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Looking for the best way to learn French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Skvoznyak Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4234 days ago 6 posts - 86 votes  Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: French, German | Message 17 of 19 24 April 2013 at 5:03am | IP Logged | |||||
Having read all of that, I think I'd join you in recommending Assimil to anyone, even if they had to buy a used course to fit their budget. Had I known all of this when I was studying French it would have been my first choice. I'd probably still be studying it today had I started with it. One exception, though, would be as follows:
For a "student" like this, the only course I've ever seen that fits the bill is Teach Yourself Beginner's French - or, based on TY's recent renaming of their entire menu of courses, the level 3 course of the available five. This is the one I was talking about where the first ten lessons give you a limited foundation and the second ten lessons can be taken in any order (and lessons unnecessaqry to you can be skipped). I remember skipping a two or three of the second ten because at the time I had no need for "At the Hotel," "At the Post Office" or whatever it was that I skipped. Strangely, for such a student who wants solid survival travel skills and nothing more, if they get through TY Beginner's French (a.k.a. level 3) and feel they need just a little more without a lot of grammar, I'd recommend they follow up not with TY French (level 4), but by stepping BACK to the one-disc TY Instant French (level 2). This is one of those six-weekers which is large on conversation, and I found that a lot of the phrases I'd need ("I work with computers," "I come from New York," "I have one brother and one sister," whatever) were phrased exactly as I would use them in real life. It's as if half the course was written with me in mind specifically. Still to this day, on those rare instances where I wind up speaking French to a native, at least three quarters of what I say comes straight from that book, verbatim, and it always fills my conversational needs quite admirably. It's pretty eerie how that's worked out for me, actually. But for the serious student, EMK has completely sold me on Assimil. BTW, it's one thing to know a lot about the language, but knowing that much about the COURSE? Talk about impressive. Great post, EMK. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5208 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 18 of 19 24 April 2013 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
Great post as usual Emk. Interesting background re. Cherel, and apt exercise analogies. I think you're spot on about the three types of people for whom Assimil doesn't work - I suspect I fall into #2, (though there are certainly elements of #1 as well in me!), which is why I really liked it for French (for which I'd already had prior instruction in the grammar), and became stalled with Italian (I kept flipping ahead to see the grammar explanations, then borrowed another book with explicit charts and such for the grammar). And yes, re. the importance of consistency (something I have to keep working on): to repeat my quote from AJATT on your excellent "30 Days to Self-Discipline" thread, "Many people overestimate what they can get done in a day, and underestimate what they can get done in a year". Edited by songlines on 24 April 2013 at 3:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7143 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 19 of 19 24 April 2013 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This thread contains a lot of useful information and real wisdom from some really valuable forum members. I won't try to compete with or supplement their excellent advice, but do want to add some comments on some of the lesser-known beginners' materials suggested for French.
I just bought a copy of Beginner's French Made Easy, recommended by Skvozynak, and think it's a very user-friendly way to start with French. In some ways' it strikes me as a sort of "Assimil French Light" which has a bit more of a grammatical approach and shorter dialogues, but still has the facing French and English that Assimil has. It's a bit more of a "book", though, and might be a good starter book for people seeking a more systematic approach than Assimil. For one thing, it provides phonetic transcriptions for all the words and phrases introduced, and in two forms at that. Thus the pronunciation for the French word "salut" is given both in the IPA as [saly] and in a cockamamie English-based transcription as "sahlew". So it strikes me as a very good way to learn a lot of basic grammar and some useful vocabulary, and also to match the French pronunciation to the written forms of the words and phrases it contains. And used copies, as mentioned above, are pretty cheap from Amazon. Luke's suggestion of http://frenchbyfrench.com/ was also quite welcome. With 150 lessons in the beginning and intermediate section, it also resembles Assimil, with short French and parallel English texts, audio of the French, and short grammar and vocabulary notes. The price is right as well... The lessons in both of these resources are very "short and sweet", and appear amenable to advancing in "baby steps", just a little each day, which has always been my preferred approach. So while in agreement with the general support expressed for Assimil, I'm also very grateful for the tipoffs to these other resources as well. Edited by daristani on 24 April 2013 at 11:06pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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