We had an interesting lesson in French today where we talked about inclusive language in French. To be honest, I thought that anyone who doesn’t identify as male or female would have used “vous” which is the equivalent of “they” or a formal “you” in French but I was wrong. The pronoun iel is used […]
Learning a Language According to Me
I’ve been watching my husband using DuoLingo to learn German. It’s that little ding when he gets something correct, that I now hear every night. 🤣 However, when he gets something wrong, he becomes frustrated because he loses points. He has to repeat something and then he can’t move on to the next level. Welcome […]
Achievement Unlocked: I Speak French
In the last few months, I changed from one University of the Third Age French class to another. It was unfortunate that I left the first one even though I enjoyed the class however, it reached a point that I realised I needed MORE conversation than grammar classes. Don’t be under the illusion that you’re […]
Virtual Trip to Lyon
It’s unlikely we will be travelling anywhere overseas for at least another few years but thankfully, we have an abundance of wonderful videos, programmes and other resources to do virtual trips instead. Some time ago, during the pandemic lockdowns I created a Virtual Tour of France where I created an itinerary for 5 days that […]
Become Fluent in French in 8 Hours a Day
I stumbled upon this video on YouTube and it was an eye opener. First of all, I thought to myself that I can easily do this now that there is time in my day. Devoting 8 hours a day to language learning is achievable especially if you don’t work, have no family commitments and want […]
Nothing Wrong With Starting with Grammar When Learning a New Language
I watched this interview with D’aria talking about how she learned French and it struck me that we both started the same way. Many people on YouTube and other articles online advise NEVER to start with grammar. However this is wrong. I started like her. I bought the Practice Makes Perfect books and methodically over […]
Writing French Stories
I am writing short stories using a French picture dictionary for inspiration. For exercise, I flip open the dictionary and look at the pictures and definitions (there’s no English) so then I concoct a story in French using those words. It’s a way to contextualise the vocabulary I’m learning and in my mind’s eye, I […]
A Way To Improve Vocabulary in Language Learning
Many years ago, a girlfriend gave me an old French picture dictionary and I’ve wondered how I could use it as all the definitions of the words are in French too. She had bought it thinking that it would help her learn the language but as she was a complete beginner, the definitions weren’t much […]
Learning a Language Through Coursera
About a few weeks ago, I found the Etudier en France course on Coursera that is at a B1-B2 level. I hadn’t completed a Coursera course for many years and when I saw this, I thought it was time to get back into it again. If you do a search on MOOCs (massive open online […]
The Immersive Language Experience At Home
I’ve been writing about my language learning journey with French (click on the Search box above and type in ‘French’ to see the list of blog posts) over the last 18 or so months and one of the things that I’ve been deliberating is whether “language immersion” works and whether we need to be IN […]