The main thing is you want to pick a course or course combo that has 1) a book/main text and 2) audio. FSI, DLI, and Assimil have a book with accompanying audio. Pimsleur is audio only so it would need to be paired with a book course or book+audio course. One reason those courses are mentioned so much is that traditionally those are the ones with some of the best audio. Finding a decent book is not so hard, but for many courses the audio is non-existent, impossible-to-find, or sub-par. And having good audio can make a tremendous difference. Nowadays there's a lot of stuff online, including an abundance of audio, but there's still much to be said for a good old fashioned book+audio course. The classic courses tend to be well-structured and comprehensive and should leave you with a good foundation in the language.
If you are having trouble getting the ball rolling, you might take a look at some of the apps. I've used some Duolingo and the nice thing about it is that it's completely free and you don't have to plan out what you're going to do. You can just get on and do it. It's a great way to get your feet wet, imo.
Material to start learning French?
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- Orange Belt
- Posts: 172
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Studies: German, French - x 622
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- Orange Belt
- Posts: 163
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- x 521
Re: Material to start learning French?
I was hoping someone else would post about French in Action, but I guess I will take it upon myself. In my eyes it's the best out there. For those unfamiliar, French in Action consists of 52 (really 51) lessons, each based around a half-hour instructional video that's entirely in French. For each lesson, you then continue with 50 or so exercises in the accompanying workbook, textbook, and audio files, and then you're on to the next lesson.
I like it so much for a variety of reasons. One is that it's a mostly audio-focused course. Each lesson has half an hour of audio in the video, and then many of the exercises are based on accompanying audio tracks. Do a couple lessons and you're already have more audio than an entire Assimil course. That's important for getting input and also for developing your ear for the sounds of the language and your own pronunciation. If you're not careful as a beginner it's easy to develop an atrocious, incomprehensible French accent, and the audio focus in FiA, along with all the explicit pronunciation instruction or minimal pair exercises that's spread throughout the lessons, should (hopefully) help.
Besides the purely phonemic component, the audio also gives a lot of exposure to actual spoken French. That means things like negation without "ne" (some of the time, in FiA) and dropping a number of e vowels (the e muet). Many learner-focused materials teach a somewhat artificial form of French that's not going to match up to what you actually hear if you go to France and speak to anybody.
Another reason is that it's very thorough and comprehensive. You're going to hit basically all the grammar points you need to know and cover a lot of useful vocabulary.
I like it so much for a variety of reasons. One is that it's a mostly audio-focused course. Each lesson has half an hour of audio in the video, and then many of the exercises are based on accompanying audio tracks. Do a couple lessons and you're already have more audio than an entire Assimil course. That's important for getting input and also for developing your ear for the sounds of the language and your own pronunciation. If you're not careful as a beginner it's easy to develop an atrocious, incomprehensible French accent, and the audio focus in FiA, along with all the explicit pronunciation instruction or minimal pair exercises that's spread throughout the lessons, should (hopefully) help.
Besides the purely phonemic component, the audio also gives a lot of exposure to actual spoken French. That means things like negation without "ne" (some of the time, in FiA) and dropping a number of e vowels (the e muet). Many learner-focused materials teach a somewhat artificial form of French that's not going to match up to what you actually hear if you go to France and speak to anybody.
Another reason is that it's very thorough and comprehensive. You're going to hit basically all the grammar points you need to know and cover a lot of useful vocabulary.
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- Pikaia
- Yellow Belt
- Posts: 51
- Joined: Fri Sep 18, 2015 9:23 pm
- Languages: English (N), Spanish (a bit), French (a bit less)
- x 165
Re: Material to start learning French?
The tricky part with FIA is getting ahold of the audio component. It used to float around the internet, but I haven’t seen it lately.
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- kennyaa
- White Belt
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Spanish (B2) - x 104
Re: Material to start learning French?
Aliceayel.com and French in Action are my favourite beginner French resources.
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