Brehs, I’m really improving my French 
Me and a co-worker where at the coffee machine this morning and she was talking about how sleepy she was. I’ve always known she wasn’t from America but I couldn’t pin point her accent. I asked where she from and she said “France”, so naturally I was intrigued.
Hit her with (in French)
“Where in France do you live” and she replied in French. “Normandy, 2 hours from Paris”.
We conversated a bit about some other francophone Africans at our company (2 other ones) and then I said I had studied some French in college and that I’m studying it now.
She was then like “il faut pratiquer!” (You must practice!) and to me it was such a trip that I just “understood” what she said. It was just like I “got it” without having to translate to English in my head. Granted I stumbled a bit in our conversation and some of the vocab is very similar to English so it’s not too hard to piece together, but nonetheless progress is progress.
To improve my listening and reading comprehension I’ve been trying to get at least 30 mins of listening to a news program in French. I try to find the transcript and then follow along with the audio. I find news to be a very good medium as it’s a very “baseline” French. Not too casual, yet not too formal but usually well-articulated because it’s communication and you have to be understood by the masses. Also, news has current events so it allows me to understand the context a lot more. Additionally, French news covers a lot of topics (especially France 24). Economics, politics, art, culture, immigration, sport etc. It’s given me exposure to all sectors of the language and helps me broaden my vocabulary.
The written transcript helps with building vocab and understanding sentence structure and composition.
Speaking is the part that’s quite tough. DC has a few French meet-up groups but I think I just need full blown immersion to get this thing right. 6 months and I’d be good.
Damn I regret not studying abroad in Switzerland or Belgium when I was in college.
Your boy just might have to move to a Francophone African country to get this thing right.
That feeling of improvement just keeps me pushing along
Me and a co-worker where at the coffee machine this morning and she was talking about how sleepy she was. I’ve always known she wasn’t from America but I couldn’t pin point her accent. I asked where she from and she said “France”, so naturally I was intrigued.
Hit her with (in French)
“Where in France do you live” and she replied in French. “Normandy, 2 hours from Paris”.
We conversated a bit about some other francophone Africans at our company (2 other ones) and then I said I had studied some French in college and that I’m studying it now.
She was then like “il faut pratiquer!” (You must practice!) and to me it was such a trip that I just “understood” what she said. It was just like I “got it” without having to translate to English in my head. Granted I stumbled a bit in our conversation and some of the vocab is very similar to English so it’s not too hard to piece together, but nonetheless progress is progress.
To improve my listening and reading comprehension I’ve been trying to get at least 30 mins of listening to a news program in French. I try to find the transcript and then follow along with the audio. I find news to be a very good medium as it’s a very “baseline” French. Not too casual, yet not too formal but usually well-articulated because it’s communication and you have to be understood by the masses. Also, news has current events so it allows me to understand the context a lot more. Additionally, French news covers a lot of topics (especially France 24). Economics, politics, art, culture, immigration, sport etc. It’s given me exposure to all sectors of the language and helps me broaden my vocabulary.
The written transcript helps with building vocab and understanding sentence structure and composition.
Speaking is the part that’s quite tough. DC has a few French meet-up groups but I think I just need full blown immersion to get this thing right. 6 months and I’d be good.
Damn I regret not studying abroad in Switzerland or Belgium when I was in college.
Your boy just might have to move to a Francophone African country to get this thing right.
That feeling of improvement just keeps me pushing along
