Resources for Learning French
=============================
by John Walker
March 23rd, 1993
This is a summary of resources I've found useful in learning French in
order to survive in Neuchâtel. The selection of resources is slanted
explicitly toward the goal of survival: mastering the language
sufficiently to be able to buy a car, read the newspaper, get your
furnace repaired, and all the other fun-filled
components
of
day-to-day life.
From that base, you can proceed to a deeper
understanding of the literary language and more effective ways of
expressing yourself but it doesn't make sense to worry about such
refinements until you're able to warn that pesky neighbour kid that if
he rings your doorbell one more time and runs away, you'll tear off
his fingers and toes and feed them to your vicious dog.
Note: this document is written in the ISO 8859/1 Latin-1 character set
which includes the accented characters used in French. The following
lines should be a sequence of letters, unaccented in the first line,
with a variety of accents in subsequent lines. If your computer shows
these as anything other than the correctly accented characters, French
words in the body of the document will also be incorrect.
Systems
that properly support the ISO character set (such as Microsoft Windows
3.0 and above and recent releases of SunOS and Solaris) will display
this document properly.
Unaccented:
Grave:
Acute:
Circumflex:
Cedilla:
A
À
Á
Â
E
È
É
Ê
I
Ì
Í
Î
O
Ò
Ó
Ô
U
Ù
Ú
Û
a
à
á
â
e
è
é
ê
i
ì
í
î
o
ò
ó
ô
u
ù
ú
û
C
c
Ç
ç
FRENCH IN ACTION
================
French In Action is a video-based course created by Pierre Capretz of
Yale University. This course is so excellent it almost justifies the
invention of television. I know of no better way to so rapidly obtain
a knowledge of day-to-day French.
French in Action is focused around 52 half-hour video lessons which
assume no prior knowledge of the language.
The course starts in
French from the first instant, and is built around a story that
involves the kinds of day to day activities that are often neglected
in literary-oriented language courses. Don't expect to find a lot of
verb conjugation and noun-adjective agreement exercises here; the goal
is developing an instinct for what "sounds right", just as children do
as they learn their first language. You may feel like an idiot when
you bungle such details, but the fact is you can mess up genders,
adjectival forms, and much of verb conjugation and still be understood
perfectly well on the street.
French in Action plunges right into colloquial Parisian French, spoken
full speed. The first time through you'll probably miss about 90% at
first hearing.
The second time, you'll get about half, and by the
third time you'll understand almost everything.
Your very progress
provides strong reinforcement as you follow the course.
The course consists of the 52 video segments, a textbook which
consists largely of transcripts of the videos with explanations, and a
workbook and set of audio cassettes that focus on structure, grammar,
and pronunciation skills.
If you're too busy to work through the
more
schooldays-like
components, you can misuse French In Action to build your skills
almost painlessly. Just pick a 30 minute time period every day and
work your way through the videos from number 1 through number 52, one
per day. When you get to the end, go back to the beginning and start
over again. Repeat until you understand perfectly and have ceased to
improve. (Mustn't leave you like the programmer found starved in the
shower clutching a bottle of shampoo with instructions: "Lather,
rinse, repeat".)
French In Action is published by the organisations listed at the end
of this section.
The textbook, study guides, audio cassettes, and
other student material are available in many college bookstores; the
last time I checked, San Francisco area residents could obtain them at
the College of San Mateo bookstore.
The video cassettes
are
distributed separately by the Annenberg/CPB project, in a dumb format
(two half-hour segments per VHS cassette--if you insist on standard
play you could fit four per tape and *twelve* in six-hour mode, which
would reduce the number of cassettes from twenty-six to five) at a
mindboggling price: more then US$600. This notwithstanding the fact
that French In Action has been broadcast by
numerous
Public
Broadcasting System stations in the US for years, and anybody with an
antenna and a VCR is perfectly free to make their own tapes of the
video portion of the course. In fact, some PBS stations have held
all-night taping marathons of French In Action, aimed entirely at
folks who want to make their own set of tapes. Now while you're
perfectly free to tape anything broadcast on TV for your own use, it's
still probably a federal crime to run off a copy for a friend. Go
figure.
[French In Action: Textbook, Workbook, Study Guide, Instructor's
Guide, Audio cassettes: Yale University Press, 92-A Yale Station, New
Haven, CT 06520, USA.
ISBN
0-300-03655-8
(Textbook).
Video
cassettes, Faculty manual: Annenberg/CPB Project, 1111 Sixteenth
Street NW, Washington DC 20036, USA, Tel: 1-800-LEARNER.]
CONVERSATIONAL FRENCH IN 20 LESSONS
===================================
If you go out and buy this "Cortina Method" self-study book and open
it up for the first time, you'll probably think I've taken leave of my
senses to recommend this course. First of all, the book was written
in 1954 and has not changed much since. It's filled with little tacky
line art period illustrations that date it (actually, I'd have guessed
late Forties).
Ignoring the anachronistic layout and
content,
however, any of three aspects of this course make it well worth your
time.
First, each of the 20 lessons is simple and can easily be read through
in half an hour. Each builds vocabulary and conversational skills as
you go.
Second, grammar is taught in a very effective manner--by
English-language footnotes keyed to the French-language material in
the lessons.
Each time a new grammatical construct appears, a
footnote introduces it and provides a simplified explanation of the
principle involved.
I've found this a remarkably painless and
effective way to assimilate grammar. Third, the last 135 pages of the
book contain an exhaustively detailed and well-written reference on
French grammar that's worth the modest price of the book by itself.
You can find much classier French courses, but this one works.
[Cortina, R., and Alden, D., Conversational French in 20 Lessons, New
York: Henry Holt, 1954-1962-1977. ISBN 0-8327-0011-8.]
CHAMPS-ELYSÉES
==============
Once you've come to terms with the basic vocabulary and grammar of a
language, you're only at the start of a long process of learning how
the language is *actually* spoken colloquially and of learning to
*hear* the language.
Spoken language has much less information
bandwidth than the printed page and contains much more ambiguity which
must be resolved, in real time, by context.
Consider, for example,
that in French the words:
tu
tu/tue
tout
tue
you (familiar form)
past participle of the verb se taire
all
kill (1st & 3rd person singular present)
will probably sound exactly alike to a novice, and don't
that much in pronunciation in any case. Or the words:
foi
foie
fois
differ
all
faith
liver
time, occasion
which are pronounced precisely the same, at least as far as rendering
into the International Phonetic Alphabet is concerned. Now if you
know the context of the discussion and pick up all the neighbouring
words, you're not likely to be confused about the meaning of "pâte de
foie gras" (unless, perhaps, you're in some
weird
California
cult-o-mart), but when you're in language learning mode, missing about
10% of the words and struggling to understand the rest as fast as
somebody is talking, the added ambiguity of sounds really makes things
tough. Finally consider this epiphany of aural ambiguity passed on by
Billy Hinners, all pronounced precisely the same.
vert
vers
verre
ver
vair
green
toward, or verse (of a poem)
glass
worm
squirrel fur
Developing full-speed comprehension of the spoken language simply
requires a lot of practice, and the best way I know to develop the
skill is through an audio magazine called "Champs-Elysées" published,
in of all places, Nashville, Tennessee. Ten times a year you receive
an audio cassette which amounts to a variety radio program entirely in
French. Segments include news, interviews, current popular music,
history, and the like.
The cassette is accompanied by a complete
printed transcript in which idiomatic and unusual words are printed in
boldface and defined, in English, at the end. You can use this in
several ways.
You can listen to the cassette cold to measure
comprehension, then play it again while reading the transcript to
identify words. Quickly, you'll find yourself able to pick out more
and more words as they are spoken. When I'm done with the cassette, I
usually read through the definitions at the end, picking up a few new
and useful idioms each time.
The content of Champs-Elysées makes no compromises toward being a
learning tool; the language is spoken just as fast as you'll hear on
French radio stations (and generally faster than Swiss French), and
with an unrestricted vocabulary. Don't expect to find words like
"mettre" or "prendre" defined--the definitions tend to be more like:
le légitimiste: legitimist; in France, a supporter of the elder
branch of the Bourbons, dethroned in 1830, to the advantage of
the Orléans branch. When King Charles X abdicated and went
into exile, his cousin, the duc d'Orléans, Louis-Philippe 1er
became "roi des Français". In 1883 the comte de Chambord,
Henry V, grandson of Charles X, died without an heir.
la
zizanie: ill-feeling (cf.
mettre/semer la zizanie dans une
famille = to set a family at loggerheads).
The only disadvantage of Champs-Elysées is the price; about US$100 per
year, but if you're really serious about understanding spoken French,
I don't know of any better way, especially if you're living in an area
where you don't have access to French language radio and television
programs to provide the same kinds of practice (albeit without a
transcript to help you). An optional "study guide" is also available,
which seems to be produced with a goal of introducing Champs-Elysées
into school curricula. I found the study guide boring and essentially
useless, so I dropped my subscription to it when I renewed last year.
If your interest encompasses other languages, the same company
publishes similar audio magazines in German, Italian, and Spanish;
I've tried the Spanish edition and found it to be of the same quality
as the French.
[Champs-Elysées, P.O.
Box 158067, Nashville, TN
37215, USA. Phone: USA/800-824-0829.]
SOUS-TITRES AU SECOURS
======================
If you live in Europe, there's a free and inexhaustible resource for
learning to *hear* French that's as close as your television set.
Unlike in the United States where subtitles require a special decoder,
most European networks subtitle their programs using the Teletext
mechanism which also provides access to pages of news, weather,
financial quotes, and other information.
Principally intended for the deaf, subtitled programs are a wonderful
way to improve your comprehension of the spoken language.
You'll
note, as you gain skill, that subtitles are often simplified compared
to the actual spoken dialogue (primarily so they don't flash by too
quickly to read). Even so, you'll find you're soon following speech
much more readily, even without subtitles or when using that most
challenging of modern conveniences, the telephone.
To receive subtitles, you need a Teletext-equipped television: most
medium-priced and higher receivers include this feature.
Then, when
watching a subtitled broadcast (they are, regrettably, still in the
minority), set your decoder to the "page" on which the subtitles are
transmitted.
Most broadcasters have adopted the European standard of
page 888 for subtitles, but you may encounter some which haven't yet
conformed.
France
2's evening news is always subtitled, and
Télévision Suisse Romande subtitles the news every other evening.
Video cassette recorders do not record Teletext information, so even
if a movie you record was broadcast with subtitles, you won't be able
to see them when you replay the tape. (Tricky high-end video setups
do allow recording subtitles, but few people have such special
equipment or the patience to figure out how to use it.)
OXFORD FRENCH MINIDICTIONARY
============================
This
is a small (7.5 x 12cm), fat (650 page) English/French
translation dictionary of more than 45,000
words
and
65,000
translations.
It's small enough so you can tuck it in a corner of
your briefcase and never be without it.
Don't look for extensive
definitions here, just brief one or two word translations. But for a
book so physically small, the coverage of the language is nothing less
than astounding.
[The Oxford French Minidictionary, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1986. ISBN 0-19-864145-1.]
If you live in continental Europe, you may not be able to find the
Oxford dictionary in your bookstore. Fortunately, Robert & Collins
publish a virtually identical volume (size, shape, format, and
content) which is available everywhere. The Oxford and Robert are so
similar that if you don't happen to glance at the cover you'll seldom
be aware which you're using. [Le Robert & Collins GEM Dictionnaire -Français-Anglais/Anglais-Français:
Dictionnaires Le Robert, 1992.
ISBN 2-85036-136-4.]
In the UK you may find it published by Harper
Collins Publishers under ISBN 0-00-458539-9.
BARRON'S FRENCH GRAMMAR
=======================
This is an English-language, pocket sized summary of French grammar
which makes a perfect briefcase companion to a compact translation
dictionary like the Oxford French Minidictionary mentioned above.
Despite its size (less than 200 15x9 cm pages), it's quite complete
and includes plenty of examples and mnemonic tricks
to
help
troublesome points stick in your mind. It contains one of the best
summaries of that eternal puzzle, "which preposition goes with what
verb" I've seen. [Kendris, C., Barron's French Grammar, Hauppage NY:
Barron's, 1990. ISBN 0-8120-4292-1.]
COLLE FRANÇAISE & LE TRUC DES GENRES
====================================
This is a one-page "reference card" for French that I developed while
learning the language. In learning French, I found that the most
difficult words to master were what I came to call "linguistic glue,"
the adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions that link
verbs and nouns into complete sentences. Unlike verbs and nouns,
which are frequently similar in English and French, these "glue words"
tend to be unique in each language. In addition, they are often used
in idiomatic ways which are difficult to find, even in a dictionary.
The reference card is provided as a PostScript file which, when
printed on a PostScript printer, produces a one-page reference card
that lists more than 230 French "glue words" along with their English
translations. I've found that keeping this card at hand while reading
French documents saves an enormous amount of time compared to flipping
through a dictionary, and is an excellent way to commit these words
and their usage to memory.
Included on the reference card is "the gender trick".
English
speakers learning French often struggle to memorise the gender of each
noun. Yet simply learning 40 word endings will allow you to predict
the gender of three quarters of all French nouns with an accuracy of
approximately 95%. For example, of the 1976 nouns that end with the
letter "t", all but 5 are masculine. A companion gender reference
card lists each ending, the number of nouns with that ending, the
accuracy of gender prediction it yields, and principal exceptions to
the rule. I developed the rules in the gender trick based on analysis
of more than 18,000 nouns.
[Colle Française and Le Truc des Genres are available by anonymous FTP
from ftp.fourmilab.ch in the directory /pub/kelvin/francais. See the
README in that directory for details.]
501 FRENCH VERBS
================
You may remember this old buddy from high school French class.
It's
the book that gives complete conjugations, one per page, for 501 of
the most common French verbs, and lists more than 1000 additional
verbs conjugated identically to the 501 given explicitly. This book
is mostly useful in writing the language rather than speaking, but
you'll use it often enough to justify the modest price. [Kendris, C.,
501 French Verbs, Hauppage NY: Barron's 1989. ISBN 0-8120-4363-4.]
BESCHERELLE "GREEN" SERIES
==========================
The following Bescherelle books:
Bescherelle 1: La conjugaison--12000 verbes, ISBN 2-218-02949-9
Bescherelle 2: L'orthographe pour tous, ISBN 2-218-02952-9
Bescherelle 3: La grammaire pour tous, ISBN 2-218-02954-5
are genuine heavy-duty references to conjugation, spelling, and
grammar. In Switzerland, they are published by Éditions 5 Continents,
5, avenue de Longemalle, CH-1020 RENENS, and are available in any
bookshop and even in larger supermarkets. Since the explanatory text
in these books is in French, they aren't for beginners (although the
conjugation and spelling books can be readily used). Once you've
learned enough to read them, they're the books you'll turn to again
and again.
These references are masterpieces of graphical design:
they use colour throughout in a highly effective manner, for example,
to highlight irregular forms in tables of verb conjugations.
LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD AND (X)DICTOOL
=====================================
There's a CD-ROM available called "Languages of the World" which
includes a collection of language dictionaries for Danish, Dutch,
Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish, and
Swedish. The French dictionaries included are:
*
*
*
*
Harrap's Shorter French-English, English-French
(350,000+ translations & examples)
Harrap's French-English, English-French Dictionary
of Data Processing
(18,000 headwords)
Harrap's French-English, English-French Science Dictionary
(30,000 headwords)
Harrap's French-English, English-French Business Dictionary
The Harrap dictionaries are serious, high quality references which
sell well in bookstores; they aren't the kind of bottom feeders you
often find repackaged on CD-ROMs. Unfortunately, this CD-ROM comes
with what is perhaps the worst access software ever created.
Whaddya
think of the idea of a 450K terminate and stay resident program for
MS-DOS? With an indecipherable keyboard-based user interface to boot.
To reboot, that is!
If you're lucky enough to have a Sun Workstation with a CD-ROM drive
(or you're on a network across which you can access a CD-ROM drive),
you can use DICTOOL, an access and retrieval program I wrote which
makes looking up words in the dictionaries on this CD-ROM extremely
easy and virtually instantaneous. When you're sitting at your Sun,
you need only click an icon, type in a word (or the first few letters
of it) in English or French, and in less than a second its complete
dictionary entry appears in a text subwindow, allowing you to cut and
paste translations into a document you're writing.
You don't even
have to type accents on words you're looking up. You can also easily
browse forward and backward in the
dictionary
alphabetically.
Versions of DICTOOL are available for both the original SunView window
system and OpenWindows.
DICTOOL is available by anonymous FTP from ftp.fourmilab.ch in the
directory /pub/kelvin/dictool.
Of course since it's
just
the
retrieval engine you must also buy the CD-ROM that contains the actual
dictionaries. "Languages of the World" is sold for US$889 by the
Bureau of Electronic Publishing. But before you pay that price, shop
around! People have obtained this CD-ROM at prices varying from zero
(bundled with a drive), less than US$100, all the way up to the BEP
list price. Having instant translations on tap for a wide variety of
languages is extremely convenient (you'll be amazed how many more
puzzling words you look up when it's so easy), but I'm not sure I'd
pay close to US$900 for it. But if, as I did, you can get the CD-ROM
cheaply (I found it as part of a bundle in the DAK catalogue), it's
worth US$100 or so--the paper dictionaries it contains would cost you
substantially more than that. Further, if you're on a network, you
can mount the CD-ROM on a drive that's exported over NFS and any
number of people on the same net can legally share a single CD-ROM;
nothing
in
the license restricts network access.
[Bureau of
Electronic Publishing, 141 New Road, Parsippany NJ 07054, USA, Tel:
USA/800-828-4766 or 201-808-2700.]
I have recently heard the Languages of the World can be ordered for
US$59 from S&S Enterprises, Tel: USA/800-ROM-DISC. I have not verified
this personally and have had no experience with this firm.
DICTIONNAIRE DES MOTS SUISSES DE LA LANGUE FRANÇAISE
====================================================
If you're living in Suisse Romande, this odd-shaped and overpriced
(CHF 29.50) book is probably worth picking up. Most of the more than
1000 words it defines are relatively useless items like names given to
residents of this town or that region, terms obviously adapted from
the German, and the like, but every now and then this volume will save
you some puzzlement.
For example, last week I was reviewing a
contract which included the phrase "L'Icha figurera séparément".
Eeesh...what's "Icha"? Well, pull out ye olde DdMSdlLF and there it
is, right on page nonante-et-une, "ICHA, n.m., Mot suisse. - Impôt
sur le chiffre d'affaires"...or, in other
words,
sales
tax.
[Nicollier, A., Dictionnaire des mots suisses de la langue française,
Genève: GVA SA, 1990. ISBN 2-88115-003-9.]
AUDIO-FORUM
===========
Audio-Forum is a company that started out marketing the US Foreign
Service Institute (public domain) language courses and grew to become
the most comprehensive supplier of language learning material I know
of. The FSI courses still form the foundation of their offerings, but
their catalogue now includes a wide variety of material covering
languages from Afrikaans to Zulu.
I have not tried the Foreign Service Institute French course they sell
(Basic French Part A is US$175, Part B US$195, Advanced Part A US$225,
Advanced Part B US$225), but I have worked through their Basic Spanish
and German FSI courses and can recommend them with the following
caveats.
One, US$175 is a lot of money for a 200 page paperback book
and 12 hissy cassettes, especially when the material therein is in the
public domain and, if you're a US citizen, developed with your tax
dollars (or your parents'). Second, the textbook is photo-reproduced
from the original master that looks like it was typed on a 1950's
vintage manual typewriter, including erasures. Still, the course is
very thorough, if somewhat tedious, and thousands of people have
taught themselves using it.
The Audio-Forum catalogue contains 7 full pages of French language
material, including videos, French language movies and radio programs,
flash cards, brush-up courses, material focusing on dialogues and
colloquial speech, and courses for children. [Audio-Forum, 96 Broad
Street, Guilford
CT
06437,
USA.
Tel:
USA/800-243-1234
or
203-453-9794. Catalogue US$2.]
DICTIONNAIRES D'INFORMATIQUE
============================
Okay, you've clawed your way to sufficient proficiency in French that
you can verbally ream that "sale espèce de limace puante" who rammed
you in the traffic circle without batting an eyebrow. But how do you
say "spreadsheet" in French? Well, if you're a computer type, you're
going to
need
the
following
outrageously
expensive
books.
(Unfortunately, I don't have the receipt and the price isn't printed
on the books, but I distinctly recall these puppies emptying my wallet
when I bought them.)
Ginguay, M., and Lauret, A., Dictionnaire d'informatique,
ISBN-2-225-81885-1.
Ginguay, M., Dictionnaire Français-Anglais d'informatique,
ISBN-2-225-82006-6.
Ginguay, M., Dictionnaire Anglais-Français d'informatique,
ISBN-2-225-81988-2.
all published by Masson, 120, boulevard Saint-Germain, 75280 Paris
Cedex 06. Oh yeah, it's "tableur". Now what the heck is an "SGBD"?
WICKED FRENCH
=============
Finally, just for fun, here's a slim little phrasebook filled with les
mots justes pour épicer la vie quotidienne comme "Le canard calciné
était vraiment extraordinaire" (The carbonised duck was particularly
fine), "Ôte ce tas de férraille de la circulation" (Get that worthless
heap off the road), and "Pardonnez-moi, mais avez-vous un porc-épic
coincé entre les fesses?" (work this one out for yourself!). [Tomb,
H., Wicked French, New York: Workman Publishing, 1989.
ISBN-0-894480-616-5.]
THE HACKER'S FRENCH
===================
No, I'm not about to start writing another "Hacker's" book until I get
the *last* one published! But here are my notes for such a volume,
aimed at how to quickly acquire a basic survival proficiency in French
using the tools listed above.
1.
French In Action
Get this course and play one video per day, each and every day,
week in and week out. When you get to the end, start over from
the beginning. Even if you don't have time to read the text,
practice with the workbooks, or use the cassettes, make the 30
minute slot for the video a permanent part of your life.
I've
said on several occasions that if you simply watch this series of
52 videos through two times, you could parachute into Abidjan and
get along in day to day life from the moment you hit the ground.
It's that good. Really. As you proceed along this path, I'd also
recommend doing one lesson per day of the Cortina course over and
over until you don't feel you're improving further.
2.
Hammer Grammar
At some level, you simply have to bash grammar into your head,
especially since there are facets of French grammar that have no
or very limited counterparts in English (such as many uses of the
subjunctive, partitives, and the greater precision of time in
French through such tenses as the future anterior).
I recommend
simply reading the Barron's and Cortina grammar summaries from
front to back, spending about a week on each pass, a chapter or
half a chapter per day, until it begins to sink in. There are
lots of exercises you can do to master grammar, but the most
important thing is first of all to know what there is to master,
and these references show you that. The Cortina course, with its
footnotes introducing elements of grammar, is very helpful in
connecting the rules to their application in the language.
3.
Read for Vocabulary
Once you understand enough grammar to comprehend basic sentence
structure, you can then start to build your vocabulary by reading.
It's often recommended that you start with children's books, but I
prefer to read something that's interesting enough I'd read it in
English. Newspapers and magazines are excellent material for
beginners, since they generally don't use fancy literary language
(though there are exceptions; don't expect to "get" some humour
columnists for quite a while).
As you're reading, keep that
little translation dictionary at hand.
Every time you hit a
stumper, look it up.
(Or if you're reading with a workstation
running DICTOOL at hand, use it; it's a lot faster). Before long
you'll find yourself exclaiming, "Gee, it's been *pages and pages*
since I looked anything up, and then you'll be well on your way to
mastering the basic vocabulary.
4.
Listen for comprehension
Language learning consists of a sequence of painfully-achieved
milestones.
I found that being able to read the language
readily--in other words, knowing enough vocabulary and grammar to
be able to understand printed text without constantly having to
look words up and puzzle out sentence structure, is only the first
step.
Learning to *hear* the language is a related, yet largely
independent skill. You have to understand the words, of course,
but memorising the whole bloody dictionary won't help if you can't
tell what words somebody is saying. Constant practice is the only
way to acquire this skill. If you're living in the US, about all
you can do is watch French In Action and work through the
Champs-Elysées tapes as they arrive every month. If you're living
in a Francophone area, take advantage of every opportunity to hear
the language--tune the radio to talk programs when you're in the
car, watch the TV news every night, catch the latest Hollywood
movies in dubbed editions, and listen to people talking to one
another on the street. This is the language as she is spoke, not
as she is writ, and you gotta hear it to learn it. You'll
probably find this a painfully slow process. But after a year or
so, you'll be amazed at your progress.
5.
Speak up
Once you can read books and newspapers almost as fast as you read
your native tongue, and you can follow a political discussion on
the radio while driving
through
crowded
traffic
without
difficulty, then you're ready to discover that you're still in the
starting gate at the eloquence track, as it were, when it comes to
actually *speaking* the language.
Summoning up the right word at the instant you need it, assembling
words into sentences in the proper order, and matching all the
subjects, adjectives, objects, verb numbers and tenses and all the
other details of a strongly-typed language is yet
another
difficult-to-acquire skill.
And if you really want to master it, I can't help you very much
because I'm still struggling with this phase myself (although I
should note that I don't consider myself a particularly articulate
speaker of extemporaneous conversational English). The basic fact
is this: if you want to learn to *speak* a language, as opposed to
read it or listen to it, you're going to have to pack up and move
to someplace they speak that language, plunge in, and start
getting things done in that language. No exercise, no course, and
no trick that I know of will do it. Neurons get programmed by
being used, and once you've struggled to express something like
"light socket" to the guy in the hardware store and suddenly his
face lights up and he exclaims, "une douille!", that term will get
burned into your repertoire.
6.
Nasty habits
I've found that once you get the language learning circuit going,
you can reinforce it in many ways. As you walk around the house
or office, try to name all the objects you see in the language
you're learning and remember to look up the ones that stump you.
Try to use what would otherwise be downtime: driving to work,
making dinner, performing triple bypass surgery on the cat, to
reinforce your listening skills; keep the radio or TV on or, if
you're in the US, use Champs-Elysées or French In Action for
practice.
And finally, here's the nastiest habit of all, one that combines
both the acquisition of language skills with a diversion from that
bane of modern existence, endless, boring business meetings. You
need to work yourself quite a way up the learning curve before you
can kick this in, but once you get there it's like lighting the
afterburner halfway down the runway. The next time you're stuck
in a stuffy room, one hour into five or six hours of a Very
Important Action Item Resolution Meeting focused on where the
serial number should be printed on the disc label and all of the
cataclysmic implications of any change on the global community of
humans obsessed with serial number formats, just smile, lean back,
and...translate.
Imagine you're one of those people in the booth at the United
Nations, carefully rendering the
discourse
of
the
Fifth
Undersecretary for Propriety of the New Zealand Delegation in the
acrimonious debate on the Convention To Denounce Nastiness As A
Means Of Resolving Conflicts into the language you're learning.
*Translate*, and as you do, note down on the pad in front of you
the words that stump you.
Everybody will think you're making
careful notes of the momentous decisions being "taken" at the
meeting, and since the words you note down will be the tricky
ones, your scribblings will probably be more useful to recall the
details of the meeting than the gibberish all the other potatoes
in the room are scratching down.
Then, when you finally escape, go look up the words that baffled
you in your little translation dictionary or with DICTOOL, and
write out the translations on the page. I don't know why, but
searching for a word and coming up empty, then looking it up
shortly thereafter and writing it down seems to burn it into the
brain more effectively than any other way I've found.
7.
"Have I ever failed?"
Remember
this
mantra
of
the survival language learner.
Better
yet, translate it into French and remember that! For if your goal
is to live in a French-speaking culture and conduct your day to
day life in that language, then the only real criterion for
success is success itself--can you, in fact, get along in that
language? At the start, you'll be short of skills and confidence
and things will be a little rocky. And you will continue to grind
your teeth every time you mis-conjugate a verb, blow an adjective
agreement, or fail to come up with a noun that's "right on the tip
of your tongue". And that irritation will probably last the rest
of your life.
But after a month or so, think about this: once
you've rented an apartment, bought a car, arranged for insurance,
opened a bank account, ordered a turkey for Christmas, gotten the
oil tank refilled, etc., etc. and never had a real disaster (you
know, disaster: like having a ton of steer manure dumped in your
neighbour's yard), then every time the molars start gnashing, just
ask, "Have I ever failed?"...failed to get done what I set out to
do, without having to find somebody who speaks English?
And as
long as you haven't failed, then you're succeeding--succeeding in
living your life in a language you didn't grow up speaking--a
skill that the vast majority of humans on this planet never
acquire or even attempt. And as the days and weeks pass, "never
failing" will mature into "success" and then "proficiency".
Then
you can start on German.