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How to go on studying French? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Franz Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4057 days ago 5 posts - 11 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French | Message 1 of 9 12 October 2014 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Reading the forum has helped me quiet a lot during the last few months. Lots of great advice, answers to all the
questions I had could be found somewhere. Now, I am at a point were I really would be grateful for some personalized advise. I have just finished the German version of Assimil s New French With Ease. It took me 2 days for each new lesson and 1 day for each "activ-wave" lesson. Besides Assimil I also have been using Anki to study vocabulary for the last 4 month on a (more or less) regular basis. Adding up everything (including some lazy days) I have been studying French for 14 months. Lately I have bought some little A1 books like "Le Petit Nicolas part en vacances", "La nuit blache de Zoe". I found I can decipher the books using an additional dictionary. It is not a relaxed way of reading, it still feels like work. Listening to RFI radio on the internet feels like a complete waste of time. Watching a documentary (with subs) on TV5 is quite ok. They talk slow and I can stop it anytime I feel like reading the subs without stress. Oh .. I should not forget to mention the French class I have started a week ago. It takes place on 5 saturdays (5 hours on every day). It felt like being back in Highschool. The teacher is a native French lady, very friendly. Unfortunately the teaching methods are still the ones I have suffered 25 years ago. Half the students are back the third time and they are still at chapter 4 in the work book. I am not sure if it is worth going back. Reading other posts I get the feeling most people have learnt more/better French after having finished New French With Ease. So, my question would be how to go on studying french. Should I... - buy Using French - repeat New French With Ease - go with A1 literature and just decipher them - ... I also could make the time to go to Montpellier and attend a Language School for two weeks next spring. I was thinking about http://www.ila-france.com . It would mean to make some sacrifices and I am still not sure if it would be worth the effort. Any thought or advise would be really appreciated! Thanks for reading the post! Edited by Franz on 12 October 2014 at 9:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5531 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 9 12 October 2014 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You're coming from a German-speaking background, so depending on how much you've read in English, you may not know as many obscure Romance cognates as the native anglophones. I don't know whether this makes a difference.
That said, if you've done Assimil, you should probably be able to more-or-less read. But you may need to cheat more: 1. Try reading with a special reading app. Good choices include LingQ, readlang and LWT. 2. Try reading ebooks with a pop-up bilingual dictionary. 3. If you have any favorite books that you've re-read a dozen times, try reading one of them in French translation. 4. Don't hesitate to skip the hard parts. And you're not obliged to look up words until you've seen them a few times. 5. Consider trying a longer book. This is called "narrow reading", where you build up your skills with one book/author/subject, or a limited set, before trying to branch out to other things. My first French book was an interesting 450-page non-fiction tome. The first hundred pages were hard, but eventually things got easier. By the end of the book I was moving much more quickly. 6. If you're a science fiction fan, you might actually have some luck with Aldebaran, which many people have found to be surprisingly easy. It's full of very conversational French. If SF isn't your thing, browse through the Izneo catalog, and see if any other graphic novels catch your eye—the French have something for most tastes. 7. If you enjoy documentaries, go for it—they tend to some of the easiest and clearest French speech you'll find anywhere, and they have plenty of images to help out. Ideally, you'd be able to find something with is interesting, and fun, and not too hard, which you can read with just a little extra effort. But in reality, you may wind up needing to slog through your first hundred pages anyway. If everything you can find is still too hard, it helps to pick something which is really, really interesting, and to allow yourself to let stuff go. The most important thing is to keep going, and to find a rhythm that you can sustain without giving up. Good luck! Edited by emk on 12 October 2014 at 9:55pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 3 of 9 12 October 2014 at 10:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hey, congrats on finishing the assimil. I think there are many options for you and emk already named quite a lot of things you can do. My two cents
1.I think A1 graded readers should be too easy for you having finished assimil and they tend not to be as much fun as normal books by far. BDs are an awesome way to start reading in French. Or there are good young adult fiction authors or others to get you started. Many people begin with a translation since translations tend to be easier then originals, Harry Potter is among the popular choices. The key is to find things you enjoy and just do them in French. Sure, every beginnig is tough but you will soon see progress. 2.A good teacher or tutor can be beneficial but classes with bad classmates seldom are. Whether or not you choose to continue the class is up to you but if you want results, you need to work on your own as well. For exemple, learning grammar on your own can be much less frustrating than in a class. There are awesome resources like Grammaire Progressive series by Cle and similar for vocabulary or whatever you might like. Many options to help you cover everything you need. Assimil still may leave you far from perfection but there are many other interesting resources for you to cover the gap. 3.Listen a lot. Many htlalers, myself included, have had great results with watching tv series in the language. Find something fun for you and don't let the initial struggle drive you away. Tv series are more challenging usually then documentaries and less them movies (basically, you have more time to get used to one set of speakers which is great at this stage of learning). Radio tends to be among the most difficult things to listen to. 4.Find opportunities to speak and write. If there's nothing else, just speak for yourself, do your exercises aloud, write a diary or something like that. By the way, what coursebook is your class following? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4908 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 4 of 9 13 October 2014 at 12:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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At something like your stage, I quite liked easy readers if they came with audio. In fact, I read "La nuit blache de Zoe" although I didn't like it much. A better book by the same publisher is "Enquête capitale", which has a more interesting story and is written for adult learners rather than children.
Some people think of these book + CD combos as too expensive since they are so short. But if you find you can read it and listen to it many times over then they are worth the price. One excellent series of readers designed for adults is Mondes en vf. The books range from A2 to B2, and are much longer than other easy readers. Most have over 100 pages, compared to usually 30-50 pages for most reader + CD combos. They don't come with CDs, but you can download the audio from any book you own from their website (it will ask questions about the text). Since you can download the audio, the kindle editions are a good option as they are cheaper and you can use a popup dictionary where needed. Edited by Jeffers on 13 October 2014 at 1:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mutant Groupie United States Joined 3910 days ago 45 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German | Message 5 of 9 13 October 2014 at 1:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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I finished Assimil New French With Ease about three weeks ago, and so far what I've been working on is :
1.FSI French Basic Course (I really need to get disciplined about doing this every day). Boring, but tried-and-true for drilling the language into your head. I think it has improved my ability to speak more automatically and fluidly. I am determined to finish this course. 2. LingQ, a nice tool to have, although not complete in itself. You get a text in your target language with accompanying audio, the ability to look up unknown words and save them as flashcards, and a lot of other nice features. 3.Essential French Grammar, published by Dover. Based off of emk's recommendation in another thread, this is a great, inexpensive little grammar book to help pull together all of the things you learned with Assimil. Very easy to flip through when you have time. 4.First French Reader, also published by Dover. Okay, huge caveat here: this book is definitely not for beginners. But it is bilingual, and it does give a nice introduction to French literature. 5. Lots and lots of input, from France 24 to Radio-Canada to watching my favorite films and movies dubbed in French. 6. Using Skype to find a native speaker/teacher. We've quickly become good friends, and having her to speak French with has really boosted my confidence. My method hasn't been perfect, and it's definitely been a learn-as-I-go process, but I think I've improved a lot. At any rate, good luck with your studies! Edited by Mutant on 13 October 2014 at 1:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Franz Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4057 days ago 5 posts - 11 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French | Message 6 of 9 13 October 2014 at 8:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks a lot for your advise!
I take it, "Using French" is not high on the list of recommendations. Ok, I sure can do without it :-) Having read other posts I actually already got the feeling it is not really popular. So, I will go for "native material". I definitely will try e-books with a pop-up dictionary. It looks like the kindle-app for my smartphone will do just fine. The first two books are already on it ... Harry Potter will follow as soon as I manage to find an ebook-source for it. Let´s see if I also can come up with accompanying audio-books :-) Readlang.com looks also very promising, very nice first impression. I will make sure to have a closer look at the other recommended reading-apps, too. Living in Europe makes it easy to watch French TV via satellite. In addition to reading books and working with Anki it will definitely fill the time I have available. Well, I guess I am set for the moment :-) There is one more thing I would like to ask. Would you recommend two weeks of studying French in a language school? It would cost me about 1500 Euros and effort me some inconveniences at home. For the money I could buy 60 hours of tutoring which could be distributed (and payed) as needed. Any thoughts? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5235 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 7 of 9 13 October 2014 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
Personally I would save my money and look for free or alternative methods of learning. You would get a lot more out of tutoring I think, however you'd have to have a plan for what you want to learn and to find tutors who will teach you what you want to know, not just talk. If you have a room in your house, and you don't mind hosting strangers you can sign up at WWOOF and become a host, and insist that the work they do is 2-3 hours of speaking in French and tutoring. This lets them travel to Germany, and gets you a free tutor. You can also sign up at WimDu and rent out a room to French speakers. You might want to look for French Audiobooks on Librivox which has a large number of audio books in French. In addition you can find a lot of free and legal books on this thread. Here are some African Stories in French with transcripts. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5531 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 9 14 October 2014 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
There's nothing really wrong with Assimil's Using French, except for the fact that (1) no course could ever provide enough reading or listening material to get you through the intermediate levels, (2) the individual lessons are too long to do at a pace of one per day (especially after lesson 15 or so), and (3) you'll be able to use native materials with pleasure soon enough, provided you dive in and try. :-) For Harry Potter ebooks, the official source is Pottermore. They're available in many languages, including French, and you can use them with almost any ebook reader. There are no region restrictions or DRM. The audiobook is available from Amazon.fr. You should be able to log in using your normal Amazon email address and password, and your billing and shipping information should already be there.
There's a lot language schools out there. A small number are very good indeed, relying heavily on immersion, host families, language pledges, and so on, but those schools tend to be quite expensive. There's also a lot of language schools where everybody speaks English (or their L1), and where the average speed of the class is pretty low. For $1500, you can buy a lot of really amazing French tutoring on Skype, and spend all of that time on one-on-one conversation. (Try to speak to the tutor entirely in French, even for business and planning, if at all possible. Write emails if you can't explain things verbally.) If you combine your Skype lessons with lots of reading and watching, you'll make far more progress than you'd make in the typical course. My current favorite place to look for tutors is iTalki. In general, you should plan on speaking to several tutors before making a final choice. Some are excellent, and some are awful. Two excellent choices are Olivier Nyssen and Sabine André (who isn't on iTalki, and who may or may not be teaching right now, but she's amazing, and I can provide you with her email address via PM). For a less expensive community teacher, try Pablo. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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