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French through English or Spanish? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Labebrett Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 4176 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 1 of 9 07 October 2014 at 8:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi all. I've got my mind set on teaching myself French but I'm not exactly sure how I should go about doing it. I
studied Spanish as a minor in University and feel very comfortable reading and speaking to a slightly lesser extent. Because of this, whenever I've looked at any beginner French course I felt a bit bored since I can make out much more French than the courses expect. I was quite young when I started learning Spanish so I really am not very familiar with the beginning stages of the language learning process. What would you all suggest? Should I just keep pushing through the beginning stages of the book I have? I've been considering buying a French course in Spanish to try to take advantage of the similarities but am hesitant to take the plunge. I guess I'm just looking for a push in the right direction at this moment. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 9 07 October 2014 at 9:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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What book do you have?
If you are thinking about buying another book, New French with Ease is good and popular here. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5062 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 3 of 9 07 October 2014 at 10:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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You can take advantage of the similarities between French and Spanish without actually using a course that's written
in Spanish. It's not that hard to notice the similarities between French and Spanish words even if you're looking them up in English. There are even similarities between French and English that don't exist between French and Spanish, as English has had more contact with French (in both directions). If the beginner course is too easy, why not try skipping to the second half of it, or using a book that's not intended for absolute beginners? Also, you simply don't need to spend as much time with courses. The more comprehension you get for free, the faster you can increase the proportion of your study that uses native rather than learner materials. Edited by robarb on 07 October 2014 at 10:03am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 4 of 9 07 October 2014 at 10:17am | IP Logged | |||||
Good point. On that front, Assimil Using French and Business French are solid courses. Business French is the more challenging of the two.
Another great suggestion from an experience language learner. Listen/Reading is the method I've found very helpful with native targeted material. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5535 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 9 07 October 2014 at 12:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's certainly possible to learn a third language using your second, and I actually prefer to do it that way, because it prevents me from neglecting my French. Generally speaking, this will work best if you can read comfortably with decent comprehension in your existing language. There are a bunch of excellent French courses available, and many of them will work well for somebody who already knows a Romance language. I'm particularly fond of Assimil's New French with Ease, as other people have mentioned, though you'll probably find the early lessons to be rather easy. Still, that's not a huge problem with Assimil's format: Just do two lessons a day for the first 20 lessons or so, and then slow down when things get a bit more challenging. For a nice overview of language learning techniques used at HTLAL, see How to Start Learning a Language and Frequently Recommend Courses on the wiki. There's a nice variety of options there, and they all have a pretty good track record of success here at HTLAL. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| AlexTG Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 4641 days ago 178 posts - 354 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 6 of 9 07 October 2014 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Language courses contain three types of content:
1. Explanations about the language. 2. Examples of the language. 3. Exercises for practicing the language. Using the first type of content made for English speakers, you will be constantly bombarded with things which are obvious to you. This is not good. Much better to read such content made for Spanish speakers, it'll focus on the useful stuff. Also, why read something in English when you could be practicing your Spanish? With the second type of content the easier a text/recording is to understand, the faster you'll get through it and the less times you'll need to repeat it. So it doesn't matter much whether this content was written for Spanish or English speakers. In fact, Assimil French with Ease, which is mostly content 2, is available in Spanish translation. For the third type of content, I have nothing to say since I don't use it myself. So in conclusion, if the course you're using is primarily of content type 1, throw it away and get something else(or maybe use the exercises/drills, I dunno) . If you choose Assimil, you'll still need content type 1, so grab a French grammar written in Spanish. Edited by AlexTG on 07 October 2014 at 1:36pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5012 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 7 of 9 07 October 2014 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think you can do various things in the situation, such as these:
Use Spanish a one of the source languages if you find something good based in it. If not, nothing happens, it is just widening your options, not a necessary switch. Go through your beginner textbook at a faster pace and slow down only when you need it. And the best (and my personal favourite): Use the high mutual intelligibility to start using monolingual French resources much sooner. Not only there are awesome monolingual courses or similar things (like very popular Progressive series by CLE), you can get to the easy books, BDs and so on much earlier. It is awesome. At first, you might encounter the fear of not learning the active skills just as easily as the passive ones but you will surely progress towards them as well, many people on htlal have had positive experience with using native input early on. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4912 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 8 of 9 07 October 2014 at 6:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think the OP's point is that a Spanish-based course would skip over the things that are already obvious to a speaker of Spanish. I think it makes perfect sense, and think it would be a great way to work. Skipping the early parts of a textbook wouldn't help, because there will be things obvious to Spanish speakers at all levels of an English-based French textbook.
NFWE is of course an excellent course, and if you just focus on the texts, it doesn't really matter that it was written in English. But as a few people have mentioned, if you can practice your L2 while learning L3, why not? The difficulty remains: what good resources are there for learning French from a Spanish base? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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