What can I do to learn French?
French is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, being official in 29 countries. These include Canada and Haiti in North America, French Guiana in South America, more than a dozen African nations, five European countries, and Vanuatu and several French overseas territories in Oceania.
French is one of the many Romance languages and it is also known as the language of love. French is not a very difficult language which most people will try to convince you to believe! At the same time, French reading isn’t quite as straightforward as other Romance languages you may have studied, or heard of! Unless you approach it in the right manner with realistic goals and avoid the mistakes that many first-time language learners make, you won’t find yourself on the fluency bandwagon!
Every new language needs time commitment; you can not achieve remarkable progress if you only put a few hours a week into it! I would suggest you have an initial plan ready so you approach the language in the most focused manner. Plan your approach to the entire French learning so that you can learn it fluently in the shortest possible time.
My suggestions to help you learn French
My First suggestion would be a travel immersion that helps you speak French as a native language. All you have to do is to take admission into a college or university of your choice to learn the language, pack your bags to stay at that place for a minimum of six months or a year. However, this approach seems to have an overwhelming effect on many due to the cultural shock that they get as soon as they land up in a new country due to their inability to express themselves or ask for something due to the language barrier. In the event you find the travel immersion method inconvenient, challenging, expensive or time-consuming, I suggest for you, online and classroom courses are available in partial and complete immersion training methods where you do not have to travel across the world to learn a language but you can do so from within your comfort zone. In the full immersion training method, all the classes are held strictly in the target learning language and students are provided with notes or CDs as a reference to follow and understand the lesson and context better. However, in the partial immersion method, the lesson is conducted in the target language but it is also explained in the commonly used/prevalent language.
My Second suggestion would be to define your fluency levels. For some fluency could mean speaking travel or business French while for some it could mean clearing the C2 level of CEFR in the French language! If your fluency goal is only to speak with peers during travel, then it’s an easy road. However, if you intend to give a French proficiency test DELF or DALF then you need to have a serious approach to learning! You need to speak the language and not get detected or pushed back because of the mistakes you may make in speaking of pronouncing the words. You would need to have a lot of commitment, dedication and a disciplined regime. You need to spend some time every day on the subject learning reading writing speaking doing something associated with the subject. To improve your spoken French you can find conversation partners in your neighbourhood if not, you can find them on language exchange programs online such as Meet-up Italki etc.
My Third suggestion would be to identify the compelling reason for learning French! This identification is extremely important because this is the only thing that will keep you going when you are when you encounter adversities or challenges!
My Fourth suggestion would be to use Flashcards to train yourself. You could use apps like Anki, a spaced repetition system, that help you create your own decks or use premade decks and learn by way of repetition. Do not feel shy to start reading with kids French books to grasp and identify the alphabets, the words and the phrases.
My Fifth suggestion would be to improve your listening skills and to achieve that, I recommend logging onto French radio stations, French podcasts, French audiobooks online, French new stations, French songs playlist on Spotify, and explore many more audio resources available online for the French language.
Some more coming your way
My Sixth suggestion would be to find a good tutor for yourself because self-learning is not meant for everybody especially after you have identified your style of learning some people learn by writing however most people learn by listening but apart of these there can still be many more learning styles. An online class especially if it is life would help you speak to the teacher, clear your doubts and get your confidence level in French learning.
My Seventh suggestion would be to recognise the cognates and the fake cognates and build a vocabulary of the commonly used conversation phrases rather than words, including the fillers and conversation connectors so that you can start holding small conversations at the earliest. Trying to memorize words that are not in common conversation use would be self-defeating in your French learning.
My Eight suggestions would be to label all the possible objects in your home with their respective French names, written on post-its and stuck on them. In this manner whenever you see an object you would be able to see the French word and I recommend you train your mind to connect the French word directly with the object rather than translating it from English to French. In this manner, you will be learning French faster.
My Ninth suggestion would be to learn from modern spoken French to learn spoken French in a native way. For all learning purposes, written and spoken French are almost 2 different languages due to many silent letters, glidings, liaisons, etc… that are everywhere, even in French verb conjugations and grammar. Many students however fall prey to learning French with pre-written material, or traditional methods that over enunciate every single word. “Spoken French taught in American classrooms is a fiction, based on ideas about how people should speak, not on how they do speak” – Waught & Fonseca-Greber, University of Arizona
My Tenth suggestion would be to spend 15-30 minutes a day learning French with 100% of your attention – not multitasking – not 3 hours a week! Rule of thumb: for each hour spent learning new things, you need to spend a minimum of one hour reviewing older things.
Finally, focus on the Easy Aspects of French
French isn’t any easier or harder to learn than any other language, but you can quickly forget this if you only focus on the difficult aspects of French. Whenever you get discouraged, think about all of the reasons that lead to learning it! Remind yourself, French, is an easy language because it: