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The wife and I have the opportunity to do something productive over the summer and learning the language is on the radar.
We both teach and have childcare so have 8 weeks over the summer to commit to it!
How would the hive mind go about it?
We're both semi beginners, ie got the basics but majorly rusty. We don't mind spending the cash and want it to be as fun as possible - so have people used things like italki for live lessons? Joint lessons vs individual?
Other online non "live" resources such as Rosetta Stone, etc that people recommend?
Any help much appreciated!
Worth trying Duolingo, try it for free to start with and see how you get on. Bon chance!
Déjà, vous n'êtes pas sur le bon forum, chercher un forum français qui correspond à l'un de vos passions.
Installez-vous dans un camping dans l'Aveyron ou le Tarn avec un max d'activités à proximité. Kayak, raft, VTT, via ferrata, équitation... des activités qui vous obligent à communiquer. Si vous n'avez pas de voisins français, changer d'emplacement, faites vos apéros à l'heure française et proposer un verre à tous ceux qui vous entourent.
Écoutez la radio française, regardez la télé, éteignez vos téléphones bourrés de contacts britanique, lissez le journal du coin et un roman.
Spend the Summer in France
Really??? In quarantine...........
+1 for Duolingo.
Thanks, Duolingo wasn't on the list so it is now!
I'd love to spend the summer in France but there's a bug knocking around making things difficult.
Michel Thomas worth a try. A different approach.I liked it.
Live would be just about the best way if you can, by zoom or whatever.
https://forum.velotaf.com/ for a forum, just work out how to say 'is your sausage frozen' first
Michel Thomas is good for helping you build up sentences orally. There are some useful tips on how to deal with future tenses etc.. It's not so good for written comprehension obviously
Kwiziq can be useful to guage your current level and suggest things to learn but you soon run out of free stuff.
I'm assuming you like bikes if you're on here? How about reading bike reviews in French and then use Deepl to translate them if/when you get stuck...?
Here's one:
Vélo Vert Commencal review
I've almost finished DuoLingo French. Started mid January and will finish level 7 next week. I coughed up straight away for the pro version which was on offer at £40 IIRC. I found the adverts iritating on the free version and wanted to improve my French, so though what the hell....
I've spend about 5-7 hours a week on it every week since starting, doing about 5 days a week, so pretty good value for money in my book.
The main thing is I've really enjoyed it! Huge improvement in vocab, it keeps count of new works up to 2000, then stops counting, but probably learnt over 3000 by now.
I found it pretty weak on verbs especially tenses, they don't really make you learn them and I normally guess the tense from the context rather than the verb ending. I really need to take a couple of weeks out and just learn all the tenses properly.
It's also pretty good for audio comprehension, they start talking really slow and as you progress it gets faster and faster with little / no gaps between words and you really sharpen up your ear.
As for getting fluent, miles from it. My wife is fluent (Frech degree, lived in France) and I've only caught her out with two words she didn't know (wireless mouse - which didn't exist when she lived in France) and fur, other than that she would breeze through it in minutes without making a single mistake...
Next is Michael Thomas, someone gave me the complete set, so I'll work through all of that next.....
Apart from the usual methods, I like the Assimil series - for some reason they have me making up sentences quicker than the other books/tapes* I've tried.
*you know what I mean
Michel Thomas is the best IMO. People move from method to method IME looking for a magic bullet and Michel Thomas recordings are years old now but they are very good and worth purchasing. Its good to use different methods as well and Duolingo is good but it tends to make you better at doing Duolingo 🙂
I’d love to spend the summer in France but there’s a bug knocking around making things difficult.
Même si le virus circule toujours dans nos deux pays les nouvelles infections sont en baisse. Nos dirigeants font le point toutes les deux semaines et on peux espérer un retour progressif à la normale à partir de juillet. Si il reste un frein c'est Boris, plutôt paradoxal car c'est le pays le plus touché de l'Europe qui impose une quarantaine juste au moment où les frontières s’ouvrent sur le continent.
Soyez optimiste, les enjeux économiques sont trop importants pour laisser des centaines de milliers de touristes potentiels chez eux si on peux les accueillir dans les conditions qui empêchent une recrudescence des cas.
Localement tout est mise en œuvre pour que les piscines, écoles de surf, restaus, musées, spectacles, puissent ouvrir à la clientèle internationale. Pour l'instant les touristes misés sont les allemands et scandinaves car les frontières sont déjà ouvertes, La Normandie en particulière espère le retour des britanniques.
chercher un forum français qui correspond à l’un de vos passions
Edukator - I like this idea. Would you happen to know a VTT one you could recommend? Merci.
https://forum.velovert.com/forum/1-forum-de-discussion/
Je ne suis pas membre. 😉 Pour le ski, Skipass.
Brilliant - thanks so much. Even a quick look tells me I may lose many hours there. I will not look for you!
Déjà, vous n’êtes pas sur le bon forum, chercher un forum français qui correspond à l’un de vos passions.
Equally social media and friends/colleagues.
I think about 1/2 my FB friends* post mostly in French (not all of them French)
I'm also pretty rusty so we tend to speak French for my benefit when we call...
*by friends I mean real ones
the only annoyance with this is my phone where I seem to press the language switch by mistake so often its annoying
Along with anything else some books and films never hurt either.
It's also interesting to read the press ... and introspectives are ...
https://www.lemonde.fr/royaume-uni/
leffeboy - I’ve only just realised you posted a link to a forum too - very helpful, thanks. I was distracted by the talk of frozen sausages and had wandered off to find my hammer.
Thanks everyone.
Michel Thomas is totally new to me so that's very much on the list to try. Probably in combination with an online gamey type Duolingo effort.
Anyone got any experience of online live lessons as I've not heard them mentioned yet? Italki seems to be the main place but very much open to suggestions!