Adventures in Learning French

Hi, were Ron and Kate and were originally from England. We spent about 15 years holidaying in France before we moved here permanently. In that time we tried quite a few different ways to - some of them more successful than others!

Today we get along with the French language pretty well - but theres still room for improvement so we continue to try new ideas, programs, software and books as they come along. Were also having lessons with a retired teacher who we met locally.

What were hoping to pass on, via a series of articles, is our experiences (both our successes and our failures) in order to perhaps be of some help to those of you who are visiting France - whether thats just for the occasional holiday, in search of a second home or moving here permanently. Here we go then...

There are many ways to learn French. Kate and I both have our preferences and you will probably need to try a couple of methods before you find what suits you best. Weve found that investing in a few books and couple of CD or pc-based courses is well worth it.

However, one of the largest learning resouces is, of course, the internet and there are many ways to start to online. An added bonus is that, with a little searching, you can find several sites where you can begin to for free. No single site has all the answers - and we strongly advise you to look at other methods as well - but as it wont cost you anything, why not dive in?

So where do you start? Well if you type 'how to learn French' into a search engine youll get millions of answers - far too many to list here. Were also unable to give you direct link to websites in this article but if you visit our site at www.how2learnfrench.com you can get access to a few of the places we like best such as, for example, the excellent resources of the BBC.

When youre ready to move on from the feee exercises, which can be a bit limited, youll be looking at home-study or 'distance learning' via CD, pc software, books etc. Some courses offer an interesting and entertaining mixture of medias which all help speed up learning. Well be covering some of those in a further article and again, our website has plenty of details. Well also look at what we think is the most effective way of learning French which, for those with pockets deep enough, is to be right here in France.

But thats for another day. In the meantime, remember that almost any learning is better than none at all. The only proviso we would give is that with a language you need to be able to hear it so as not to learn bad pronunciation habits - this is where language CDs are at their most useful.

Until next time, good luck with it. Maybe well see you over here one day!

Ron and Kate are 'just an ordinary couple' who, after holidaying in France for many years, left the English rat-race and moved to France to run a gite. Their experiences in learning the language led them to start the website: How2LearnFrench.com

Here are some more learn french articles...