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I need to learn French fast | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Juggernaut Newbie United States Joined 6196 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 12 29 May 2007 at 8:53pm | IP Logged |
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I guess before I go on to tell my situation, I should state my goal. I want to learn as much French as humanly possible in the next three months before I take a placement test at my college. I want to be able to skip the first two years of French classes (beginner/intermediate).
So far in my French studies I’ve completed Michel Thomas French (Basic and Advanced) course and I’m in the process of reviewing it again. I use a notebook where I take down most of my notes and so far I have a good command of the grammar, but I’m lacking in vocabulary, idioms and pronunciation. I guess that I have about a ~250 word vocabulary range in French, and to add to this I have the French Language Builder by Michel Thomas which I plan to complete this week (which should up my word range to an additional ~ 250 or so words). Now I have the course “Learn French in Your Car” and I plan to go through this entire course this weekend along with the language builder (and I will review the courses again), I’m hoping that these additional courses will improve my pronunciation and vocabulary… but my question is where I should go from there. I can get all three courses of Pimsleur from my library but I’m thinking that would be too weak of a program to use after going through the entire MT and Learn in You Car series. I’m thinking that I should watch the entire French in Action videos and take notes from the transcript… or go through the two volumes of FSI French. Does FSI end at the end of volume two or are there more volumes? Where should I go from here? To recap… so far I’ve complete Michel Thomas Basic & Advanced, and in the next two to three weeks I’ll complete Michel Thomas Language Builder, Vocabulary Builder (I plan on purchasing the vocabulary course this weekend) and “Learn French in Your Car”. Edited by Juggernaut on 29 May 2007 at 8:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Darobat Diglot Senior Member Joined 6976 days ago 754 posts - 770 votes  Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin | Message 2 of 12 29 May 2007 at 10:47pm | IP Logged |
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Well, there's an article called How I Learned French in One Year. It outlines how one person managed to learn French in 10 months, and obtain "advanced" on most sections on the TEF. Some of his techniques could probably be helpful to you too.
Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Juggernaut Newbie United States Joined 6196 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 3 of 12 30 May 2007 at 1:22am | IP Logged |
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I just found this link... http://www.loquella.com/learn-french/ ... this makes FSI so much easier. I think I might go ahead with FSI. Does anyone know how far the two volumes of FSI French will take me?
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tornado Triglot Newbie Luxembourg Joined 6527 days ago 17 posts - 16 votes Speaks: EnglishC2, Hungarian, German* Studies: French | Message 4 of 12 30 May 2007 at 3:35am | IP Logged |
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i'm no expert, but i do think the 2 volumes of fsi take you quite far. i'm doing them right now and i'm coming to the end of volume one. i don't know about you, but it gives me headaches to do more than one lesson per day of fsi, that should be in my opinion the maximum if you really want to grasp the material.
having said that, you could try to go through assimil at a faster pace. personally i have done pimsleur, rosetta stone, french in action, half of fsi and i'm halfway through the first book of assimil, which i did in about the last 3 weeks (3 weeks assimil, not 3 weeks everything else ;) ). i think assimil is fun to do, because it has useful sentences, but i don't know how effective it is yet. you could also try to get supermemo, which will probably have a good impact if you have 3 months to use it. i don't know how the placement test is, but if it is in writing, which i assume for at least a big portion of it, then you should not forget about practicing to write! Edited by tornado on 30 May 2007 at 3:37am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6258 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 5 of 12 30 May 2007 at 3:56am | IP Logged |
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You should also try http://www.polarfle.com/. This is a detective story that trains your French as you try to identify the criminal. Mostly grammar practise, but you will of course also see words you haven't learned yet. It's available in 4 levels, so you can choose the one that suits your current knowledge of French or maybe go through more advanced ones once you're done with one level. I know the "Avancé" level really teaches you the most advanced parts of French grammar there are.
And you should definitely find a tutor to help you develop your active knowledge of French, that is speaking and writing. It's hard to do when studying on your own, especially if you have no way of checking whether what you wrote is correct. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jerrod Senior Member United States Joined 6291 days ago 168 posts - 176 votes Studies: Russian, Spanish | Message 6 of 12 30 May 2007 at 7:26am | IP Logged |
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Here are my thoughts (warning I don't know French).
I was looking at different university programs and syllabi and noticed this descripition for forth semester French: The student will read five or six French readers. So I think that would be around a 3,000 word vocabulary. In other words, you have a lot of vocabulary to learn to get to that level. Probably at least 2,500; not an easy task. My advice would be to try to learn everything fully for French 101-102 (the first two semesters) and if there is time, skim all the material for 201. That way you bypass the first year and maybe the third semester. Are you just trying to get out of French so you don't have to take a language course? Or are you wanting to jump to the third year level? If you are able, try actively reading four or five readers. If you are truely "hardcore" use Iversen's pre-vocabulary learning technique. Just my two rubles. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dmg Diglot Senior Member Canada dgryski.blogspot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6799 days ago 555 posts - 605 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Dutch, Esperanto | Message 7 of 12 30 May 2007 at 8:19am | IP Logged |
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I would similarly suggest that the test is likely to be grammar oriented, and not conversation oriented. As such, I think courses like Michel Thomas and Pimsleur, while great for getting you speaking the language, present it in a less formal method that would likely be learned at school. Thus, even if you can carry on a basic conversation, if you still make tonnes of _written_ grammar errors, you're likely to be placed in the earlier class anyway. I think this is where FSI would come in handy: the grammar explicitly presented, rather than absorbed (which can be difficult to regurgitate on a test, especially if they're testing edge-cases which seems likely in an academic setting.)
Personally, I think drilling FSI for two months and watching French in Action for vocabulary and idioms is probably your best bet. You might want to pick up something like "Teach Yourself French Grammar" to a more palatable introduction than FSI's grammar instruction, but it won't help you with vocabulary. FSI might have a slightly odd vocabulary skew as well (in terms of types of vocabulary items learned), which is why you'd want to concentrate on FiA's vocabulary items. Good luck! Edited by dmg on 30 May 2007 at 8:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Topsiderunner Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6706 days ago 215 posts - 218 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Arabic (Written) | Message 8 of 12 30 May 2007 at 8:05pm | IP Logged |
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Get "Mastering French Vocabulary: A Thematic Approach" ($10.36 on
amazon) and start memorizing words like you would with a dictionary. Once you get into the swing of things you can easily passively learn 50+ words a day without too much effort. As for pronunciation, just start listening. Find some good clear radio broadcasts or podcasts on topics you enjoy and start listening all day with an mp3 player, in the house, walking around...I find I can put in an extra 20 min a day if I listen just before falling asleep. Once you know the sounds in your head, all you really have to do is "act" them out and eventually you will get pretty close to a decent accent. You said that you're pretty set with grammar, but have a printout of the all regular verb conjugation around to review every once in a while, as well as the most common irregulars. It seems much more manageable when you realize that everything you have to memorize can fit on just a few sheets of paper. Good Luck! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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