French is known as the Romance language of the Indo-European family. 80 million people around the globe speak French as a native language. 61 million of them live in France. Besides English French is the only language which is spoken on 5 continents. As per the demographer’s forecasts, French will become the most widely spoken mother tongue in Europe leaving behind German, by 2025.
Why You Need to Learn the French Language
In this era of globalization speaking one foreign language is not enough. People who speak heterogeneous languages have the chance to find better job opportunities globally. In fact, learning new languages opens new horizons for personal and professional development. French is the second most widely learned language after English and considered the sixth most widely spoken language in the world.
French is working and official language of the United Nations, the European Union, UNESCO, and NATO, the International Olympic Committee, the international Red Cross and international courts. If you need to pursue your career in any international organization, you should learn the French Language. It will increase your chances of being hired by reputed organizations.
We know the significance of the French language and provide French Translation Services for all types of content. We know what it takes to maintain a natural flow and tone in the translated content. If you want to learn the French language, we can help you out!
How to Learn the French Language
Here are some of the valuable tips that can help you to learn the French language.
Inspiration
The initial step in learning the language is to ask yourself which things about the French language inspire you to learn it. Learning a new language requires a lot of time, effort, dedication, and hard work. Dedication comes when you are inspired by the language and knows the significance of the language. When you start learning a new language, the novelty will keep you captivated and little learning will motivate you to learn further but when novelty finishes, it hampers your progress and inspiration to study further.
Inspiration is the key to successful language learning.
Once you decided that you want to learn a new language, you need to find answers to following questions.
- Will it help in your career?
- Do you want to ease your traveling?
- Do you want to explore the world?
- Do you want to surprise everyone?
- Is learning French your objective?
These questions will inspire you to learn French eagerly so don’t give up, keep going.
Reading
Reading is very important for learning any language. Here are some tips which will help you in learning French rapidly.
- Find the French version of books that you have already read. As you have already read the book, reading will take place at a faster rate. It will be fun for you to see how words get French translation.
- Look for introductory books with interesting topics in French. If you find a topic of research in which you have an interest, then you will learn with less effort. Furthermore, introductory books have less difficult vocabulary. As at the start, you don’t have to jump into difficult words so these books would be great.
- Reading the news in French will improve your language skills. All of us read the news then why not in French? Give it a try and it will be helpful for sure.
- Learn in the context. For learning any new language, it is essential to make more connections. When we make connections in learning the new word then it will remain in our memory for a longer period of time.
- If we are reading a book and finds 100 words on every page then you need to look up the words that have a tendency to repeat themselves and you should make a note in the margin. In this way when you read the text next time you will retain the new vocabulary.
Writing
French Writing exercises are the scariest area of French learning. We are never interested in practicing writing unless we are residing in a French-speaking country. One of the benefits of including French writing into our daily exercises is to grab difficult concepts and observe your linguistic abilities more efficiently than oral exercises.
Writing is important because it gives you the chance to rectify the gender of a noun. Writing mistakes are more noticeable than spoken ones. To increase your fluency in French studies, writing in French is important. Here are some points which will help in French writing:
- Develop the habit of writing your diary in the French Language. It needs not to be personal. You just need to write your daily routine that is how you spend your day. It will take only 10 minutes of your day. If there is no one to check your French writing then you can try online tools like iTalki and notebook tutors and get your writing checked.
- Precise the things which you have listened to read. If you watch the Online TV shows than after every episode write down in french the interesting things which you liked about that online TV show or if you are more passionate and have more time, read the article in French and rephrase the main points which you have found more interesting.
- Make some fictional stories and tell them to a friend. Make it as a game, after telling a fictional story to the friend, send it to another friend and ask him to correct if there is any mistake and add another paragraph. The game will continue in this way unless it gets dry and start over again. In this way, you will be able to discover new verb tenses because your fictional story can be in the past, present or future. Just learn the French language by fun and take the stress off.
Listening
Hearing is passive whereas listening is active. For learning any language one needs to be active. This era of digitalization has made it more convenient. You can listen to the French language in a number of ways.
Listening to Radio or Podcasts is the best way to check your French language skills. Check out podcasts in French. If you find a good text with the voice than you should listen to the whole program before relying on the words. Here are some useful tips for learning by listening.
- Find some catchy tunes. Visit your iTunes store and start looking for French music. If you don't have money, you don’t have to worry at all. Just log on to YouTube and discover new musicians. If you find your favorite artist than find out the favorite song of that artist before you search for the words. Listen to the lyrics and find out whether you understand it or not. After some time you will be singing a French song while taking a shower.
- Look for French films and television dramas. Here raises the question while subtitles should be included or not. French dialogues with no subtitles will improve your French language. Once you know the basics, it will be fun to watch the movies without subtitles.
- Activate FluentU. FluentU is the real video world of music, videos, movie trailers, news, and inspiring talks. For the French listening practice, you can turn them into personalized language learning lessons. Listen to the French language with the interactive French Subtitles. Add new words to your vocabulary and review them. You can use learn mode in multimedia flashcards to practice those new words before you check log out the video game.
Consistency
Consistency is required in learning the new language. If you have decided to learn a new language, make sure you spare time daily to learn a language. It will keep you going and you will refresh things in mind. Learning the language once or twice a week will slow down the French learning process so you need to spare 20 minutes daily. Initially, it will be difficult but by the time it will become a part of your daily life.
Practice
It is rightly said that ‘Practice Makes You Perfect’. You need to practice if you want to learn any language. 70 to 80% of language learning is achieved when you practice it. Before learning new things you should remove passive things from the mind. If you forget new words which you have learned recently, no doubt you will get frustrated. To prevent yourself from this frustration, practice is the best solution. When you learn a language, you need to use it, review it, and revise it.
In this way, you will learn the language more easily. To memorize the words, you need to see the word 5 or 6 times. Pronunciation becomes difficult when words are long. The best way is to look at the word and hear it enough times so that it becomes familiar to you. This will also enhance your vocabulary.
At the start of your learning French, you can use flashcards. They are a very useful tool to assist you in repeating words or phrases you have learned. When you reach a level of speaking, you can read different texts written in French to restore and expand your vocabulary.
Conclusion
You need to understand the objective behind learning the French language. It will make your language learning journey easier. French is a language similar to English. 33% of English words come from French and another 33% comes from Latin which adds familiarity and it makes understanding formal French writing and speaking very easy.
No matter if you are familiar with the language or not, if you want to learn it, you can! All you need to do is develop a habit of reading and writing in French, practice as much as you can and be consistent. With time, you will be fluent in writing and speaking in French.
Keep practicing!
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