What do I need to learn French?
French allows you to enter the culture of over 300 million French speakers in more than 50 countries worldwide. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. The language of love belongs to the Indo-European family. Today, owing to France’s past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole. French is an official language in 29 countries across multiple continents, most of which are members of the Organization Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), a community of 84 countries that share the official use or teaching of French. Learning French helps one improve his artistic and critical thinking skills. It is a global language as recognized by the United Nations and a very influential language as it is a language of culture, including art, cuisine, dance, and fashion. In both English and French, a French-speaking individual or nation is referred to as a Francophone. French is also the 18th most natively spoken language in the world, the 6th most spoken language by a total number of speakers and the second or third most studied language worldwide.
So, let's see what you need to have to learn French! I'd say you need to:
Have a fully developed age-appropriate Intellect:
In all honesty, students must have a base minimum level of intellect, to be able to learn a new language. This is paramount for the learning language process. Your intellect can also be defined as your cognitive ability that inturn help catapults your understanding of a language and its linguistic system. That is, language is derived from cognitive development and greater intelligence aids individuals in learning a foreign language more quickly and easily. This study has practical implications for both teachers and students.
Learning factors
There are numerous factors that affect a student’s language learning. A few of them being:
Attitude:
Attitude is widely regarded as one of the most significant elements influencing language learning. Attitude is distinguished by a high amount of emotional engagement, such as feelings, self, and community interactions. Students’ high desire and good attitude improve second language learning. As a result, learners’ attitudes form an important part of language acquisition since they may impact their success in learning the target language. Attitudes are classified into three types: cognitive, affective, and conative. Cognitive refers to concepts and beliefs, whereas emotional refers to what individuals like or hate about an attitude object. The last component is conative, which is described as a willingness to act in relation to language. The manner in which people express their positive or negative attitudes may have an impact on the outcome of language acquisition. To summarise, each component describes how learners see, act, and perceive language acquisition.
Have a strong Reason that can Motivate you when you hit roadblocks:
Motivation is an extremely important factor for language learning because it directly impacts the continuity of your language learning process. If you start your language learning without a strong reason or motivation you are likely to give up at some point where you meet adversities. To continue effectively you would need to have a strong reason or motivation to learn the French language such as the dire need to enhance your professional level etc.
Seek and study with Authentic Resources:
To accelerate your language learning you would also need to access reliable, authentic and error sources such as audiobooks online videos YouTube videos, movies, music, reading material such as literature and children’s books etcetera. You would need access to flashcard apps online such as Anki, Memrise, and many more. Also look for conversation partners for yourself from sites such as Tandem, Hello Talk, Italki etc
Bear in mind your Physical factors, and approach language learning to support you:
Physical factors range from anything with respect to you being well and available, to age and strength. They could also reflect your surroundings or point to your support system.
Command all Mental factors:
The strength of your mind, conviction and decision plays a key role in shaping up your ability to pursue language learning. Another important factor that affects your language learning with certainty would be your broad-mindedness, your awareness or your ability to approach language learning with an open mind, in order to receive and accept new cultures and experiences. Retrain your mind to start accepting new things and focus on the important aspects.
Manage Emotional and Social factors:
If you have responsibilities that keep glaring at you, from your workplace or your home, you wouldn’t be able to keep up with your learning pace or study diligently. Therefore, you would need to maintain a fine balance with support from your family members which would prove really worthy at this point.
Ignore all myths about the age
While studies have shown that as younger students we tend to acquire the correct accent and language skills in their best format. And older
students find that it’s more difficult to fully acquire a foreign language, but this isn’t true of everyone. So while this should not hold you back, I suggest you to be prepared to put in double the effort to learn a language.
Develop your Personality to learn like a pro
More introverted students have been shown to take longer to acquire a language because they’re more hesitant to make mistakes. Extroverted students, on the other hand, are more likely to go all out and try out their newly learned vocabulary. To learn French, you need to understand that mistakes are part of the learning process and it’s more important to speak than to be perfect.
Search for convenient and calm surroundings that offer you peace of mind and comfort to learn.
Whether it be your country of residence or your home do ensure that you have the convenience and peace of mind to be able to continue your studies. While as a child you are more likely to receive family support for studies, as an adult you would need significant support from your family members to be able to concentrate on your learning, for a few reasons. The first and the foremost of the reasons is that you have been out of touch of studies and so, you would need to invest significant time and concentration to be able to get back to the rhythm of studying.
Have a favourable Environmental factor by your side:
If you are located in a country, which supports the learning of your target language, you would have lot of resources available, a lot of options with respect to classes to enrol in and a lot of online support to seek help from; however if you are in a country that does not support your target language you would have to face numerous challenges while learning the language, that would eventually delay your learning process.
Be creative and involved when learning a language.
French may be one of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn, but a little guidance definitely won’t hurt (if anything, it’ll speed up your learning time!). Here are my top tips to learn French, so you can master this beautiful language in no time. Label items in your home with their respective articles. Such as la table written on a sticky note stuck on table! It would even better if you could use stickies of two different colours, to differentiate masculine and feminine words.
Activate Your Passive Memory
Using passive memory can help you sail past bothersome spelling, tripping over choosing the right gender and conjugating the numerous tenses. If you happen to be a visual learner reading a captivating article or a book in French could help you remember the right orthography, use of tenses, nouns, gender and vocabulary. All you need to do is avoid focussing too much on understanding everything and pick a book for your level. By simply translating the most repeated words you will soon be able to integrate them into your vocabulary, with the context to back you up!
Focus more on intonation and accent
The same can be said about auditory learners for watching TV series, films or YouTube videos in French. Not only will it help auditory learners to get the grammar right, but theu will also pick up on the right intonation and accent. Once again, it’s advisable to watch suitable videos for your level, with English subtitles to begin with until you are comfortable with French.
Master your grammar rules:
Keep practising your grammar, and the knowledge will take you places. As an example most Feminine nouns end in:
-e, such as -ise (surprise), -ine (mandarine), -alle (balle), -elle (poubelle), -euse (danseuse), -esse (maîtresse), -ette (fourchette), -ille (fille), -ière (théière), -ance (romance) and -ence (urgence)
-ude, -ure, -ade (attitude, peinture and promenade)–tion, -sion, -son (natation, pension, maison)-ée, -té, (idée, liberté) and
most Masculine nouns end in:
-tre (théâtre), -cle (article), -age (fromage), -ège (siège) and -isme (capitalisme)–and (marchand) -ou (bijou) -oir (comptoir) -ment (gouvernement) -il, -ail, -eil (fil, ail, accueil) -eau (couteau) -eur (professeur) consonants in general with an exception to few masculine endings that end in -e
Focus On Intonation
The French R and nasal sounds of the language are aren’t the only things to be focused on. Yes, they are undoubtedly difficult to pronounce, by an English speaker, but it can’t singlehandedly overshadow the need of a better intonation, than anything else. A good intonation enables a learner to be well understood by French natives. Stress is very important in French to express where a sentence starts and where it finishes. Structural comprehension helps people understand what you mean. And the good news is that the French intonation is extremely easy; with the stressed syllable in a word, always occupying the last position, and the stressed part of a sentence always being the last syllable. You could use a descending tone for an affirmative sentence and an ascending tone for a question or you could also stress the most important words in a sentence.
Be aware of the loan words and prefer vocabulary you’ve learnt in a French-speaking context
Loan words that were originally taken from the French vocabulary in English, aren’t necessarily used in the same context. Therefore i recommend avoiding clichéd words and expressions that such as: Oh là là, rendez-vous, coup de grâce, or calling the waiter ‘garçon’. For example, a rendez-vous can either mean a romantic date, an appointment at the doctor or even a business meeting! Thus stick to the vocabulary you garnered during your vacation in France or through a French film or in your French lessons, rather than vocabulary carried over from English.
Learn Food Vocabulary
Perhaps Food Vocabulary are the only words English uses in the same context as the French! And with English using so many French terms for food and beverage, you’re already one step ahead. As an example:
to be hungry avoir faim
to eat manger
meal le repas
breakfast le petit-déjeuner
lunch le déjeuner
to have breakfast or lunch déjeuner
dinner le dîner
to have dinner dîner
after-school snack le goûter
to taste goûter
appetizer, starter le hors d’œuvre, l’entrée*
soup la soupe, le potage
main course le plat principal
salad la salade
dessert le dessert
Travel to a French-speaking country may not always be the available option; however, one can always practice the newly learnt food vocabulary in a local French restaurant or bakery, order food and give your compliments to the chef in French!
Finally,
There are a wide variety of practices that you can make use of in the many language learning services in the market today, and the top-rated of these offer you multiple ways in learning and practising these language skills and vocabulary efficiently and effectively. Using passive memory will help you integrate the use of the right tenses, gender and intonation without putting in a conscious effort, into your daily routine, without your knowledge. Are you sceptical? This is actually the way babies learn their first languages — and nobody’s been teaching them grammar rules.
This includes learning through memorization, in-depth learning practices and challenges, learning a language with native speakers, and much more. There are even apps and programs specifically designed by age groups, meaning both kids and adults can get a lot out of these services! Moreover, with practice mistakes will eventually disappear over time.If you consider learning French then Multibhashi offers great French courses, Click here, to enrol.