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I had to learn french a couple of years ago. And I had three months to do it. It was perfectly doable, but my method did cost a bit of money. I did all the thi
by surfsvammel 6y ago
I had to learn french a couple of years ago. And I had three months to do it. It was perfectly doable, but my method did cost a bit of money.
I did all the things described in the article, more or less.
This was my approach:
1. I had a 1h lesson with a private tutor over Skype (via italki.com) every single day. This was the part which cost me most money. But private tutors from italki is fairly cheap.
2. Listened to the news every day in easy french (RFI has a great short podcast).
3. I watched LOTR (the only one I had available where I could change language and subtitles to be the same) first with English audio and french subtitles, and then french audio and french subtitles and lastly only french audio no subtitles.
4. Listened to french kids books as audiobooks.
5. I read kids book in french.
6. I finished the 3 months with a week of immersive french course in France and then spent another week travelling France alone, committed to only speak french.
7. During this whole time I added 10 words per day into my Anki deck. I also added any other words that I learned along the way. This was quiet a lot of work.
8. During the three months I also went through the Duolingo French course.
After three months of hard work I passed the fluency test for french.
It took quiet a lot of time and quiet a lot of money. But it got the result I was after.
Ps.
My tutor also wrote a nice review for me on LinkedIn which I’m very proud of and look at every now and again:
“Xxx has learned French with my company. He became fluent in 3 months in has now reached a level close to B2 on the European Framework of Reference, starting from scratch. He has been an extremely hard-working and committed student, with classes every day at 6.30am.”
- TsomArp 6y agoImpressive. But which one is your mother tongue?
- surfsvammel 6y agoMother tongue is Swedish, and I had done some school Spanish when I was younger. However I feel the Spanish was more in the way than actually helping me at the time. I think french is estimated to require about 600h of study, or something like that, for an English speaker, and that is probably a bit more than what I did. But it seems ball-park right. Edit: Na, thinking about it, I think I did do about 600h, maybe even a bit more.
- yangikan 6y agoWow! So you spent more than 6 hours a day for three months?
- surfsvammel 6y agoYes, maybe. I would say maybe 4h per day on week days, and some more hours on weekend. And then the last couple of weeks I spent even more than that, maybe upwards 10 hours, or more. But then I was at an immersive course, where we where only allowed to speak french. When I travelled France I also lived a couple of days with an old retired wine consultant. He only spoke french, and when I got back from day trips in Provence, I would sit with him and just talk and drink wine. That also helped a lot.
- imjared 6y agoIn the few years I've been studying Spanish, I've found that the (take your pick of) wine/mezcal/sidra always helps a lot with my ability to speak. This comment is certainly a bit tongue-in-cheek but being able to relax the nerves a bit and just give it a good effort sometimes goes a long way. Sounds like landing with a wine consultant who doesn't speak your native tongue is about as good a scenario as possible!
- tstrimple 6y agoThe Ballmer Peak applies to many things it would seem.
- kwanbix 6y agoI duno. Spanish and French share a lot. I am positive it helped you.
- tomcooks 6y agoDunno about "a lot", especially when it comes to writing. Or you mean it as "more than Japanese and Russian"?
- speedgoose 6y agoFélicitations ! C'est impressionnant.
- yangikan 6y agoAny good sources for Audiobooks and kids books?
- surfsvammel 6y agoI’ll try to find them. They where about a small boy in Provence. I believe they are quiet famous in France. For the audiobooks I tried to do books that I had already read myself previously. I found that to be better. So for example Bilbo (the french audio version is excellent) and Little Prince, for example.
- mumblemumble 6y agoFor French: http://www.litteratureaudio.com http://www.litteratureaudio.com
- SV_BubbleTime 6y agoCan we get a relative scale for roughly how much, when you say expensive?
- mumblemumble 6y agoIn US dollars, a professional French teacher on iTalki will typically cost $20-$30 per hour. You can reduce the price by going with "community tutors" instead. The price is lower, but they typically aren't professional teachers, so you're effectively paying for a conversation partner rather than actual lessons. The region the teacher comes from is also a factor, due to cost of living differences. So the price can vary from language to language and dialect to dialect.
- surfsvammel 6y agoCan’t remember, and for some reason the price doesn’t say in my old mails. Maybe 10-20USD per session? I tried maybe 5 different tutors before I settled for one. She was based in Hong Kong (which I believe she still is) and comes from central France. She was doing italki as a side gig teaching French in HK during days.
- mumblemumble 6y agoSpecifically to point #2: I would highly recommend RFI's podcast (Le Journal en Français Facile). At first, it's intimidating, and, despite the name, doesn't feel easy at all. They use simpler vocabulary, but still talk at full speed. You might need to listen to each episode a few times in a row, and read the transcript. And that's exactly what makes it such an effective tool. Struggling through it is part of training your brain to make sense of the sounds of the new language. There are other options out there that try to be easy for learners by speaking very slowly. That's a trap. It's absolutely easier to understand, but you're learning to understand the wrong thing. The phonics of many languages undergo some subtle mutations when they are spoken slowly. This is especially true in French. So if you only listen to slow language that's over-pronounced to make it easier for learners to understand, you'll end up training your ear to understand the phonics of slow language that's over-pronounced for learners. Which isn't how actual people actually speak.
- philshem 6y agoIndeed, the “trick” to learning any language is money and time.