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Best program for studying French? | ||
Tags: Language Program | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| dandas Pentaglot Newbie Spain Joined 4821 days ago 11 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English, Spanish, Russian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian Studies: German, Swedish, Sign Language, French | Message 9 of 14 10 November 2011 at 11:55am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for your answer Canntear.
I`ll definitelly try it and see the result. Around the forums people are saying mostly good things about MT, so I guess its worth trying. Thanks again! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ljones29 Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4799 days ago 35 posts - 59 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Arabic (Written), Greek | Message 10 of 14 10 November 2011 at 2:40pm | IP Logged |
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This is my first post here!! Normally I'm a lurker, but I wanted to weigh in and give
you my advice. Personally, my favorite French Resources are Pimsleur and FSI. I know Pimsleur gets a bad rap around here sometimes, but for me it's perfect. My vision is poor, so I prefer using audio methods. Plus, I've never forgotten any of the words I learned through Pimsleur. I also wanted to add that I love internet resources like french.about.com. It's just a website with a lot of grammatical information. I use it to fill in the gaps of things that I've studied elsewhere that I have a feel for but don't fully understand. It's very good for grammar. I didn't care too much for Michel Thomas. Sadly - I thought I was going to love it. I have MT Advanced and I find the students to be distracting and his pronunciation to be a bit confusing. Anyway, good luck on your French journey. It's a beautiful language. I hope you enjoy it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| dandas Pentaglot Newbie Spain Joined 4821 days ago 11 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English, Spanish, Russian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian Studies: German, Swedish, Sign Language, French | Message 11 of 14 11 November 2011 at 3:34pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Ljones29, thanks for the answer! I already borrowed Pimsleur French from a friend and downloaded some
podcasts to start with. I`ll do the same with MT, will give it a try and see how I feel with it. Unfortunately, I won`t be able to use the web site, because I don`t have computer now (this one is borrowed) and will be like this for a wile, so I`ll buy some books for the grammar. Tv5`s program seems very good, but I can`t use it for now since I have no computer. Later, when I get one, I`ll definitely take a shot there as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6552 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 12 of 14 13 November 2011 at 8:38am | IP Logged |
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Maybe it's been mentioned already, but if not, FIA.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| JasonUK Triglot Newbie United Kingdom learnalanguagein1yea Joined 5258 days ago 29 posts - 38 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, French Studies: Thai, Spanish | Message 13 of 14 13 November 2011 at 1:59pm | IP Logged |
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I've learnt french from a complete beginner to advanced level over several years although still not fluent. I've used
everything. The best thing for me is French in Action as leosmith said. But you need to be at least at an intermediate level before you can start using it. Also you also need to be using a personal tutor at least 1 hour a week in my option. find some onelocal to you. Apart from FIA my other big 3 are Lingq, Yabla and French pod. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Antanas Tetraglot Groupie Lithuania Joined 4814 days ago 91 posts - 172 votes Speaks: Lithuanian*, English, Russian, German Studies: FrenchB1, Spanish | Message 14 of 14 18 November 2011 at 6:46pm | IP Logged |
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Hi, Dandas, I think that being a pentaglot you should by now know better than any one else what method for you is the best one :)
But since you ask, here are my two cents. These ideas are of course nothing knew but here are my thoughts about how to learn French which are based as on my own experience. I've been learning french on a regular basis for about a year and a half. Before that I had been using french very occasionally (to get some info from the web or while learning German from Assimil Perfectionnement Allemand) for a couple of years but never tried to grasp it fully. I used it as a kind of dialect of English. Just enough to proceed with French based German Advanced Assimil. And yes, I had studied french for about half a year long ago at school, but had not learned much. As for now, I can understand about 90-95% of spoken French, particularly, news, quiz shows, political debates, etc. But I have rather poor knowledge of French idioms that are much more abundant in French than, for instance, in German. What concerns active knowledge, it is not very impressive. I forget rather often the names of everyday objects, such as vegetables, furniture pieces, and the like. Sometimes I am unable to use such simple words as 'demain'. So my active knowledge is rather poor. On the other hand I feel that I can use conditionel and subjonctive almost automatically. But I have had very little active exposure to French speaking environment, so far. Now, I believe that a successful language learning depends not only on a learning method alone but also on a personality type of the person who is learning that language. Or rather on the fact if those two are well matched. Being a lazy person as I am I really hate using dictionaries or grammar books. Especially when I begin to study a new language. Therefore I prefer language learning methods that are centered rather on understanding than producing. And doing translation for me instead of making me to do it myself. So for someone like me I would recommend: 1. Assimil "French with ease" and "Using French". Translation on the facing page of a French text. Listening to the audio again and again will imprint the basic vocabulary onto your brain in a couple of months, provided you listen to them at least for an hour each day. I prefer not to do second wave (but this is of course very controversial issue) 2. French for Reading, by Sandberg and Tatham. A very thorough textbook which is based on reading a passage in French and the verifying (via English translation) if one understands it correctly. French text passages are unadapted right from the start. Grammar is explained by showing how correctly translate from French to English. Very impressive. One learns (passively) grammatical structures and a huge amount of words. 3. Listening to spoken (oral) French as much as possible. You don't need to understand everything. I would recommend listening to not very "high-brow" audiobooks (sadly, but French audioplays are virtually inexistent). For instance, they have all Michael Connelly's books (fiction) translated and available as audiobooks, and majority of those by Harlan Coben. It's of course a matter of personal preference, but I would hardly read or listen them in English or any other language I know rather good but in French it was quite fun and very useful (for learning French). Also there are French bestselling authors like Guillaume Musso and Marc Levy whose books might be a bit too sentimental for some people but easy to follow. I also tend to agree with you, Ljones29 (if I understand you correctly), that words learned through sound are somehow better preserved in memory than those learned through vision. 4. Since you know Russian you could also profit from using books adapted by Ilja Frank (see franklang.ru). Basically they consist of unadapted text in object language (for instance, French) and translation of virtually every word (or of combination of them if translation of meaning requires it) in Russian. Then the same passage of text is repeated without translation. It's surprising how useful they can be. If you know how 'be' and 'have' are conjugated in French you can begin using them at right from the beginning. I have read Simenon book and found it very rewarding. 5. Fluent French is (or rather was) a magazine which consisted of French texts with interlinear English translation and notes. It had audio, too. The audio was available at two speeds. And some active mode, if I'm not mistaken. On the other hand, if you are more of industrious and persistent type, or someone who absolutely needs to begin speaking right from the start, then Teach yourself type of books perhaps might be your cup of tea. Or FSI. But the amount of vocabulary one gets from them is not very great. What concerns Pimsleur, I found it very good at activating my passive knowledge rather than learning something from scratch (based on my experience while learning German). I would tend to disagree with you, Canntear. I had no trouble following Michel Thomas German course although English is not my native language. On the other hand, it is also possible that a native English speaker would get more or faster from MT than a non-native. By the way, if someone wants to get a feeling of French as it is used to instruct someone it is very interesting (and useful, too) to listen to Michel Thomas course for French speaking people of the language one already knows. And, IMHO, French in Michel Thomas Anglais is much more natural than French in Michel Thomas French. And one which is quite easy to understand. But this kind of use goes of course against the very essence MT method :) To cut the long story short, I believe that (at least for me) in order to learn a language the most important thing is to feed oneself as much language as possible and in a way which has more to do with pleasure than a hard labor. It does not matter which method you use. And the language begins to grow _inside_ you. And after a while you begin to speak. Of course, you need to practice with other speakers. But you have to have a (significant part of) language already inside you in order to speak more than 'Il fait beau', 'Il fait chaud' and the like. I'm still in progress in gaining the active command of French, but these principles helped me to learn English and German (the latter still in need of improvement). Good luck, and sorry for a long post Anyway, if you know Spanish you already know a big part of French. Thanks for a great link, Arturs I agree with you, JasonUK, that Yabla is a great resource but unfortunately it is not free. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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