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My personal experience in learning the #french language, what tools and methods I used and what kept me motivated throughout the years. #LanguageLearning
What I already knew: When I started, I had a very basic knowledge of French that did not exceed pronouns, numbers and few verbs and nouns. I have gathered this limited knowledge from life, and a movie. Yes, the movie Amélie is one of my favorite movies, and my favorite soundtrack
The Lingvist App: @Lingvist uses some smart machine learning techniques as a teaching method and was especially useful in helping me grow my vocabulary. I used to spend around 1 hour a day practicing. It kind of replaced Facebook for me
In-person group classes: I registered in my local french institution. I did an entry test and I was able to skip the first 2 levels. Afterwards, I spent around 8 months, attending classes for 5 hours per week. And I reached the intermediate B1 level in the language.
Online private classes: I used the websites italki and rype to register for affordable private classes. Those classes allowed me to have fun conversations with French speaking people from across the globe. Extremely useful to improve oral communication skills and confidence.
Series and Movies: Movies and series have been a fun way to improve my French. Examples I really enjoyed: Les Intouchables (My favorite), Monsieur Ibrahim, Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au Bon Dieu?, La Crème de la crème. Also watched some French series on Netflix such as La Mante.
Books: Reaching intermediate level, a whole world of French literature opened before me. I read interesting books. Here are my favorites: L’Étranger (Albert Camus), Monsieur Ibrahim et les Fleurs du Coran, Oscar et la Dame Rose (Schmitt). Feels great to understand a French book!
Other approaches: Changed the language of my phone to French. Followed french pages on social media. Listened to french music, radio and podcasts.
I am still learning and will probably remain on learning for a long time. I am happy that I can now speak French. Maybe this thread gives the impression that learning French is hard but you will start seeing the from first day. The fun is in the journey and not the destination!
