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Most Effective French Reading Material? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| LilleOSC Senior Member United States lille.theoffside.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6633 days ago 545 posts - 546 votes  4 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 1 of 10 28 March 2009 at 6:09am | IP Logged |
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There is a lot of French reading material, but which are the most effective? I have heard that newspapers are useful, but they can be very formal and lacking in everyday expressions/vocab. Books have a lot of vocab, but sometimes the writing and conjugaisons can be complex (such as the use of fût). Childrens French books seem too basic for me right now. I've noticed that some bandes dessinées have a lot of colloquial vocab (such as Titeuf) and other everyday words, but the dialogue seems sort of basic. Usually, I use newspapers, but I feel like I am missing out on conversational vocabulary. What would you recommend for advanced intermediate learners that want to practice reading French and improve their vocabulary?
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| jimbo baby! Senior Member United States Joined 5919 days ago 202 posts - 208 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 10 29 March 2009 at 5:36am | IP Logged |
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Trashy French novels use the same language most French speakers use in everyday conversation. Plays and movie transcripts are also a good source for typical French conversation. Amazon.fr has a lot of the plays published in Avant Scene Theatre and Avant Scene Cinema.
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| tryna36 Triglot Groupie United States Joined 6011 days ago 56 posts - 58 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 3 of 10 29 March 2009 at 2:34pm | IP Logged |
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I like the Petit Nicolas series. You can order them from Amazon.com.
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| TheBiscuit Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5865 days ago 532 posts - 619 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Italian Studies: German, Croatian | Message 4 of 10 30 March 2009 at 12:48am | IP Logged |
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Camus is good, though probably not for everyday conversation.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5953 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 5 of 10 30 March 2009 at 4:17pm | IP Logged |
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To a certain extent, whatever you want.
Material that is theoretically "good" may not really appeal to you, so you'll put off reading it. Anyway, as every type of material has its own weaknesses, why not just mix your materials? Some of the verb tenses missing from comics will be made up for by newspapers, and much of the colloquial and informal vocabulary missing from newspapers will be in the comics. Read (and watch, and listen to) a variety of material. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| icing_death Senior Member United States Joined 5803 days ago 296 posts - 302 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 10 31 March 2009 at 7:53am | IP Logged |
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Keep up with the newspapers. Watch the TV news the same day you read. They will reinforce each other nicely. Do it until until you can understand the paper and TV news without looking up words (meaning you know enough to figure out everything by context). Then move onto whatever you most desire in the language.
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| Turbo Tetraglot Newbie Hong Kong Joined 5662 days ago 18 posts - 18 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, French, Mandarin Studies: Spanish, German, Japanese | Message 8 of 10 11 April 2009 at 9:20pm | IP Logged |
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I'd suggest taking a one year subscription of the French edition of the Reader's Digest. Anyway that's what I did. I got bored reading newspapers all the time. I also wanted to have a broader, more general vocabulary. At the same time, I didn't want to spend a lot of time learning words and phrases that I would never see again. I then remembered that when I learned English years ago, I used to read the Reader's Digest. The thing about the Reader's Digest is that:
- a variety of general topics are covered - the language is not too difficult I had stopped reading the Reader's Digest a long time ago. And on the rare occasions I had the chance to pick up a copy to read it, it was seldom the case that there's a word that I didn't know already. So it occurred to me that the Reader's Digest could serve as a benchmark of some sort of minimal requirement. In other words, my French (or any language that I study for that matter) should be good enough that I understand almost all the words appearing between the covers of a Reader's Digest issue. I therefore set myself the task of looking up every single word I didn't know already in the French edition of Reader's Digest during a one year period. It proved to be more difficult than I thought, meaning my French was not as good as I thought it would be. Anyway, in the end, the efforts were well worth it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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