Today calls for celebration!… I wrote 100 posts (including this one) over the last six months!… Sometimes I wonder where I did find the time to actually achieve that! Well… apparently I did because the figures are right before my very eyes. Though I wonder if I had been that prolific without my students’ stories and tribulations… which were and still are my source of inspiration. I want to thank all of them for always having given me the green light… This blog is theirs as much as it is mine…
That being said, I decided to do something quite unusual for me… I will let a student of French express her views on methods of learning French, although I’m “slightly” reluctant towards some sites claims… Yet I am open-minded and I think my readers have the right to voice their opinions. A couple of weeks ago, Emily e-mailed me asking me if I would let her write a guest post on my blog, based on her personal experience… at first, I was skeptical wondering why someone would want to share her views on my blog. Later on she sent me her text and I thought it would be a good idea to publish her article… In my book any personal learning experiences are good: what I do not tolerate is people claiming they can have you become “fluent” in a few weeks without training… yet if they advertise their products as complementary tools to language learning, I have no problems at all!
Learning French with No Classes and No Books
by Emily Jacobson
I have always wanted to learn to speak French, but the motivation to do the actual work was not forthcoming. I bought a few books, enrolled in a few classes, and bailed on both because they seemed so boring. Surely, I thought, there has to be a way to learn language in a relevant and interesting way. When my sister decided to get married in Paris, I finally had my motivation.
Not only did I have motivation, I had a deadline as well. In just four months, I would be standing in a French airport needing a taxi, and I didn’t want to be one of those obnoxious Americans screaming English in a country where English is a foreign language. I needed to learn French, ASAP.
The first step is to get a good French language program. If you are like me and just not into staring at a bunch of pages, get a computer program like Rosetta Stone. After about six weeks of very intensive studies, I had a basic grasp of French words, grammar, and syntax, as well as small mental lexicon of common phrases. Most people stop here, because they don’t realize the great resources that are available on the internet, but I was ready for a new challenge.
I am already an avid MySpace-r, so it made sense to look for a French version and start practicing my newfound skills. I made accounts on MySpace as well as on Facebook «en français». Before long, I was conversing with new French «amis» who had no problem helping me out with my language skills (and making fun of my grammar in the meantime).
I also searched for blogs to learn French and, with the aid of an online translator for terms I didn’t understand, began slogging through longer and more complicated passages of French writing. Before I left for Paris in May, I felt comfortable leaving comments on a few interesting blogs and having a short video chat with a cutie from a small town near Calais. When I finally stepped foot on French soil, I felt competent enough to stumble my way through everyday interactions, which is remarkable in just a few short months.
The moral of my story? If you want to learn French fluently and fast, look outside the book. In a world that connects by modems, you can learn a new language from native speakers while making friends in far flung places.
I chose to publish Emily’s post because of her true belief in the methods she used. She only wanted to talk about her own experience… Of course, trying and learning a language through arid grammars and textbooks can become boring quite fast… as for French classes, I know for a fact that many of them have the effect of dope on students… most of the time, they are not highly colourful! All depends on who is teaching and on the approach… Personally, I make sure that both my one-on-one and group classes are anything but boring! I make good use of my students’ life experience and I encourage creativity… I provide them with the essential exposure to the language and its culture so that they can apply their new knowledge in contexts…
The way Emily learned the language basics worked for her because first, she was motivated and second, she spent lots of time on learning. Yet her purpose was to get by in daily simple situations and interactions… moreover, during a trip in France! Usually, people are very nice with their tourists and… very patient too! Here, in Canada, native French speakers are not very tolerant of Canadian Anglophones who can only get by in French… but unusually patient with Americans! Go figure why…
As I mentioned earlier, I have nothing against any tools that can be found on the net in order to help going through the tough process of learning a new language. And I am certainly in favour of getting on either Facebook or MySpace in French, make friends with native speakers and try to communicate with them (even better when there are a couple of cuties to chat with!). But it will never replace training! Language is much more than words and grammar… it is about the way messages are conveyed and processed… it is more cultural than anything else… Take athletes for instance: did you ever meet a gold medalist who never had a top notch trainer/coach?… Well… it is the same thing when it comes to learning a new language… without a trainer or a coach, it is almost impossible to achieve fluency… unless someone has a lifelong deadline to reach that level!
Back in September, I wrote a post on sites offering fluency in six or eight weeks… I would like to promise people who want to learn French that such a thing is attainable, unfortunately it would be a fraudulent statement… Even after having assessed my future students, although they are looking for specific answers, I cannot tell them how long it will take them to become fluent. Why? Because there are too many factors involved… learning a language is not a continuous ascending curve… there are regular periods of stagnation and even sometimes regression… a four week vacation can do noticeable damage! I can promise them one thing though: fluency and bilinguism will not happen overnight and… there will be no miracles either! It takes time… patience… motivation… willingness… effort… it is often painful yet, with the right trainer/coach, it can be the most enjoyable experience of a lifetime! As long as people who are using the tons of resources provided on the net are aware that they will not become fluent in French merely with those tools, I see no harm… maybe one day I will write a post with the real definition of the word fluency: it seems there are different interpretations out there… when, actually, there is only one!
“Nos prêtres ne sont point ce qu’un vain peuple pense, notre crédulité fait toute leur science”
Voltaire
Special thanks to Emily Jacobson for her content submission application
4 Comments
I flee from the word “fluency.” Way too fuzzy! I use the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Proficiency Guidelines. Students are rated on a scale of novice, intermediate, advanced, or superior. It’s pretty specific about what you should be able to do in the language & how at each level. In fact, each of the levels is further subdivided by low, mid, and high. And then, of course, you might have a different proficiency level in different modes (speaking vs. reading for example.)
Although it sounds a little discouraging, my level 2 high school students typically leave my class still at the novice level. (Though hopefully most of them will be at the upper end of that.) And that’s perfectly normal. Some natives never reach the very highest level, since that is an EDUCATED native speaker. And some highly educated speakers might not reach the very highest level simply b/c of an accent. But honestly, I wouldn’t care about an accent!
Of course, most people wouldn’t have the foggiest idea of what I was talking about if I threw out a proficiency level. I do prefer the term bilingual over fluent though.
As far as your comment about the patience extended to us anglophone Americans in Quebec . . . absolutely
I attended school in Quebec, but my English-speaking Canadian classmates expressed having a different experience than I did. Honestly, I’ve NEVER been more warmly welcomed & kindly treated as when traveling in Quebec City & the Saguenay region.
As always, an interesting post!
Thank you so much for this explanation Diane!
I’m sure it will enlighten some of my readers.
Actually I have no clue of what are the requirements for proficiency in our Canadian schooling system. I bet you know more than me on that subject! And I cannot really use the Public Service of Canada’s own requirements (A, B and C) since they don’t really make sense outside the governement. Yet none of these levels is considered more than functional (I would call them novice, intermediate and advanced… higher than that, we then speak of “bilingual”!)…
The Québécois are traditionally not tolerant of unilingual English-speaking Canadians, based on the fact they SHOULD be able to understand and speak the other official language. But they don’t have the same attitude towards their American neighbours, only because they consider them as “foreigners” who never really had the opportunity of getting exposure to French.
Hopefully there are signs of Spring in Michigan also… here, the day is simply gorgeous… and this week will be sunny and warm!
À la prochaine!
I just stumbled upon this blog and I found this post quite interesting. I too get sick of all the promises and claims made by online courses. I’ve been living in France for over a year now and still have a long way to go before I’ll be able to consider myself even semi-fluent. I have tried a lot of different approaches to learning French, but so far the only two things that have actually resulted in noticeable improvements have been traditional french courses and one-on-one language exchanges.
One thing I started doing this year with my french course (currently at the Sorbonne in Paris) is learning all the new words I came across during class along with the actual sentence the word was used in. To do this, I ended up making my own website (www.vocaber.com) which has actually made this task quite possible. Seeing the vocabulary in context over and over again acts as a constant reminder of what was covered in the class.
Bonjour Oliver,
I think you have a pretty good idea of what learning French implies! I mean learning French for the purpose of using it in daily interaction with Francophones. It is something that can’t be done overnight and especially not with the type of resources found on the net promising fluency in a few weeks.
I’m sure collecting all the words you hear and putting them into context helps alot… I will certainly have a look at your website: I’m always looking for complementary tools my trainees (and readers) can use to improve their learning process…
Thanks for stopping by and leaving your input! I really appreciate it!