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What to do to progress my French? | ||
Tags: Intermediate | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| drp9341 Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 4912 days ago 115 posts - 217 votes  Speaks: Italian, English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 7 18 September 2011 at 8:54pm | IP Logged |
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Hello everyone. I currently would like to learn French to fluency. As of right now I am probably at an intermediate
level. I cannot really understand the spoken language. Maybe 35% of whats being said, but due to speaking Italian and Spanish I can read about 75% of the written language. I took French 1 in high school during senior year, and learned a decent amount. I scored at an Intermediate 2 level for going into college, but opted out of the course as I am doing Chinese instead. So basically that's where my level is at, and I would like to know what I should do to resume studying and where to keep learning stuff from. Thank You very much, If I missed any crucial details let me know! PS. I was thinking Assimil 2 but I think I may already be past that 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5471 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 2 of 7 18 September 2011 at 11:17pm | IP Logged |
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Here are several ideas for improving your comprehension of the spoken language:
An article from french.about.com about the grammar shortcuts in spoken french: http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/informal.htm Smart French These CDs contain a series of recordings of interviews with native french speakers and 'educational' reproductions of the same interview that sounds like you might find in an Assimil lesson along with explanations of the differences. You basically compare the two to learn how people really speak. http://smartfrench.com/ Yabla This web site has over 300 short videos that you can study along with the transcript below and you can slow the audio down if needed. You can try several free samples to try it out. http://french.yabla.com/ rfi.fr Look for the "Journal en français facile" link for a 10 minute daily news broadcast with transcript to study. Edited by microsnout on 18 September 2011 at 11:24pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| caracao Triglot Groupie France Joined 5120 days ago 53 posts - 84 votes Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: German | Message 3 of 7 19 September 2011 at 8:55pm | IP Logged |
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http://www.dailymotion.com/ Edited by caracao on 19 September 2011 at 8:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| JPike1028 Triglot Senior Member United States piketransitions Joined 5397 days ago 297 posts - 337 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Swedish, Portuguese, Czech | Message 4 of 7 19 September 2011 at 9:03pm | IP Logged |
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I would advise listening as much as you can and reading as much as you can. I think that the exposure to the real language throu these mediums is the key once you get to an intermediate level. I listen to french radio through www.tunein.com as much as possible to help with the listening comprehension.
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| Emiliana Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 5114 days ago 81 posts - 98 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Arabic (classical) | Message 5 of 7 19 September 2011 at 9:30pm | IP Logged |
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thanks micronout! your links are extremly helpful!
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| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5959 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 6 of 7 21 September 2011 at 10:54pm | IP Logged |
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Generic answer....Check out the epilogue in the book "Achieving Success in Second Language Acquisition" by Betty Lou Leaver, Madeline Ehrman, Boris Shekhtman. It's entitled "Epilogue: from here to there: attaining near-native proficiency". I originally read it using the "look inside" feature on the American Amazon site, which prompted me to buy the book. While that section is not geared toward getting from intermediate to advance, the ideas should help.
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| hcueva Tetraglot Newbie Mexico Joined 4924 days ago 13 posts - 29 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, German, French | Message 7 of 7 12 October 2011 at 9:18pm | IP Logged |
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I went from intermediate French to advanced in only 10-12 months. The trick was to listen, listen, listen and listen, and also read, read, read, read, and then listen and listen even more.
I understand this sounds clichéd but it REALLY does work. The trick is to incorporate French (or whatever other language) into your daily life. Understand that you'll never learn 100% French and, therefore, that shouldn't be your goal at all. Your goal should be just to consume information (podcasts, TV, movies, newspapers) in French for the same reasons why you would do it in English: because you enjoy the content. There's a phase in which you'll understand whatever percentage you do now, but that's still ok, just try to be patient. Understand that even if you only learn 3 words per day, that's still amounts to 1000 new words/phrases/idioms that you will know one year from now, and they will probably be 1000 of the most used words in the language. Avoid "Learn French with our podcast" or stuff like that. You need to actually find stuff you like. For example, I enjoy skepticism podcasts in English, and so I found one in French. I like reading The Economist, and so now I read Le Figaro too. Learning a language should be a life project, forget about milestones. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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