have to spend about 40 minutes out of 4 hours of exam to check almost every single word with a dictionary. And still a lot of mistakes remain because I just don’t see them. I have a book Hachette Cours d’orthographe. It’s old (1979), but I hope it will be useful. Also, one of my French professors suggested me to rewrite some classical novels. I have found some good comments on this method on internet, but I’m afraid to waste my time. Do you really think this might help? 3. Then, my essays don’t sound french, I imagine they sound my native language instead. I think I need to read more, but I have already read few books for my French class and I don’t see a lot of improvement. The majority of my mistakes are les fautes de syntaxe. These include wrong word order, always prepositions and a lot of other stuff. Prepositions in French make me crazy, especially de and à after verbs. How do you use them correctly if there are almost no rules??? Do you know any exercise, book or something else that might help me?... Also, I definitely need to enrich my vocabulary. I started to read Hugo Les misérables for my own pleasure, but I don’t think it is smart now to learn the unknown words from this book. Maybe I should use a manual like Alter Ego since they give an appropriate level of vocabulary? I just feel like I missed good expressions that students usually learn from this kind of manuals. But I even don’t know what level to chose, B2, C1 or something easier. I definitely have gaps in grammar and writing on easiest levels, but B2 looks too boring. C1 is interesting, but it is not focused so much on what I need... 4. Academic writing. Next semester I’ll have 2 courses of French at the same time, one focuses on literature and another one on academic writing. When I had a TOEFL course, I found a lot of very good books like 400 Must-have Words for the TOEFL and other preoperational manuals that are focused on academic writing. Do you know if something like this exists in French? I have already checked DALF and DELF, but it is not exactly what I need, since they set a lot of stress in reading and listening comprehension. Maybe I’ll just find some scientific journals in French to work with… 5. Also, I will write texts and post them on lang-8. I think I will write essays on novels that I read, like I had to do at school. It’s boring, but I noticed that the language that I use on essay writing is different from the language that I use when I write on any other topic. Ok. I’m sorry for this long text. I hope that someone will read it and will be able to help me. I do need your help! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fireballtrouble Triglot Senior Member Turkey Joined 4515 days ago 129 posts - 203 votes  Speaks: Turkish*, French, English Studies: German | Message 2 of 6 11 March 2014 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Start with Alter Ego 3 (B1) even if you are a B2 level learner. That book hosts lots of
great words and studying the set of 3+4+5 will be of great help for your writing skills when you work on texts. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5372 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 3 of 6 11 March 2014 at 5:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Find a competent tutor who can read one of your essays, and start establishing a list of things to correct or to watch for. Don't focus on the text so much as on the general principles that require improvement.
Read, preferably texts of a similar nature to what you'd like to write, but do try to read a variety of materials. Write a lot, while keeping your checklist close by. You need to incorporate these new habits into your writing. Use spellcheck, which will remind you of spelling issues without having to spend time looking it up. Writing on Lang-8 is ok, but it's not usually a good place for large, advanced texts. You'll get few corrections (and very few satisfying explanations). Periodically meet with your tutor to re-evaluate your work and update your checklist. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5382 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 4 of 6 11 March 2014 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Let me offer you a relatively quick response for now and then I'll see if I can come up
with other solutions after I get a chance to think it over. Writing in French is like walking through a minefield - practically everything you write has to agree with something in some way (correct article, correct conjugation, past participle agreement, concordance des temps/modes, etc). It's really hard to just pick this up in a short while. Even after you become good at it, you'll still make quite a few mistakes - I knew native Francophones who could write an essay in English with no mistakes after just a few years of learning yet still couldn't do so in French. Also, the standards of writing in French are pretty high. Is there no support for foreign students at your school? It seems like there should be tutoring/FLE support (français langue étrangère) available to you. If there is, definitely take advantage of it! If not, see if you can find a tutor and/or a proofreader. As a native Russian speaker, I imagine you could find someone who'd be interested in an exchange. It's going to take a lot of practice. Try doing lots of short compositions targeting different aspects of language and different types of arguments so you get them finished with feedback quickly. There are lots of materials out there to help and it looks like you've already found one. I'll need time to assemble a list of specific resources but look for some of the following publishers: CLE, PUG, and Bescherelle. If it's possible to take some time to focus more on FLE study before continuing in your major, that could help a lot. Lastly, as far as reading to help your writing, you should be reading a lot of nonfiction, news, special interest magazines, etc. Fiction is fine, but I don't think it will directly transfer to your academic writing. Edited by sctroyenne on 11 March 2014 at 7:05pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| miss_mariette Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie Canada Joined 3903 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: Russian*, Ukrainian*, French, English | Message 5 of 6 12 March 2014 at 6:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you for an advice! I will definitely use this book, but I didn't understand what the set of 3+4+5 means.
Thank you, Arekkusu! This is the most obvious thing I need to do, but somehow I didn't think about that. Definitely need a tutor, I hope it won't be too expensive for me. You gave me also another good idea. In the anthology that we use at school there is often a part called Présentation de l'oeuvre . Probably I can work with more of this, because this is exactly the level of vocabulary and syntaxes that I need to use on my essays. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| miss_mariette Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie Canada Joined 3903 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: Russian*, Ukrainian*, French, English | Message 6 of 6 12 March 2014 at 7:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
You are so right that French is like a minefield! I know it will take a lot of time and a lot of effort to learn it, and even after that I will still make some mistakes, but I am just tired of making mistakes in every single sentence. There is a tutor service at my school and I used it every semester. Now, since I took a semester off to work on my French, I don't have an access to it anymore. As Arekkusu suggested, I'll find a tutor outside of school, if it will not be too expensive for me. Unfortunately, even when I had an access to tutor service, I still didn't benefit from it a lot because of the workload of my program. That's why I took a pause and now I'm ready to work on my writing :) I will highly appreciate your suggestions of books! I have gathered a lot of grammar manuals and now I feel myself little bit lost. I have several Bescherelle books like l'Orthographe pour tous, La Grammaire pour tous, Bescherelle Junior, l'Art de conjuguer (I use it very often, great book). I also have a lot of other grammar reference books, but none of them give exercises except of one Russian edition, Cours d'ortographe of Hachette and CLE series. I stopped on Grevisse grammar, because it is very complete and because I didn`t want to dash between tens of references. Do you think this is a bad idea? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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