Our friend Jessica is planning on spending a month in France this summer, so bien sûr, she needs to learn French! We sat down with her to talk about her trip, her strategy for getting her French up to speed with LL, and her attraction to the French language. We’ll also check in with her after her trip to hear how things went.
LL: Tell us briefly why you’re learning French.
Jessica: I am going to spend an entire month in Paris and rather than rely on a phrasebook or hoping everyone else understands English, I want to learn as much French as possible to make the trip even better than it will be otherwise. I always like to learn some of the language of the country I’m visiting.
LL: You’ve mentioned that you have studied French before. What do you find to be the most difficult aspect of learning French?
Jessica: I have never had a class in French but have always studied from recordings and books so the first difficult aspect is my memory. I do know a little bit of French but it is traveler’s French and it is rusty. I need to start from scratch and that means I need to learn the same things babies learn, pretty much - numbers, letters, basic words. It is memorization and that means freeing up some RAM in my brain! The most difficult aspect of all, though, is making the time to devote to studying. One other difficult thing is that I studied Spanish in school so occasionally I find myself using the Spanish word for something rather than the French, especially for things such as articles (a, the).
LL: What aspect of your French do you want to improve the most? What do you think will be most important for you to learn?
Jessica: I most want to be able to understand what people are saying to me, so that means tuning my ear to the speed of speech, as well as the context and the meaning of the words themselves, of course. For example, prior to starting the Living Language course, I was using a couple of other resources. I misunderstood some of the phrases I heard because they sounded like other words. For example, a sentence that spoke about Chine, China, I thought was referring to chien, dog. There were others like that. So of course I need to understand context and that means recognizing the words around those I think I know, since I may not be hearing what I think I am hearing!
LL: How do you plan to study? On your computer? With books and CDs? On your phone? Or all three?
Jessica: All three, absolutely. I am listening to the audio in my car as well as on the computer. I’ll also be using eTutoring with the online course. I first started studying French again with an app on my phone, prior to beginning the Living Language course, so I definitely plan to use the Living Language iPhone app. I do refer to the books. I think I am more of a visual learner than an aural learner, but the combination is fairly essential for me.
LL: Do you have a favorite French phrase?
Mon petit chou! (sweetheart, lit., my little cabbage). It sounds so much lovelier than its translation.
