Can't speak French

magictom123

livemocha.com

free interactive courses

5limJim

moanymoany wrote: »

Try here

http://french.about.com/

Excellent site.

Also http://www.rocketlanguages.com/french/premium/index.php?hop=nuch11

These should get you started and both are free.

resurrecting this, the rocketlanguage one is $99 spo hardly free, shame as its apparently a very effective course.....

MoradoJess

ormus wrote: »

why would you want to learn a useless language?
try german, japanese or arabic.

Who are you to say how useful a language is? I'm sure if you asked the 159 million french speakers they would say it' very useful.
OP sorry but I don't have a clue with French, spent a year "learning" it in school, the first month had me attempting to pronounce it, then I gave up and spent the rest of the year doodling:rotfl: Personally I prefer Spanish but I know lot's of people who prefer French.

jollybabe

Bonsoir,

I did french and german at uni and learning to speak another language is great fun. And it will always come in handy - creates a great impression when you travel and people respond so much better to you when you at least try in their language first.

I've not used the podcasts for French, but have tried out the Dutch one which seems quite good. As an alternative, there is a freebie download on a website called: Before You Know It. It has good flashcards and so on as part of the free package (I'm using it for Macedonian) - and you can upgrade if you wish.

Also, the BBC have Bitesize languages available, and I think that the french is one of the more extensive ones.

Immersing yourself in a language is the only way to learn. Use the internet to tune into French radio (or if you live near the coast you may pick this up on a normal radio) - I'd suggest buying a french newspaper every now and then, but they are so focused on Politics it can be very heavy going and that's probably for some time down the line (and I never could get much further than page one due to boredom!)

I used to revise for exams by putting flashcards created by me up around the house - which can be useful for reminding you of the gender of a noun.

If you can find some kids books in French on amazon, it's a good place to start. Remember, you learned English and it's a much more complicated language than French!!

Bonne Chance

5limJim

jollybabe wrote: »

Bonsoir,

I did french and german at uni and learning to speak another language is great fun. And it will always come in handy - creates a great impression when you travel and people respond so much better to you when you at least try in their language first.

I've not used the podcasts for French, but have tried out the Dutch one which seems quite good. As an alternative, there is a freebie download on a website called: Before You Know It. It has good flashcards and so on as part of the free package (I'm using it for Macedonian) - and you can upgrade if you wish.

Also, the BBC have Bitesize languages available, and I think that the french is one of the more extensive ones.

Immersing yourself in a language is the only way to learn. Use the internet to tune into French radio (or if you live near the coast you may pick this up on a normal radio) - I'd suggest buying a french newspaper every now and then, but they are so focused on Politics it can be very heavy going and that's probably for some time down the line (and I never could get much further than page one due to boredom!)

I used to revise for exams by putting flashcards created by me up around the house - which can be useful for reminding you of the gender of a noun.

If you can find some kids books in French on amazon, it's a good place to start. Remember, you learned English and it's a much more complicated language than French!!

Bonne Chance

bought an internet radio for my OH for her birthday and we've discovered hundreds of stations globally, just takes a bit of getting used to culturally trying to listen to french stations as they are so different to our usual ones, and you're correct, le monde, l'equipe etc are pretty hard going to read

Enterprise_1701C

I speak French, but I find when I go to France that it sounds very different. I think a good idea would be to start off by going to France for a week or so if you can and immerse yourself in the language. I find this works with more or less any language, even Thai and Swahili (even if I did forget a lot of it later!!), that way you get a feel for how people speak it.

If you can't do that, get yourself some tapes or CDs and cut yourself off from the English world for a while.

Good luck - it is definitely worthwhile.

mandragora_2

My mum signed up for a course through her local WEA - she absolutley loves it, has learned loads, gone at her own pace and made some lovely new friends. At the age of 72, she's about to take one of the 'old ladies' (aged 81!) on a short weekend break that they've booked through the local bus company, as the 'old lady' has never visited France before.