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Learning French before going abroad | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6699 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes  5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 1 of 10 12 June 2008 at 4:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've started learning French a few years ago, attending for a short time a language course at the university, which turned out to be a complete disaster. Last year I decided to continue learning French, this time on my own, but not specially systematic.
I wasn't planning it before - in September I go for one year to Switzerland (bilingual university, in the town French is spoken mostly). I'd like to reach basic fluency after this time. Now I'm thinking about how I can prepare myself to use this stay well. There are three months left, I can spend about 1-2 hours a day learning French. The question would be: what should I learn and which sources should I use? I'm doing Michel Thomas right now (finishing CD6 from the first course), I used also some FIA (15 lessons or so), Assimil (10 lessons, I like Assimil, but I didn't particularly fall in love with the French one...), the video course for advanced beginners on BBC website (I loved it but I didn't see much progress) and some Polish-based courses. I will definitely finish Michel Thomas and I'll also get back to FIA, but I wonder if you could give me any advice. I'm not sure what I should concentrate on: grammar? vocabulary? pronunciation? reading? Listening comprehension is definitely the most important skill to me now but what about the rest? I'll appreciate all your advice. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6153 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 3 of 10 13 June 2008 at 5:56am | IP Logged | ||
The "Learn In Your Car" series is a pretty good substitute for a phrasebook, if you want audio to practice phrases with (all English to French with pauses for the answer). The complete 1, 2, and 3 versions in one box (9 hours total) is a good value for the cost. Read the reviews on Amazon first. If anyone wants, I can post the types of phrases for the 3 levels. Level 1 is mostly basic travel stuff. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6153 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 10 13 June 2008 at 4:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Julie, if you can understand most of the speech in French In Action episode #15, you are probably beyond Learn In Your Car Level One. Card Shark, same for you if you finished LSLC 2. Each level of Learn In Your Car comes with a booklet of the bilingual transcripts, and some skeleton grammar notes which are good enough if you've studied a language before. I have the old cassette version gotten cheap on eBay, and it mentions French Francs and "Garcon" for waiter, so maybe the CD version is revised. Level One is 3 hours and has 44 short "lessons" including the following topics: Transportation Names, Money, Hotel, Directions, Numbers, At the Restaurant, Shopping, Time, Questions, Shops, Nouns, Adjectives & Adverbs, Verbs, and Prepositions, Stress Pronouns, Possessive Adjectives, Questions With "Est-ce que," Directions, Conversation, Verb "Etre" (to be), Reg ER ending, IR ending, and RE ending verbs, Near Future Tense, Past Tense. Here are the phrases from the (shorter than usual) last lesson 44 (of Level 1): I went to the bakery yesterday I arrived at five o'clock I left my house about noon. You left at midnight. He came to my store yesterday. She went to England last week. We arrived in Germany before you. You left Italy after me. They came to my house last night. They left by plane. They left two weeks ago. I'll give descrips of Level 2 and Level 3 in a later post. And I have Italian Behind the Wheel 2, Card Shark, which I can also discuss. Edited by TerryW on 13 June 2008 at 4:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6153 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 10 14 June 2008 at 9:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Learn In Your Car French Level 2 goes from Lesson 45 to Lesson 78, 3 hours, which include:
Infinitive Verb Forms, The Telephone, Practice with past tense, More Past Participles, Imperfect tense, the Verb "Avoir," Some Common Verbs in Imperfect Tense, Important Concepts, Using Direct Object Pronouns in Sentences, Using Indirect Object Pronouns, Pronouns in Negative Sentences, The Car, The Verb "Etre" in Future Tense, Some Irregular Future Verb Stems, Days of Week, Months of Year, At the Doctor's Office, At the Dinner Table, Pronominal Verbs. Lesson length and content varies, sometimes the "phrases" are single words. Here is one of the "meatier" lessons, "At the Dinner Table" (didn't see the pun til I proofed this post!) We have a reservation for seven o'clock May I have a bottle of wine please. Pass me the vegetables please (familiar). Bring me some mineral water please (polite). Carbonated or non-carbonated. What are your specials today? What is the dish of the day? What is the specialty of the house? What time do you open for lunch? What time does the restaurant close? What's for dessert? one more I would like another (one more) glass of milk. Three more beers please. May we have some more cheese? Would you like some more cream in your coffee? I would like a steak, please. How would you like your meat cooked? What are my choices? rare medium well cooked I would like some more jam, please. Do you have any fresh fruit? The meal was very bad. (Not sure I'd want to say this in a foreign country) This knife is inexpensive. Would you like a different plate? Give me a spoon please. Excuse me, may I have another napkin? I need a bigger bowl. Who is going to do the dishes? Is there an ashtray here? What kinds of fruit do you have? We need two more chairs. Where do you keep the silverware? We would like to order now. To contrast, Lesson 69, Verb "Avoir" Future Tense only has 10 phrases: I will have a new job next month. Will you have time to go to the store. We will have our tickets by tomorrow. etc. Edited by TerryW on 14 June 2008 at 9:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6153 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 8 of 10 14 June 2008 at 9:20am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm LOLing right now, because the booklet for Level 3 is not in the cassette case. Pretty sure I check for that when I get stuff from eBay, so maybe it's around here someplace. I can post excerpts from the Spanish Level 3, then. Again, this is the old cassette edition, I don't know if they've revamped the content. But I see that the three-level-in-one set is about $33 on Amazon, so as I said before, it's a lot of material for the price (9 hours). Depends on whether you want to practice simple phrase repetition, or not. When I found out that I would be going to Italy for a week (for work, 1st time in Europe), I had a few months to practice Italian. I did the FSI Programmatic Italian (which everyone hates) many years previous, and was at advanced beginner Spanish level at the time (which really helps for Italian due to similarities). I used about the first 90 minutes of Learn In Your Car Italian Level 1, and about the first 90 minutes of Behind the Wheel Italian 2, and felt somewhat comfortable expressing myself in very basic Italian while I was there. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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