Sin_Nombre Newbie United States Joined 5127 days ago 19 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French
| Message 1 of 11 14 March 2011 at 10:40am | IP Logged |
Simply put, I'd like to know everybody's opinions on the best methods for attaining fluency (both in speaking/listening and reading/writing) of French. Whether it be Assimil, flash cards, L-R, eating French food... anything, or any combination thereof. I've my theories, but I don't pretend to be an expert. Your thoughts?
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accentreduction Newbie United States accentreduction Joined 5000 days ago 9 posts - 5 votes
| Message 2 of 11 14 March 2011 at 7:19pm | IP Logged |
Think in French when you have learned it well. Translation in your brain can become confusing after certain points.
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Snowball Diglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 5976 days ago 1 posts - 3 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: French, Norwegian
| Message 3 of 11 24 March 2011 at 3:40pm | IP Logged |
I've found that the following worked quite well for me:
1. Study the basic grammar.
2. Read a book you have already read in your native language.
3. Only use your dictionary to look up words you find impossible to decipher.
4. Think in the language as much as possible.
5. When you've finished reading, try to listen to the audio book or (simple) songs.
6. Start working on your writing and speaking skills when you feel you should. It depends on your priorities, I think, although I suspect starting immediately is more effective.
This is how I unconsciously learned English :). I think it works so well because it is a very natural method - you don't force yourself to memorise things literally but develop a kind of "instinct".
Edited by Snowball on 24 March 2011 at 3:42pm
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FrostBlast Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5091 days ago 168 posts - 254 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Icelandic
| Message 4 of 11 25 March 2011 at 12:28am | IP Logged |
For me, the idea is to get enough grammatical theory to be able to decipher simple very simple texts, and then read as much as I can, feeling my way around until I get a sense of the language's structure. From that point on, vocabulary is only a matter of reading some more, and some more again, and again. At that point, even if there are some grammatical concepts you were missing at first, you'll grasp them fast enough while reading. That's how I learned what little swedish I know. I never had a single course, but I can read the news with reasonable ease, with only 1 word every 1-2 sentence that I don't understand - but they're easy to figure out from the context.
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amethyst32 Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5641 days ago 118 posts - 198 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, French
| Message 5 of 11 25 March 2011 at 2:35am | IP Logged |
I started learning French at the beginning of this month with the Michel Thomas Basic Course, and I'm now doing Assimil Sin Esfuerzo. I bought a small grammar book that gives lots of examples, which I like. My "language routine" is as follows;
- adding verbs and sentences to Anki / reviewing cards whenever they're due (I'm in the habit of doing this anyway)
- reading and listening to the audio book + pdf of L'Ètrange Cas du Dr Jekyll et Mr Hyde
- passive listening to French radio or podcasts
- reading a short newspaper article
I also want to find some music and a maybe a good French TV show to watch regularly. When I'm about 9 months or so into it, I'll start looking for language exchange buddies. HTH :-)
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jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5410 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian
| Message 6 of 11 25 March 2011 at 2:21pm | IP Logged |
amethyst32 wrote:
I started learning French at the beginning of this month with the Michel Thomas Basic Course, and I'm now doing Assimil Sin Esfuerzo. I bought a small grammar book that gives lots of examples, which I like. My "language routine" is as follows;
- adding verbs and sentences to Anki / reviewing cards whenever they're due (I'm in the habit of doing this anyway)
- reading and listening to the audio book + pdf of L'Ètrange Cas du Dr Jekyll et Mr Hyde
- passive listening to French radio or podcasts
- reading a short newspaper article
I also want to find some music and a maybe a good French TV show to watch regularly. When I'm about 9 months or so into it, I'll start looking for language exchange buddies. HTH :-) |
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I've been listening to Carla Bruni's music lately and while it isn't exactly to my taste, her vocals are very clear and easy to make out. Music feels a bit bland to my ears but she does have quite a nice sounding voice. She doesn't really sing so much and it sounds more like talking. Quite good for language learners I suppose.
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cspot78 Newbie United States Joined 5488 days ago 2 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 7 of 11 25 March 2011 at 3:32pm | IP Logged |
If you enjoy jazz... Stacey Kent: Raconte-moi
I find her vocals clear as well.
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Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5373 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian
| Message 8 of 11 25 March 2011 at 4:17pm | IP Logged |
I've identified these steps that I follow in my quest for fluency:
1- Filtered Input
2- Meaningful Habit Formation
3- Monitoring/Updating
You can read the full post here.
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