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Originally Posted by gbarv  I taught myself French to be able to understand movies and books and to speak in two years. I would recommend leaving language learning material (textbooks, Rosetta Stone, pimsleur, etc) and start using real content intended for native spearkers. One useful tecnique for building listening comprehension quickly is to use parallel texts, here you can see some information about this: Language Learning Forum: Listening-Reading system
good luck |
I am British, living in France for 9 years. I learnt French and German at school for 2 years and found that German was easier because it's close to English. I had the same also when I lived in Holland.
I also had massive psychological problems that I would freak out, sweat, start shaking then clam up when I used to speak to people in French. I got over that thank god!
Anyways to cut a very long story short after buying tons of CD's books etc. taking courses in france, speaking to natives and having a French boyfriends. $$$$$
I found the best way to learn French was to write out sentences about 30 times for me to retain it and spell.
Speak aloud, read things of interest aloud and KEEP
repeating it.
Find a French Natives who are willing top speak slow!! You can find many people on skype for this.
Watch films, the news etc.
Do something
every day otherwise you will loose it! Try for 1 hour a day. If you can't do it everyday try 4 times a week, at set times.
Also try and find a group like meetup.com. That helped me a lot!
Why not do the 30 days of this just to see how you get on?
I have dyslexia but it's no excuse because when I was learning every day I noticed a huge improvement. My French course is not enough because it's only 2 days a week, however I am still doing my bit. I have met many people who live here in France for 30-40 years and they don't speak a word of French because they are always at home etc. So my advice would be is to make time for it and stick to it otherwise you will forget it and you will have to start from the beginning again and I can tell you doing that was soooo boring.
Volia ! try these links too
BBC - Languages - French English to French, Italian, German & Spanish Dictionary - WordReference.com