Advice for English speaker, struggling to learn French.

[garyb]

I agree with PM's advice, which is a great balance between his preference for courses and the forum in general's focus on native materials. At this point it sounds like you'd benefit from the structure that a good course or two provides. News and radio should become much more accessible after working through something like Assimil.

It's worth remembering (for beginner and intermediate learners in general, not just you!) that there's more to life than news! News radio is a great stepping-stone but it's generally far easier than anything else aimed at natives; "real" news isn't much harder than learner-oriented stuff like "français facile" although the latter has the big advantage of transcripts. Once that starts to feel easy, it might be better to move onto podcasts on diverse subjects (learner-oriented ones "L'avis de Marie" or real radio shows; again not too much difference in difficulty in my experience but the learner ones usually have transcripts). Newspapers and online news, on the other hand, often use specialised and journalistic vocabulary that isn't that useful for everyday conversations. But anyway, this is all for the longer term, it's not worth worrying about at this point.

[Carmody]

"L'avis de Marie"

rocks; in a subtle way.

[zenmonkey]

When I started News in Slow Italian I had to listen several times to each article. By about the 40th article I was skipping the slow version of the recording and only listening to the faster, almost natural version. By about the 100th article I was done because it was too easy for me.

Same here - during my Italian craze three months ago, I listened to the first 200 introductions (the free content). My listening comprehension improved a lot.

I also did Slow German for a while to work on listening comprehension. The reader of that is a 'famous' podcaster with the stage name Annik Rubens (Larissa Vassilian) and I fell in love with her other podcast Schlaflos in Munchen. So finding a good but slow podcast can be a great help to graduating to other material.

Try to find something with transcripts at first - Slow French, GEO, etc...

[elsmandino]

Excellent stuff - I think I am also going to have a quick look at News in Slow French.

From what I have seen, just now, the free material is still really good.

Zenmonkey - you also referred to GEO as an alternative. I cannot seem to find this - could you clarify what this is, please?

[Aozora]

I'm going to recommend InnerFrench's podcast series: https://www.innerfrench.com/podcasts
The vocabulary is limited, and the narrations is slow (especially the first podcasts, they are very very slow which might be just right for you now). There are transcripts to follow along with. I'm finding it's a great (and free!) resource that's helping me a lot with getting used to basic vocabulary and working on my listening skills.

[StringerBell]

Regardless of which program / plan of action you choose, the number one most important thing is CONSISTENCY. 10 minutes every day is better than 2 hours only on Saturday. Our brains do not have an endless storage capacity; therefore, they are always trying to figure out what's important to remember and what can be eliminated to make room for more important information. Having contact with your target language every day (or almost every day) is a way to trick it into accepting that this language is important to remember and that these words deserve precious space in your memory. So even 1/2 hour every day during your lunch break is a great schedule.

My personal advice is to spend a brief amount of time with some introductory material, whatever that is (Assimil, Teach Yourself, any language series, really - doesn't matter) just to get a feel for what's going on in the language; some basic verbs, nouns, etc... It sounds like you are already doing this. Then, I suggest spending as much time reading, listening, listening while reading. I've heard really wonderful things about the youtube channel Francais Authentique, but haven't used it myself.

You may also want to check out some videos from Steve Kaufman on youtube for inspiration and guidance. His platform LingQ is extremely popular with language learners and I use it from time to time.

[Ani]

Regardless of which program / plan of action you choose, the number one most important thing is CONSISTENCY. 10 minutes every day is better than 2 hours only on Saturday. Our brains do not have an endless storage capacity; therefore, they are always trying to figure out what's important to remember and what can be eliminated to make room for more important information. Having contact with your target language every day (or almost every day) is a way to trick it into accepting that this language is important to remember and that these words deserve precious space in your memory. So even 1/2 hour every day during your lunch break is a great schedule.

The OP is studying a full hour every day. 30 minutes Duolingo and 30 minutes reading.

Interesting choice of user name....

[elsmandino]

Thanks, everyone.

I have spent the last couple of days researching Assimil and trying to pick the correct course is proving more difficult than the French itself .
As was mentioned above, the beginner course seems to be called either "French with Ease" or "French" and the prices for these packs appear to be random - ranging from £40.00 to hundreds of pounds for, what would appear to be, the same course.

There also seem to be different permutations of books, CDs, perbacks, Mp3s - all very confusing!

I am thinking of buying this one:

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/produ ... gLfWvD_BwE

Would you mind at all just confirming that this is indeed the correct beginner course that I am looking for, please?

[PeterMollenburg]

Thanks, everyone.

I have spent the last couple of days researching Assimil and trying to pick the correct course is proving more difficult than the French itself .
As was mentioned above, the beginner course seems to be called either "French with Ease" or "French" and the prices for these packs appear to be random - ranging from £40.00 to hundreds of pounds for, what would appear to be, the same course.

There also seem to be different permutations of books, CDs, perbacks, Mp3s - all very confusing!

I am thinking of buying this one:

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/produ ... gLfWvD_BwE

Would you mind at all just confirming that this is indeed the correct beginner course that I am looking for, please?

This looks correct. It's the latest version with all the audio CDs, from the way it's displayed, at least. The various prices and versions you have likely come across contain varying degrees of audio material - none at all, CDs, mp3s, USB, CD and mp3's... I do think there might be some bonus in having mp3s, as I'm sure I've read somewhere around these parts that the mp3 files can come with the words on screen or something (i.e. while playing through your phone for example), or am I totally imagining this (anyone)? Still, I used the Cds only (after converting them to audio files for my audio devices, which takes time, obviously and a little effort) and found that to be perfectly fine.

[Ani]

I do think there might be some bonus in having mp3s, as I'm sure I've read somewhere around these parts that the mp3 files can come with the words on screen or something (i.e. while playing through your phone for example), or am I totally imagining this (anyone)?

I don't know about that, but I do think you get individual sentence files with the mp3s? In addition to the regular dialogues of course.


I was fine with CD's though. I wouldn't worry much about it.i would recommend backing them up to a computer right away though. They will get a lot of use