GrannyB (& others who may be struggling):-
You probably have the best French language tuition solution already sitting there in your own living room. Namely the tv!
Watch the news and the weather forecast daily, and buy and read the Tele7Jour tv magazine - (brilliant loads of interesting reading material for just €1) . Many years ago my French came on in leaps and bounds as soon as I started doing this - and I'm not that bright.....
This immerses you in the language - which imho is essential! After the first week - even if you understand very little of what you're hearing- you will start to recognise those essential 'key' words, and a little later how they are formed and used in a phrase. After all, this is how we learnt our mother-tongue as small infants - not from text books or structured lessons.
Try it every day for one month, and if your French doesn't begin to 'click' within a month, either I will "eat my shorts", or (with respect) a hearing-aid may be required.

There is no bar in the village at the moment, I work 8am to 7pm so there is no chance of speaking everyday. We have been trying to get French TV installed but it's not easy, we have people turn us down because the access is too dangerous.

We'll get there


Further to the TV question. The last man that came round said all we needed was an analogue aerial as we could just tune our TV into that. Is anyone aware if this is the case. If so, I'm sure we used to have our analogue aerial in the attic when I was young. So need for roof access. Can anyone verify this?

Tweedpipe I said I am not struggling with reading understanding or speaking. I just find writing hard, I do in English too, as you may have noticed

I am immersed in the language, as I was in English, my vocabulary is sometimes better than my husband's. I do agree with you about watching tv and listening to the radio - especially the local stations and that is what I suggested to the OP. Though French tv other than the weather forecast , the news and the odd sports programme is really dreadful, not as bad as in the US but still dire.

I found watching French language films with English subtitles very useful at the beginning - if you see them several times you get to ignore the subtitles and just listen and learn. Trouble there is so many English language films are dubbed not sub-titled.

not the op somewhat hijacked I fear

We don't have a bar either - in our hameau there are only houses and people! Do you know your neighbours? Do you get involved with village life, are you, for example registered to vote in the local elections?

When tv went digital here we bought a digibox and one of the neighbours connected it to our old aerial - our house is three storeys high! When that set died we bought a new one which was digital so no need for box which we passed that on to another neighbour who needed one.

Some of husband's pupils come round to watch English programmes we record for them, and everyone loved the royal wedding - we had a housefull.

Sorry about that. I really did want to help you find the help you need - I'll shut up now

I thought I would just make a few comments which, although only loosely related to the OP’s question, may help others in the process of learning French.

I’ve been in France almost continually since 1991 starting out in the Pas de Calais with my schoolboy French and ending up in the Cote d’Azur by way of Monaco. Although my wife (who is a French and English teacher in Lycée) may describe my French as “almost perfect” and “very fluent” I still feel it is anything but.

So my first piece of advice is that if you think one day it is going to magically “click” then you will be sorely disappointed because French will always be your second language. Even now, I hate going to see a good film in French because it is such an effort to keep up with the rapid and/or softly spoken dialogue – my wife whose language skills are much better than mine has exactly the same problem with English films. Similarly a dinner party with only French guests will give me a headache by the end of the evening.

I say this not in order to put anyone off learning French but just to set a realistic expectation level.

Contrary to some advice here I would urge anyone learning French to develop their reading and writing skills. For me it’s important to see how the words look and if, like me, you change regions in France then this is going to be the only way that you can cope with the different accents. When I first moved to the south of France from the north I was totally confused by what I thought were new words only to find that it was really just the locals making liaisons between words which were enunciated separately in the north.

It used to be my habit to buy a newspaper everyday and sit down with a dictionary to translate the articles which interested me – with Google translate this would have been considerably easier. I also bought a book on verb conjugation and learnt a verb/tense per day (you can largely forget the past historic tense which IMHO serves no useful purpose at all). Because it was my interest I also used to buy car magazines and read these from cover to cover as they at least provided me with a bit more incentive to study.

Apart from the odd documentary,I have never found French TV to be of much interest or of much help and I have never read French books either – OK you can tell me what wonders I’ve been missing but at the end of the day I’m English and I prefer an English perspective over a French perspective any day of the week. After a couple of years I did do a one month course of 2 hours per day which gave quite a helpful boost.

Anyhow, it’s taken a long time but it’s worked for me. I can moan at the mairie, gripe at the gendarmes, fight with the fisc and I can also get a considerable feeling of superiority that I can write in French better than most of them can (which is actually not that hard).

The rewards of such an effort are there in day-to-day life since you won’t need to keep asking for help all the time (which I hate doing) and, for those more sociable than I, it makes communicating with the locals a little easier (though many of them probably can speak some English). They say when you start to dream in French you know you’ve made it though personally I think I would rather have Swedish dreams.

I always worry when I read posts that state "I don't speak French but I will learn it".
I socialize often with French friends often like this afternoon and Friday afternoon and Friday evening for example and it is difficult (impossible) when 6 French people have been eating and drinking wine for 6 hours to follow the increasingly fast and colloquial conversation.
Although after 6 hours of drinking wine - I don't really care
I just accept my limitations and get on with it.

We often go to films in V.O. with French subtitles and we can do the same with some tv programs which can throw up some interesting translations.

Thanks for your post - in around 30 years I should be as fluent as you

SB

When, in 1986, we arrived in Germany to live & work, I had one year of schoolboy German (which was one more than anyone else in the family).

What helped us most (apart from watching regular TV and having day to day interactions with Germans, as suggested earlier) was renting videotapes (remember them?) of movies we'd watched before in English. These were always dubbed into German but sometimes had English subtitles.

Leaps and bounds. We lived there for 8 years and were all taken for Germans long before that.

None of us ever had a formal German lesson or a tutor.*

Edit: *I should say neither of us: the 2 kids were of course in kindergarten then school.

We are registered to vote etc. Don't really know many people here, only to say hello to.

Most of our social activity seems to be in the village next door where the kids go to school. We do lots there, wife helps the school, I help at teh basketball club etc.

We are going to put our house on the market in April in th ehope of moving back. There seems to be a high % of English in this village which has two problems. We didn't move here to be around English so kind of keep ourselves to ourselves. And the local French despise the English as they have bought houses and then only come for 2 months.

To other posts. I didn't say I thought French would suddenly click. But one of us in this house has to work so we can stay here, and that is me, which means I am tied to the house and can't really go out during the week. As long as my wife and children are happy and doing ok that's enough for me. I try, I have a lesson once a week, I help out at school events and when I can I go to the bar in the next village.
A sports club has opened up 30 mins away and I am going to see if I can join a 5 a side team. When I can get there. I did used to play golf which helped, but they wanted 1000e for this year and I only play about 15 times. Didn't seem worth it.

loy loy

You have obviously done what you can and I agree that some of us find learning any language harder than others. Very glad that the rest of the family are happy. Children do adapt better than adults. maybe you should pay them to teach you???

I also understand the problem of too many Brits around. We too actively avoided them when we first came and concentrated on getting to know our neighbours and taking part in events and activities up in the village. Inevitably we have got to know some of the Brit Brigade - many of whom never seem to speak any other language than English and are positively intent on extending their circle of similar friends.

We were invited to a party last year where there were about 50 guests and the only French people there were the barman and the two waiters. I was, apparently, described later as "Very rustic, clearly gone native"

As for coping with lengthy French meals etc - as cyrian says you just have to go with the flow, but as most of our French friends are never ever at a loss for words a few polite interjections are usually more than enough.

As for following French language films, I have enough problems with English and especially American ones. On DVD I always put the subtitles for the deaf on.

Orange digital tv can be very helpful I have come across a few channels on Orange where you can shift programs like "The Sopranos" between English and French and the subtitles can be shifted as well which makes it an excellent learning aid. It's only on some of the post w2k tv content and it shifts back to French in the adverts and you have to change it again when the program restarts.

GrannyBunz. I am interested to know how you managed to mix with your neighbours. We have moved into a hamlet where not alot goes on, and the village doesn't have a very active social calender. We do find mixing with our neighbour and his family the best way for learning the language, but as for meeting the others we don't feel it is normal to just go knocking on neighbours doors and saying hello!! Also whilst out walking, although we live on a great route for randonée, the neighbours never seem to be out in their gardens. This is for sure how we need to learn, but it is breaking the ice and meeting more people. I suppose winter is the worst time, as everyone seems to be a recluse! We do have british friends in the nearest towns, but really want to be mixing with our neighbours more. Our immediate neighbour seems thrilled he has british neighbours, and is so hospitable and always bringing us round gifts!

Hi, go along to your Mairie and get a list of all the Associations and Clubs in your Commune. There's sure to be something you're interested in or willing to try, and you can meet French people with similar interests.