How I did it: I took French as a Freshman in college because I needed a foreign language. Towards the end of the year my professor, as an afterthought - he was almost past the deadline - handed out fliers about a three week summer program in Orléans, France. It wasn't terribly expensive, I wanted to see the world, and I knew that my boss would let me take off work to do it. I asked myself if there was one good reason why I couldn't go to France. The answer was no. So I went to France.

I studied for three weeks in a full-immersion program, feeling that I was way over my head but having a great time doing it. I was convinced that I could actually feel my brain reforming to accommodate my rapidly developing language skills. I spent nearly all of my time with a group of American students from several different states, as well as students from six or seven different countries. Every day after school we did something different - museums, bars, boat outings, shopping, ancient underground crypts, you name it. And of course we all gained a few pounds eating incredible French food. About halfway through the trip, we had a pizza party. A French student, who was there with a friend who was there with a friend, ended up standing in front of me. He spoke very little English and I spoke very little French, but I proffered my pizza box and repeated "pizza!" over his objections until he finally accepted a slice. After which he consulted a friend for a translation and asked me out for drinks the next day. 

We were together for all of ten days, but I was determined to learn enough French to come back and study for at least one semester - not only to be with him, but because I'd fallen in love with the country. So I did. I studied at work. I studied at school. I studied waiting for the bus. I read a fantastic article about learning French on your own in one year, and I studied some more. And after several months of intensive red tape, a bureaucrat in Chicago stuck a visa in my passport and I left for France.

I've now been here for seven months. I'm enrolled in a full-time French-as-a-second-language program at the University of Orléans. I study French, French, and more French. I have able to converse fairly easily with just about any French person for the past few months, but I had decided that I wouldn't call myself fluent until I could watch a French movie without any kind of subtitles and understand it. I did that for the first time last night.

I can now confidently say that I speak French.

I learned French by studying, by taking classes, by living in France, and by having a French boyfriend. That's probably not the way everyone does it, but it's quite an effective way.

Lessons & tips: Go to France. Or Quebec. Or Senegal. Living in a French-speaking country - even for as little as a few weeks - is enormously helpful. Many French universities offer intensive summer programs. They work wonders.

Speak a little bit of French every day. Listen to a little bit of French every day. Conjugate a few verbs every day. Practice a few vocabulary words every day. You can do all of this in 30 minutes.

Make mistakes. It's a cliché, but there you go. French people will forgive your mistakes because they'll think it's cool that you're making the effort to learn their language. Either that or they'll get impatient and insist on speaking English to you, but mostly they'll think it's cool.

Make friends with French people your age. This is how you learn good slang. And also, you know, you get some new friends.

Resources: This article describes how one man learned French in one year. This is the technique I used during the year before I moved to France. It really works. His system involves flash cards and a book called Shaum's Outline of French Grammar, among other things. The book is fantastic. I can't recommend it highly enough. Every time I spend fifteen minutes doing some exercises, I learn something that I end up needing to use that day. It's essential. Period.

In the article, he mentions using paper flashcards. I use Quizlet. Wonderful website. To keep track of which sets I need to practice on which day, I use Google Calendar.

To type up these flashcards, you're going to need some way to type all of those accents. This article will tell you how to install international keyboard on your Windows computer. [Note: it says XP. I can confirm it also works with Vista.] It takes a few days to get used to the differences (mainly, tapping the space bar before typing an apostrophe), but it's well worth it. You can type accents as quickly as you could with a French keyboard - more quickly, actually, since you won't have abandon the beloved QWERTY.

You're going to need to practice conjugating verbs. A lot. I mean, all the time. So use this wonderful website. Good for looking up words, good for practicing. It has an excellent quiz feature.

A good online dictionary - that's dictionary, not translating service - is called the Lingro dictionary. They claim to be the fastest multi-language dictionary on the net. They are fast, and they're usually accurate, but information is user-entered so there can be errors. I find it quite useful.

Learn French with About.com. They have useful articles, but more importantly they have fabulous email courses, both beginning and more advanced. They're very well done. Like the Shaum's Outline book, I always learn something.

To get some good listening practice, download some good audio lessons from Learn French by Podcast. You can subscribe to the podcast or download the lesson à la carte. They are extremely well done and instructive. Once again, I learn something every time. Also, they're arranged by difficulty from beginner to advanced. For a fee (it's not much, but I never did try it) you can get access to PDF transcripts of each lesson, along with other activites.

And last but not least, to round out your vocabulary you will certainly need Dirty French: Everyday Slang from 'What's Up?' to F*%# Off!''It's up-to-date, funny, complete, well-organized, and teaches things that no teacher will ever teach. And it's slang that French people actually use.

Mar 25, 2009, 10:02AM PDT | 1 comment | 4 cheers