At this moment, after all these years in 'intellectual fallow', my main objective is recovering my past abilities in languagues as well as in other aspects of my life.
As I wrote in my introduction here
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=9025&start=410#p210027
Rey wrote:I am a native speaker of Spanish who had to learn Catalan/Valencian from scratch and almost by myself in order to find a job in the Eastern Mediterranean Coast of Spain. At the end, I earnt an official C1 certification in Catalan/Valencian which helped me most to obtain my objective.
At the same time, it was supposed that I was learning English within the official learning scheme in Spain. The result is - IMHO - very mediocre.
But I want to improve.
In the course of many years, I have learnt a little of French (almost an A1) and German (I obtained an A1 certification some years ago), but I dropped out and now I have forgotten almost everything about them.
I suppose this recovering will take some months for me.
Week 1 (from June, 13th to 19th, 2022)
I have spent very little time in studying, only French this time (FR) - an hour and a half or so in the whole week.
I have been across "Aprende Francés desde Cero - Curso de Francés para principiantes" by Vaughan, a popular self-study beginner guide in Spanish to learn French (FR). I only have studied the first unit. (It has 30 units and it is supposed to be studied by complete beginners in a whole year or so). I think it is somewhat similar to Assimil, but shorter and cheaper.
Also, I have obtained the CLE Progressive Grammar for French (FR), A1 ('the orange book') that Lawyer&Mom mentioned in this thread. I think I will be very helpful in the next weeks. Thank you for the tip! https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=18193&start=10#p210396
Lawyer&Mom wrote:I think Assimil and the CLE Progressive Grammar would complement each other nicely. Different approaches, both very well done. The CLE book is very good at giving small digestible bits of grammar, it doesn’t hit you with a wall of information that makes you want to give up. (I tried those books too!) I personally only used Assimil to teach myself listening. I preferred to actively study grammar separately.
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=18193&start=10#p210411
BeaP wrote:A lot of people have had success with both books, they're a safe choice. Just make sure you buy the orange grammar, there's a new one called A1.1 (very light brown, butter colour) and I think it's not worth the money. The original A1 (the orange one) is good for beginners, it starts with the basics. Youtube is full of free videos about informal spoken French and useful expressions. These are also helpful because textbook French is a bit different. I've found pronunciation especially tricky, but these videos explain things in detail. I hope you'll enjoy learning French and come back to write about your experience.
I'll try YouTube for spoken French. Thanks for the piece of advice, BeaP!
See you!
