richardinfrance

I have lived in France for well over a year and still can't speak the language.

At the moment, and probably until after Christmas, I'm back in the UK trying to sell my house. Yes, great timing, I know.

However, what I wanted to know is, how could I use this time to best learn more French. I am hopeless and am thinking to use this time to learn.

I am not good at self-study at home, so that's absolutely out, so what I really want is to attend a course somewhere. Does anyone know of a good place for learning French. I know there is Berlitz and Alliance Francaise. Has anyone tried them? How far can they get you in a couple of months. Is there anywhere else that's better?

I've never learnt particularly well in normal language classes and would appreciate any recommendations you could give me regarding where to study.

Thanks,

Rik

richardinfrance

Oh, price is not a huge problem, so it doesn't have to be too cheap.

val50

Hi Rik
I've used Alliance Francaise and found it very helpful. They assess you when you first go in, to see which class you will fit into. Where I went, they also had conversation classes, where you learn everyday phrases. These were very popular.
I still use the Michel Thomas CD's - especially if I'm driving on a long journey.
Good luck with selling the house

G-J-B

Good luck with the house sale, it's certainly a tough time in which to be doing it. The British consulate offers very cheap French lessons (something like 60 euros for 3 months worth, once or twice a week), although it's possible you may not be located in the best of places to take advantage of it? Michel Thomas is a good starting point - he poo poos grammar and meticulous learning, but my French teacher was quite particular on grammar and even if my French is still very much in development, it's nice to know why and how a sentence might be constructed the way it is, and an understanding of the tenses.

I found the Assimil CD's on French very good. They have quite a high learning curve, because it throws you in at the deep end, trying to assimilate what you hear, but it's very well done with a book to accompany it.

BBC's free online course - Ma France is excellent too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/french/mafrance/

Roger O

... and... above all... learn to become as a child at the mother's knee!

This means (and it's NOT easy) "forgetting" your mother tongue while learning another language.

Like this example:
Someone holds up a hand and says "main" - you repeat "main" you think "main". You DO NOT think "hand"!
etc.

Watch 1/2 hour French news daily (if you can) - TF1 or FR2 -
Even though the enunciation is clear and relatively slow, at first it will be gibberish. After a few weeks words and phrases will start to "catch". After some months it will start to make some sense.. After a year you will understand an amazing amount - provided you concentrate on watching and listening and NEVER try to translate into English while doing it!

I've been married to a French wife since 1981 and lived in France since 1994 (before that was 24 years in/near Zurich)

I had school French when I/we started. I immersed myself in French TV and later the local life (Antibes/Perpignan and now Carcassonne) and now... no more problems!

There is no easy way (yet) to be put to sleep and wake up an hour later with a perfect 2nd language knowledge..

Good luck
Roger

andrewshrehane6j

I'm thinking of learning French, so these answers have been useful to me too.

My real bug bare though is German. Would the Goethe Institute be the equivalent of Alliance Francaise? And is it any good?

dmu

Yes. My (French) nephew is doing a 2-month course in the Goethe Institut in Berlin at the moment, to brush up his forgotten Bac-level German. He's finding it difficult, but German is so different from French (even more so than from English) and one (how pedantic in English but so common in French and German!) has to be really motivated.....

Roger O

Learning German in Berlin is a bit like learning English in Cockney London!
As soon as one gets on the street the berliner accent is evident and not easy to understand - even for Germans from other regions! I.e. learning in the institute doesn't always translate into understanding the locals up there!

On average, they speak the "cleanest" high German in Frankfurt - well, that's the word - and I never had any problem understanding 'Frankfurters'.

German is a much more logical language than French - and English, for that matter - with the added advantage that every letter or combination of letters is pronounced clearly according to certain rules with very few exceptions(!)
The main difficulty for a Brit (or anyone non-german speaker) is the verb placed at the end of the sentence to make sense.

dmu

Lol imagining someone with an Eastenders way of speaking employed to teach a foreigner to speak English in a language school!
He chose Berlin for family reasons and I agree that the Berliner accent isn't easy. When I go there, I often have to ask people to repeat what they say.

Roger O

I come from Torquay originally and remember many years ago two Finnish students who came over on a "stay with a local family and learn English at South Devon Technical Colleage" 3 month summer package.

Unfortunately for them, they landed with a family of our friends, who, although very nice and warm hearted, only spoke "broad Debn"!!

Goodness knows how they got on at home after that!! "Ow be'ee ackin me biys? Av 'ee ad uh gud time z'aadernoon, en??" Us be gwain downtown t'morrow mornin' if ee feel loik cummin, en?"

Oh well, try to learn Finnish instead!! Now that's a hard language!!

Collioure_Bee

Agree with Val, michel thomas is a good un.

I have picked up most of mine (not much I admit) since I've been working and just mixing with French people. In Collioure most speak English anyway so it is easy to be lazy.

My mate is fluent in English but has now picked up some pretty useful or useless slang off me just because I can't help but use it, "have a butchers. give a bell, he's a right diamond, is he mugging me off?" etc

Sounds funny because he uses London accent for it but learnt most of his English off a Scot so speaks most with a Scottish accent!

G-J-B

I was in the post office today, and my French is still very much work in progress, so when I speak I can see lots of people in other queues turning round to look at the pommy guy trying out French. My partner's very kind and say, they like the English accent, but I think I know what they're really thinking. An argument starting breaking out behind me - Parisians can be so darn rude at times, and this guy who came in on a bike thought he had the right to jump the queue and push his way in front of the lady behind me. Fortunately she bit back and the postal staff told him to go queue elsewhere.

Louise.A

Hello everybody

I'm a French girl and would be interesting in practicing English, with native English speaking people against some French lessons with a native French.
Exchange can be via email or in front of a nice cut of coffee for those who live around Paris, as this is where I live.

If anyone is interesting in my proposition, please send me a PM.

Cheer

richardinfrance

Wow, thank you all so much for the advice. I don't think I've been on as helpful or nice a forum before really.

I shall look into each of your suggestions and keep you informed of how I get on.

Undoubtedly it will probably lead to me assking for still more advice.

Thanks so much anyway,

Rik

beigey

I spent 2 months in France this summer and stupidly thought I would be pretty good by now but no - I seemed to find the only people who spoke english or got by with pushing my MIL or DH to the front to speak on my behalf ... saying that my "passive" understanding as my MIL (who is a french teacher) told me is pretty good just my vocab is lacking.

I am back in an anglaphone environment determined to go back to france at Xmas determined to at least hold a basic conversation so I have started with the CD's - french for dummies with the MOST annoying guy saying things like an idiot but its helping .. plus I have a book called 10 mins a day learn French ... it has flash cards and stickers ... I ran around the house sticking the stickers to all the objects in my house ... now you open the cutlery drawer and their are stickers on the space for knives, forks etc ... makes me look like a neat freak but its already helping me unlearn the wrong words ... everything went well until I saw the sticker for verre de vin and then spotted the bottle of wine!

I guess everything helps ... I keep telling myself - where there is a will there is a way! I just wished I had not been so disruptive at school and actually listened to my french teacher rather than using verb examples to discuss things like brown nylon knickers and bondage whips which resulted in me spending most of the class outside the room!... tsk tsk naughty 15 year olds eh?

Good luck and please do share any tips you have!