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Back on track with French? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| elu1989 Newbie United States Joined 3628 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 5 07 June 2014 at 1:51am | IP Logged | ||
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So, I took some French in high school and studied it for a while and got to an intermediate level. Then, I started university and majored in Spanish and moved to Mexico for a bit and French fell by the wayside. I took an intermediate course last semester and did well, but I am in a strange area where I know a lot of intermediate French, but I still feel shady on some of the basics.
Fast forward, I'm moving to France in September for a year and I'd like to get my French up to par before leaving. I tried going through assimil but the first lessons are gruelingly slow and I get discouraged. I don't know where I need to start when I'm in this sort of purgatory phase. Any advice? Secondly, I don't expect to be fluent by the time I leave in four months, but I hope to take advantage of the year in France in order to REALLY become fluent. I'll be working only a few hours per week and the rest of the time I can spend on improving at French. What are some ways I can really take advantage of being in France? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5030 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 2 of 5 07 June 2014 at 9:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I can only tell you what I would do based on my idea of what you mean by "intermediate". I'm going to guess you mean something like A2 in the CEFR which means that you:
Can understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to areas of most immediate relevance (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment). Can communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar and routine matters. Can describe in simple terms aspects of his/her background, immediate environment and matters in areas of immediate need. To achieve your goal; I believe you should eliminate the English language from your life starting today! From today if you listen to music, it has to be in French. If you buy a book, it is in French. If you watch a movie, it must be in French. Change your computer language to French. Change your phone interface to French. Anything you write, you write it in French. All your "self-talk" (aka your thoughts) must be in French. It is OK if you don't know the words right now, just think it in English, note down the word and look up the French equivalent. Make it a mission to find French language exchange partners, and speak to someone everyday in French. You can find people here: http://www.language-exchanges.org/content/mixxer-free-educat ional-website-language-exchanges-skype/ Find a few books in french (real fiction books not textbooks) and read at least 1 page every day. Lookup all the words you don't know. I'm going to recommend to methods here which I personally detest, but they work. Go to this website: http://invokeit.wordpress.com/frequency-word-lists/ and download the most frequently used word list for French. Using this list load the first 1000 most common words into Anki http://ankisrs.net/index.html a free opensource flashcard program, and spend 4 months learning the 3000 most common words in French. Or you can use the Goldlist method on the same word set. (You can google for "Goldlisting words" and you'll find out how to do it) I personally hate flashcards and goldlisting, and I figure you'll pickup just as many words watching TV or reading books, but it might take longer. You can get a very good list of French resources from the Super Challenge thread, http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=38652&PN=0&TPN=48 or the Super Challenge French Resource page http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Super_Challenge_Recom mendations_French In addition to all of that I would download the free FSI franch language tapes and do the entire set. http://www.fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php. This course has a LOT of audio for you to listen and repeat. Well good luck! I hope that helps you a little. Why don't you start a log on this site and keep us all updated on your progress? Edited by rdearman on 07 June 2014 at 9:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6999 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 3 of 5 07 June 2014 at 10:39am | IP Logged | ||
And if you kiss, it must be French. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6999 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 4 of 5 07 June 2014 at 10:41am | IP Logged | ||
I've found starting at the end of Assimil and working towards the beginning is a great way to put the most challenging material up front. With your background, it may work well for you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4238 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 5 of 5 07 June 2014 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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In this part of the world we have radio programs in Chinese where different topics are discussed. The
audience can phone the station and give their comments live. I don't know if your level of French is in the level you can freely discuss and give your opinion about specific subjects. Sometimes I would go online and type messages in both English & Chinese. Since French is a language similar to Spanish & Italian, you shouldn't have any trouble with the grammar. Although English has a lot of words borrowed from French, the way they use words & phrases isn't quite the same. You definitely need to watch TV programs, movies, listen to radio broadcasts. When listening to songs if you can sing along you'd get phrases into your head faster. Right now I'm working with the online French language videos on Yabla. What I like about Yabla is that you can repeat phrases and go at a slower speed with a click of a button. Reading the captions isn't too bad but listening to the dialog alone you miss a lot. The problem is that the French has a lot of silent sounds and syllables of 1 word that seems to run into another. This isn't too bad when people talk slowly but at a faster speed you may have trouble in the beginning picking up a conversation. Edited by shk00design on 07 June 2014 at 6:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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