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Curing my Franglais symptoms and advises | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5844 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 1 of 9 26 April 2009 at 1:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Dear Dr. Alexander Arguelles,
My name is Junping and I am a student studying at National University of Singapore. My native language is Chinese (Mandarin) and I have a level of command of English. My English was acquired through the educational system of Singapore, where I had been studying since I was seven years old. In the last three years, I have studied French, in order to prepare my current exchange program in France. My writing and reading skills in French are excellent, but I still could not communicate very well with the locals, because I have problem speaking and listening. In my spare time, I have picked up German, Russian and Japanese. The main reason why I am writing this letter is I am getting very frustrated with my incapability to communicate orally in French. Despite the facts that I have a good knowledge of grammar and vocabulary and that I have been in France for more than 3 months, people cannot understand what I intended to say and I have difficulty understanding them as they speak very quickly. My professor (in my current French university) said that I have the ‘Franglais’ symptoms. The characteristics of ‘Franglais’ symptoms include: 1. wrong pronunciations of the vowels of ‘e’ and ‘u’ as ‘é’ and ‘ou’ 2. wrong pronunciations of words which are similar in both French and English 3. direct translation of English grammatical structure to French in speaking (I rarely have this problem in writing!) 4. forgetting the ‘liaisons’, the ‘élisions’ and the silence of ‘e’ in some cases (those who leant French will understand this) I think that the reason why I have such a wide gap between my written and oral skills in French is due to the way I acquired my French back in my home university. The course emphasise much more on vocabulary and grammar, in which we have lots of exercises and essays to do. On the other hand, there was lesser time on oral and listening practise. I had spent more time on grammar, as I thought it was easy for me to rely on my vast knowledge of English to understand the French vocabulary. (English and French shared 35% of words, if I am not wrong) As a result of my work, I managed to have a strong foundation in grammar and vocabulary. We have a large class of about 30 students per session and 6 hours of teaching per week. Due to the large class, it was difficult for the professor to pay attention to the problems of each student. Some of my classmates could speak well, but they have problems with orthography. The others, like me have caught the Franglais symptoms Prof Arguelles, how will you suggest me to cure these Franglais symptoms? I have tried to use drill methods, but they didn’t work. I got bored with them as I have already known all the words and structures they presented to me. It seems like a waste of time to ‘restart’ from the elementary course and I have already a lot of commitments at hand. But, there is a very strong desire to pull my oral skills to match with my written skills as I want to maximise my immersion here in France. Since I am now at Europe, I have found quite a lot of materials in various languages. I have found Spanish, Dutch, Italian and Hungarian materials. I would like to start on Spanish or Italian, but given my situation, is it advisable for me to add them? I hope that I can cure my Franglais symptoms first and avoid the mistakes that I have made when studying French.For the three other languages, I have studid based on the advises found in this forum and they are progressing very well. Edited by QiuJP on 26 April 2009 at 1:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sgt.Pepper Newbie Ukraine Joined 5698 days ago 38 posts - 32 votes Speaks: Ukrainian* | Message 2 of 9 26 April 2009 at 4:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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- Edited by Sgt.Pepper on 16 March 2010 at 3:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5844 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 3 of 9 28 April 2009 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | ||
Hi,I have went through the videos and I think it will be hard to use shadowing for my situations due to the following reasons: I already have a very good foundation in the grammar and vocabulary of French and I can understand all the words and structure of French of the assimil materials. I would not like to shadow a story book, which I feel it is a waste of time. I would rather like to read books on philosophy , science and non fiction books. It is almost impossible to find a computer science audio book in French, which I will be very thankful about, so that I can improve my understanding on what my professor here is really speaking. I find my problem similiar to what Prof Arguelles have for his Icelandic. It was mentioned that his pronunciation of Icelandic is based on old Norse, which results in lots of criticisms that his Icelandic doesn't sound right in the video he made (for introducing icelandic). His problem is mentioned in his video of Accent formation in Foreign languages part 3. I had somehow embedded an incorrect pronuncation in my mind when I was forcing myself to acquire as many vocabulary and grammar in order to pass my tests in the university. I had little or did not speak or listen to French as I was doing this and I could have hence relied on English phonetics to remember them. Now, I can read a newspaper and write an essay of 4000 words in French and yet I find my oral French to be not much better than a high beginner.What is the best way to delete the wrong pronunciation in my mind and plant the correct one? Edited by QiuJP on 28 April 2009 at 6:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5844 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 4 of 9 28 April 2009 at 6:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here is a self evaluation on my oral skill.I have a score of 0-3 out of 10 in terms of accent formation in French. This scale is based on Prof's video "Accent Formation in Foreign Languages Part 4: Perspective".
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Turbo Tetraglot Newbie Hong Kong Joined 5709 days ago 18 posts - 18 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, French, Mandarin Studies: Spanish, German, Japanese | Message 5 of 9 30 April 2009 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't get to speak French very often. When I do, people invariably comment that I have a good accent. And the reason I have a good accent is that soon after I started learning French, I had the good fortune to have read a book on French phonetics. In all likelihood, I wouldn't have noticed on my own that when you pronounce the French 'd' sound, the tip of your tongue has to touch the back of the upper teeth. IMHO, for an anglophone adult learner to have good French pronunciation, a course in French phonetics would be a big help. I know that you don't like to do drills but I can't see how you can overcome the problem any other way. Better suffer the drills for a short time than forever being unable to speak French properly.
JP, where are you in France? I have checked the Alliance Francaise Paris site and they offer a Cours de phonétique. Perhaps you might want to check it out. http://www.alliancefr.org/article.php3?id_article=467 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5844 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 6 of 9 30 April 2009 at 11:21pm | IP Logged | ||
Thank you for your advice. I am currently at Toulouse (Southern part of France). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5844 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 7 of 9 30 April 2009 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Today, something funny happened to me during a conversation. I was siting with a Spanish student during lunch with my friend. We tried to maintain the conversation in French, so that I could improve my speech. All of a sudden, the Spanish student approched and asked if I can speak Spanish. I was taken by surprise and asked him why did he think that. it turn out that as I was speaking quickly, I pronounced the common words such as tu and de as in Spanish! This was the problem that the Spanish student have when he was learning the French language and hence he think that I have the same problem as well........
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7245 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 8 of 9 02 May 2009 at 8:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Dear Junping,
The advice given above about the value of shadowing and/or a phonetic course of instruction during the actual learning process is spot on. However, at your more advanced level, with your ingrained habits, I am not sure how much self-correction you can hope for. As you have been in the country for more than three months and are still seriously challenged to engage in conversation despite complete and correct structural knowledge and an adequate vocabulary, I see no recourse for you other than truly professional correction. Even going to your regular teacher for assistance in his office hours will probably not be sufficient. You must find a trained phonetician or specialist in accent reduction and work on your difficulties, point by point, under his or her guidance. Alexander Arguelles 1 person has voted this message useful |
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