Intensive French: Following the Bouncing Ball
21 Sep 2009
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 you a few years to get the language part, although, it must be stated in your defense, that you also had to deal with other significant challenges: learning how to walk and use a potty chair, eating mud etc. Is there any way to reproduce this blissful state as an adult language student, now that the staff is long gone and you have a busy schedule yourself? The answer, fortunately, is yes.
I want to outline a simple procedure which will help you massively increase your comprehension of your new language, without you having to leave your house or engage in frightening exchanges with natives who seem to have drunk 15 or 16 triple espressos very recently.
Step One: Gather several 10 to 20 minute long recordings or podcasts of native speakers engaged in conversations or reading informal texts in French. You can find many on the internet – quite often for free. Try French Lingq.com or French pod.com. You want at least 10 of them. You can also get native friends of yours to record them. Always choose topics you are somewhat interested in.
Step Two: You must obtain a transcription in French and a translation in English of the full text. This is critical unless you want to spend five years trying to guess what things might mean (as you had to do as a baby). Now you have a way to penetrate into the meaning of the recording directly. If you have the text in French, just copy and paste it into the Google translation tool (free) http://translate.google.com/translate_t# . It will not be perfect but absolutely sufficient to understand the gist of the text. These are all the materials you need.
Step Three: Read the English translation of the text so you have a good idea of the topic.
Step Four: Go through the French text and make sure you understand it fairly well. Look up all new words. Write them into a notebook in the order that they occur in the text. Read it in French two or three times so it feels familiar.
Step Five: Listen to the recording while following with the English translation. Also listen to it while following with the French text. Alternate. You should be able to hear and understand the gist of what is going on.
Step Six: Listen to the French recording by itself. Notice where you get lost so you can better prepare later. Listen to the text several times for several days in a row.
Step Seven: Go back to steps two through Five as needed.
Step Eight: When you feel comfortable with one text, move on to the next one. But, keep alternating with previously mastered ones. Keep them current until they really become trivial.
Most important instructions about how to listen.
Keep track of the “bouncing ball”!. Listen to every word as it is spoken. Simply relax, breathe and listen! Do not in any way translate, correlate, analyze, backtrack or talk to yourself. Just listen. Stay with the flow of speech. You will probably miss certain words, phrases, even sentences at first. But do not stop! Keep listening to the words as they are being uttered. That is all you need to do. You will notice your comprehension of the individual texts radically increasing. Even more exciting, you will notice your overall comprehension of French gradually improving. You somehow begin to hear French. The key as you continue doing this is to realize that you can now automatically track French without having to do anything special (except listening attentively). It is an art, but a simple one to acquire. This is all it will take. Once you hit a certain level you can watch movies – always keeping track with the subtitles. You may also listen to live conversations if you can. Just focus and listen. Remember to have fun with it.
You can access the site for my Language School in Phoenix, Arizona at www.FocusLanguage.com. or visit Teach Yourself. Cheers and good luck in your studies.
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
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
One of the most challenging things for most people learning French is to actually speak it. This is especially important when you are in an Intensive French course and demands are constantly made on you. So, are there ways to make this easier? Naturally! It is first useful to remember that much of your learning integration is done when you are alone. And fortunately, there are quite a few things you can do by yourself which will gradually develop your confidence and your abilities.
- Practice reading outloud. It improves your pronunciation and your confidence when you speak. This proves vital when you are trying to engage in a conversation with someone.
- Make a list of 20
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