![]() I flip back through my notebook every week to review what I've learned.īut if you're looking to really be able to speak with colleagues, you need to practice forming sentences on your own. I often listen to a podcast while on my morning walk, then read the transcript and jot down any new vocabulary. I've found the key is to do some combination of these every single day. I also follow a few French news sites on Twitter. The Duolingo French podcast is great, too. I also really like Little Talk in Slow French, in which the podcast host reviews a different conversational topic each week with just enough explanatory English. I use Duolingo every day and listen to Le journal en français facile podcast Mandolin Conspiracy mentioned. I've been doing exactly the same thing - relearning my dormant high school French 20 years later - for the past year. Posted by urbanlenny at 12:48 PM on February 17 You can check kijiji or FB Marketplace and the link, but there may also be a local Alliance Française that maintains a list of French tutors. Especially given the changes to the way things are done during the pandemic, you should be able to easily find someone who you can pay to do one on one French speaking tutoring via a video chat platform. Once you hit that point, what you really need is one on one speaking practice - especially given your short timeframe I'd limit yourself to one month of preparatory passive work and then just jump into one-on-one speaking practice so that you have any hope of unlocking what you have to work with by the time you need to interact with francophone colleagues, because it will likely be a slog. If you were once good at French, you're going to hit those walls pretty quickly with the passive forms of learning. They will definitely help the way the language sounds as and feels "right" it gets pieced together in your head, but there will be a wall - and in fact several walls - where you reach as far as you can get on your own. ![]() Speaking as a sometimes mostly fluent person, the apps and TV shows and such are going to help a lot with unlocking the existing French in your brain, but they are too passive for it to transition into being an active skill that you can use so you can speak French with ease. Posted by andrewesque at 11:41 AM on February 17 īest answer: There's a big difference between fluency as judged by your comprehension (you easily understand what is written and being said) and verbal fluency (where you can actively and with little effort access the appropriate words to convey your message) and it sounds like what you are looking for is verbal fluency. Canada, France, whatever) which is helpful if you want exposure to particular varieties or accents. You can also filter teachers/tutors by where they come from (e.g. If you have a budget but it's tight, in your situation you should be fine with a "community tutor" (vs the "professional teachers" who are typically more expensive) - given you're not starting from scratch you don't necessarily need an extremely organized pedagogical program, but just sheer conversational practice. (I have no professional connection, I've just used it and had a positive experience.) If you're willing to spend some money, I'd recommend using italki or some other similar platform to get some 1:1 practice speaking. If improving your speaking is a priority (which I'll guess it is based on interactions with Francophone colleagues and your professional motivations) you'll want to practice speaking as much as you can. I am really weak at speaking it and have a poor vocabulary (and very low confidence in my spoken French) How should I approach this? posted by rodneyaug to Writing & Language (17 answers total) 27 users marked this as a favorite I’m happy to cobble together resources like apps, library books, podcasts, radio, or TV shows. ![]() I don’t have access to in-person French practice with native or fluent speakers in the short term, nor do I have access to any sort of immersive experience like travel to French regions. I have professional reasons for refreshing my French language skills and will likely be interacting with Francophone colleagues about 3-4 months from now. But I do know that French fluency is buried in my brain somewhere and I can reignite it with effort! Today, I can maybe understand 50% of the written French I read, maybe 25% of the oral French I hear, and I am really weak at speaking it and have a poor vocabulary (and very low confidence in my spoken French). I haven’t really used it at all in the intervening decades. When I graduated high school, I was basically fluent. I’m an Anglophone from an English-speaking region and I did all of my schooling in (Canadian) French from grades 7-12. Inspired by yesterday’s question about learning Spanish, please help me develop a learning plan for relearning French. ![]()
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