The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Learning and Mastering French: A Comprehensive Language Learning Resource

5/24/2024

First of all, it is vital that you define your goals to ensure that you stay motivated and keep up your French practice as diligently as possible. As you start to learn French, establish a method through which you can achieve your goals.

There are 5 key components to language learning that are useful to separate:

Speaking
Listening
Reading
Writing
Application

Each of these requires different methods of learning, and so it is useful to bear this in mind when designing your practice. Think about what you want to use your French for and prioritize this (speaking/listening or reading/writing) in your language learning. As you learn a specific piece of material, aim to learn it from multiple perspectives including different levels of complexity. This paired with a desire to understand the logic behind the language construction will enable you to fully grasp the language.

Speaking and Listening

When focusing on speaking and listening, it is important that you learn French pronunciation and vowel sounds as best you can. French can be very difficult for anglophones to speak due to the different vowel sounds, and so the sooner you master them the more confident you will be! Practice listening to francophones slowly and repeating what they say. Make recordings of yourself speaking and analyze how well you have done. To improve pronunciation and become more confident at speaking, read French aloud rather than in your head and repeat the phrases until they feel incredibly easy and roll off the tongue.

As you progress to making dialogue, avoid translating English into French in your head. This can lead to one creating funny sentences that don’t quite make sense in the other language. Instead, aim to learn the French phrases and patterns themselves. This takes a long time to achieve and requires much experience, but it will allow you to fully immerse yourself in the French language.

Use resources such as the YouTube Channel Easy French to improve your listening skills. This channel provides films of native speakers answering questions about themselves and their lives. A good exercise is to listen to the podcast, write down what you hear, and then make a translation of your dictation. You can then use the channel’s subtitles to check how you’ve done. Don’t be afraid to replay these videos as many times as you need. It can also be handy to repeat what you hear and see if that jolts your memory.

Reading and Writing

As you develop your reading and comprehension skills, choose a specific topic to read about and stick with this. It’s important not to completely drown your head in new vocabulary, instead, give yourself the chance to master a certain subject in French when choosing your reading material. Finding parallel texts can be motivating as you develop your expertise and vocabulary to a higher level.

As you read in French you should aim to use the dictionary sparingly. Instead rely on guesswork (from the layout, pictures, headlines, or titles) and your logical understanding of etymology to get a first understanding of the text you are reading. After you’re confident that you have the gist of the text, you can start to focus on the details and expand your vocabulary.

As you learn vocabulary, phrases, and verbs in their various conjugations, it is great to write these down in a notebook. Writing is a wonderful method to enhance your learning and should be used as much as possible. You can write down dialogues to get to grips with the French language. This will also allow you more time to carefully construct your phrases.

As you progress through your learning, review the areas in which you feel most confident and analyze why these might have been particularly successful. This can be a great thing to bear in mind when continuing to learn French.

Finally, ensure that you study at your own pace and in the way that suits you best. Personal motivation is key to learning French, and finding your own pace will allow you to reach your goals. If you would like to learn more about our course offerings at the Music & Language Learning Centre, schedule a free consultation with us today!