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Father and Son French learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4900 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 1 of 20 25 June 2011 at 12:21am | IP Logged |
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First, the history:
My son has been learning French in school, and struggling with it. He is about to turn 13, and will begin GCSE French in a year. I was never that interested in learning French myself, but I thought i could use some self-teaching methods to learn it alongside him. The more I thought about it, the more excited I got about doing it. Visiting my sister in Belgium made my decision. He is somewhat sceptical about doing extra French, but he is willing to go along with it. So we started around the 1st of June. Unfortunately, he has had a school trip for a week, so we've studied for only 2 weeks so far. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4900 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 2 of 20 25 June 2011 at 12:30am | IP Logged |
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The goals:
Vocabulary Since part of the intention of our study is to prepare him for GCSE, I looked on a couple of the exam board sites for suggested word lists. It would seem that for upper GCSE, they expect you to know about 2000 words. So I have given him the challenge of learning 1000 words in the first year, which isn't a lot for many of you, but sounds like a lot to him! So far we have learned about 50 words in two weeks, so at this pace we would exceed the target. Conversation One of the great criticisms of school French in England is that students can't really converse. We will be careful to use a lot of audio to make our accents as good as possible. And as we complete a section of study, he gets a day-trip across the channel as a reward. He also has cousins in Belgium who are fluent, so once he improves a bit, they'll practice when we visit. Grammar I'm not certain what forms and tenses the GCSE requires, but the topic section mentions the need to speak about your past, and your dreams for the future. I would like us to get a solid grasp on grammar, but with a focus on practicality, so he doesn't get bored. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4900 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 3 of 20 25 June 2011 at 12:39am | IP Logged |
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Step 1 Materials
Our first textbook is Elisabeth Smith's Instant French, because we borrowed a copy for free, and I thought he would be encouraged by being able to complete a short course. After starting, a new version came out (Fast French) for £8.95, with 2 CD's instead of 1, so I bought it. It is essentially the same course, but it has audio tracks for the vocabulary sections of every chapter, which will help because I have no confidence reading French properly. We are making flash cards of all the vocabulary. The author also gives 10 sentences to memorize each chapter. When we finish this book, he gets his first reward day-trip to France. We are also going to use Les Portes Tordues, which is a teaching book based around a story of a haunted house. You are supposed to learn the grammar in order to open the doors to the next chapter. I also have a DK French pack for kids. My son has agreed to become the teacher, and use this book to work with his younger brother and sister. Nothing helps you learn better than teaching someone else. Edit: we also have the four Max et Matilde books, published by Ladybird. They have simple stories, with excellent CD's which allow the student to repeat the material. Edited by Jeffers on 25 June 2011 at 12:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4900 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 4 of 20 25 June 2011 at 12:50am | IP Logged |
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Next steps
Although we are just getting started, I like to think strategically and plan ahead. I'm not quite sure what to use when we finish Fast French. Here are a few of the options I'm thinking about (with a bit of consultation with my son!): Assimil French with Ease-- should give us both a good practical grasp of the language. Michel Thomas-- good for gaining confidence to speak, but I'm not sure if my son will like it. I'm getting the first hour to try it out. Living Language Complete French-- would be good for developing a more formal understanding of the language. I am leaning towards a combination of Assimil and Living Language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4900 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 5 of 20 25 June 2011 at 12:54am | IP Logged |
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Additional reading
For additional reading once we've finished step 1 (above), I'm thinking of the Easy French Reader + CD, or Think French + CD. Both cover topics that he will need to be able to use in his exams. When we're more comfortable reading without audio, we'll be reading a lot of Tintin as well! Actually... does anyone know if there are audio files of someone reading Tintin comics (not some sort of dramatized version, but an actual reading of the comic)? Le Petit Prince is a classic, of course, but I don't know if it's too dated. For German, I found some short intermediate books published by Langenscheidt (Felix & Theo series, and Klara & Theo series). They are 30-40 pages long and have mini-CD's. I'd like to find something like this for French, but haven't managed to locate anything on the Amazon.fr site. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4900 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 6 of 20 25 June 2011 at 12:55am | IP Logged |
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So there's the plan. If you have any suggestions or comments, please let me know.
Edit: I didn't mention study time! We are studying between 1/2 hour to 1 hour most evenings. Most evenings we listen to the dialogue and vocab tracks on the Fast French CD, have a bit of discussion about what various phrases mean, and then take a walk around the neighbourhood with our flashcards, testing each other. When he begins to get frustrated when I'm testing him, I switch back to him testing me. Once we've learned all the vocab in the chapter, we'll do the exercises then move on. Edited by Jeffers on 25 June 2011 at 1:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| anamsc Triglot Senior Member Andorra Joined 6194 days ago 296 posts - 382 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan Studies: Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Written), French | Message 7 of 20 25 June 2011 at 5:14am | IP Logged |
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What a great idea! Best of luck! Sorry I don't have any advice on French :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Carlos Ignacio Diglot Newbie ChileRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4917 days ago 12 posts - 15 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French | Message 8 of 20 25 June 2011 at 6:18am | IP Logged |
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Congratulations for your initiative. I'd like to say something about the 1000 words, I
know that it could seem a lot at first, but you will soon notice that it's not so, you will realize that it's neither hard nor unnecessary to learn more and more words. Just Assimil (which I highly recommend, gorgeous method - specially for French... you need to internalize all of it, put it deeply into your mind) will give you 2.000-3.000 words or some. You might be also interested in a video series called 'French in Action', it's 100% in French and intend to introduce you the language gradually (of course you'll need to know some French already) so you'll get used to hearing the French (it's a story about a French girl who meets an american guy... ). Anyway it's just a suggestion because you've already got plenty of materials and courses! excellent! PD: I'd appreciate any correction of my written English. I'm sorry but I don't know why when I use Google Chrome my posts seem to be cut. Good luck for both of you!! Edited by Carlos Ignacio on 25 June 2011 at 2:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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