Intensive French Courses at Focus Language
21 Sep 2009
Focus Language, located in Phoenix Arizona, offers highly effective and enjoyable Intensive French courses year-round. Our programs can be custom-designed but normally last for eight days (for all levels). Jean-Paul Setlak teaches all the intensives. He is a native Frenchman and a master linguist who speaks and teaches seven languages. In our Intensive French program, you will be closely guided so that you improve your pronunciation, your capacity to express yourself comfortably in French and your ability to understand normal spoken French. You will learn powerful vocabulary expansion strategies. You will also learn how to move quickly and competently through new grammar.
You will receive clear and specific methods to continue improving your French long after you have finished the Intensive French course. Eight days is indeed a short time but you will learn far more than you can imagine. You will acquire sophisticated learning strategies that will allow you to absorb languages the way gifted learners do. You will learn far more than a few words and grammar patterns. You will actually learn how to learn brilliantly. You simply need to come relaxed and motivated and be willing to learn new ways of approaching a language.
The advantage of an Intensive French course comes from the fact that – for a short time – most daily distractions disappear. Your full attention is on the task at hand: learning French. The conscious and the unconscious mind automatically focus much more, the flow of information is much more direct. The impact is therefore far stronger – reinforced as it is by the level of motivation.
If you come between October and May, you will be able to hike and even receive part of your classes in the wonderful Phoenix Mountain Preserve, located one mile from our school. Please feel free to contact us with any questions about our programs. Intensive French at Focus Language
French and English have much in common, especially on the level of vocabulary. They are more distant when it comes to pronunciation. English is fundamentally a Germanic language, and its sound system reflects it. French comes almost completely from Latin, though, on the level of pronunciation, it was also influenced by the Germanic tribes which invaded Gaul (France) in the early Middle Ages. (Remember that the Franks who gave France its name came from Germany.) The famous French "R", "EU and "U" are really Germanic sounds.
So how can you maximally improve your pronunciation in French? The following ideas are meant for beginners, but they can really be applied at any level.
- Immerse yourself in the sound and sounds of the language. Listen to French
One of the most crucial and yet elusive tasks at hand when you are learning a Foreign Language is to develop your comprehension in a systematic way. Just exposing yourself to the language will not do it, or we would all learn French simply by walking around the streets of Paris. Yet, you originally learned English without knowing any other language. What made it possible? Well, for one thing, you had nothing but time on your hands laying in your crib or screaming in your playpen. You also had a good staff (Mom and Dad) taking care of your basic needs and wants, allowing you to focus on understanding what was going on around you, and learning communicate with the locals. It still took
Once you are past the tasks of learning basic French sounds, as well as some basic vocabulary and grammar, two new tasks appear before you in a French Intensive course. The first is to speak, the second is to understand. They are both challenging and call on completely different skills. Comprehension, our topic here, lies at the very core of acquiring a new language. What then, are the steps which can facilitate and accelerate your progress in understanding French natives? It is useful to recognize the various levels we go through as we move from absolute non-understanding to full knowledge and command of a language. First you hear a wall of unfamiliar and absolutely incomprehensible sounds. As your familiarity
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