be fluent in French

I suppose I should force myself to treat learning French as a “class” and set aside time each week to go through lessons.

I’ve been collecting RSS feeds of French courses online, and finally downloaded iTunes to organize them all. I found that I just didn’t have time to go through the feeds and download the webcast each and every time. Hopefully iTunes helps me with all of that…

Now to figure out how much time I can set aside! ^sigh

Visit here for many topics lectured in French from École Normale Supérieure (Diffusion des Saviors). Add the RSS feeds to your iTunes or whatever software you use for such things. (I use Outlook 2007.)

Oh, and here for a list of French sites that assist in learning. (Including other languages.)

Visit OpenCulture for even more knowledge without it all blowing your mind away because everything there is free (even the videos).

Thank you, Internet.

A list of links for use in learning French. Some sites are eh, but some are neat.

Well, I definitely learned a lot while in Paris. My vocabulary increased ten-fold, I think. And, I found out I didn’t know as much French as I had thought…

But, now I do, so I want to keep the ball rolling and hopefully take French classes at the local community college. (Alliance Francais and Berlitz are too expensive right now…)

Although, I know I will not be “fluent” unless I live in a French speaking area for a while. There is just no way to speak a language fluently by learning in a classroom.

Over the weekend, I saw my uncle who I hadn’t seen in years. He was down from Canada for a conference in Anaheim, so my family and I took him out to dinner and hung out for a while in his hotel suite.

Apparently he’s a teacher – for FRENCH.
His children also went to French schools in Canada (so my mother says) and they’ve been to Europe several times. He also says if I ever plan on visiting, he has friends in Versaille, Switzerland, and elsewhere. (Speaking of his kids, one of them is now a magician and will be performing at The Magic Castle! We’re going to go see her while she’s in town this month – another family member I haven’t seen in years.)

I’ve already emailed him a few times and he writes back in French. Hopefully he can help me out as I try to work on this goal through out my life.

Also, even though I’m graduating this semester, I’m thinking I’ll continue studying French at the CC closer to my house. Then I can finally move on to French 2 and 3 and, oh my goodness, 4…

I was searching for some inspiration on what to do for a Flash assignment I have, and I saw map imagery on my survival book. So I thought what a nice theme if I used an old map of Paris…

And then I found these sites:

Historic Cities offers very high resolution images of maps, including Paris.

Gallica is the national French library and I found gorgeous images of illuminated manuscripts among many other things that I didn’t quite understand…

We used French in Action at my college in the language labs, but we didn’t even have all this page offers. And guess what, the videos are free! (I had to pay my school, pfft.) The downside? They’re not free to download so you have to be online…

Another site is Learn French by Podcast, where you can download each lesson (free!) and there are printable lesson guides (some are free, but you have to be a member to get them all). I think the only problem is the lessons aren’t in any particular learning order, but they’re definitely helpful regardless.

There is also About.com’s French Expressions pages – just Google “french expressions” and you’ll see it right at the top.

A bientot!

French II doesn’t fit in my schedule…once again.

So I’ve decided.

My French I/II textbook is going to be my new best friend. I’m going to [re]start at the beginning and P is going to help me by doing something – I’m unsure as to what yet.

I’ll do every exercise possible and read thru it all, including the French II section I’ve never perused. I’m going to force home-schooling French!

It’s easy to catch up on some French when you’re in Canada. Even their washers and dryers have French on them…but the big part is TV5 (TV Cinq) which is included by default with a cable subscription. In the States, TV5 doesn’t exist unless you especially request it, and I think it’s only available with certain companies…

ANYWAY.

I sit in my aunt’s bedroom, working on school assignments with TV5 on the tele. C’est tres bon pour mes compétences de langue, eh?

I listened to the French audio in the car on the way to school and back. Although, the return trip was cut short because the car decided it was too tired and accelerating was just too much work.

Hurray for AAA…