How to quickly learn French. Learning French from scratch

Thanks to my French teacher at the university: despite the fact that I did not use this language for a long time, my knowledge and skills were preserved. For example, I can read any text flawlessly and have a good grasp of grammar. But: there was little speaking practice at the university. I plan to close this gap in the near future and bring my French back to life.

I want to start with my personal selection of sites for beginners. This list contains resources that will help you in the basic stages of learning French.

FrenchPod101

My favorite English-language resource with a powerful database of dialogues, podcasts, printouts and assignments for them. If you know and understand English at least a little, you will at least be able to download podcasts to your laptop or phone and listen to them in transport. Tasks are divided into levels from zero to advanced.

When registering, you can buy a whole set of materials for beginners for $1 to try out the training. Then it is convenient to get premium access to the service for several months with teacher feedback in order to ensure regular and high-quality practice.

A detailed overview of the Language Pod service.

Polyglot

I have repeatedly turned to the courses of Dmitry Petrov in order to remember and practice basic knowledge and skills in Italian and French. This year I plan to connect his lessons to learn new languages. In my opinion, these are the best classes to get a first understanding of the language, deal with basic vocabulary, grammar, language system and start speaking.

Busuu

I'm currently taking French lessons on Busuu, an interactive learning service, to fill in the gaps in my current knowledge and prepare for a full-fledged advanced class next month.

The tasks here are divided by learning levels, it is very convenient to go through a small block every day. Vocabulary and grammar are given from simple to complex, there is voice acting, new information is immediately fixed in practice. I like that theory and practice are offered in small chunks so that everything is well remembered.

Lingust

It is very important to understand the correct French pronunciation from the very beginning. On this resource you will find a collection of lessons with a detailed explanation of the sounds of the French language, you can listen to audio files and test yourself by repeating after a native speaker.

Irgol

I have known this site for a very long time and many times I turned to it for background information. The resource is run by a French teacher, so there is a lot of quality material here. In addition to the obligatory information on French vocabulary and grammar, the author publishes comprehensive articles about the culture and traditions of France, offers lists of resources and tests.

Forvo

While you are just learning the basics of French phonetics, the Forvo website will help you out. Here you can check your pronunciation at any time.

Extra

Excellent series in French. Of course, if you just started learning a language yesterday, it's too early for you to watch it. But in the process of mastering the basic level, it is worth connecting it to classes. You need to learn to understand what you already know, to hear simple dialogues and phrases. This is a good alternative to the usual series, which are still difficult for you to watch.

BBC Learning French

Another English-language, but cool site. (See how useful it is to know English after all?) If you have any knowledge of English, look around the site - there are a lot of cool video lessons, tests, riddles, articles. There are good materials with basic phrases and voice acting. On this resource, I took a course for continuing Ma France a couple of times.

Les verbes

Verbs in French are a different story. If you understand the logic, then it will not be difficult for you to automatically conjugate them in different tenses, persons and numbers. Not only individually, but also during a conversation. In the meantime, keep the hint!

hello pal

A convenient mobile application for communicating with native speakers by correspondence, in conversation and through voice messages. Connect to chat anytime! Why do I recommend this program to beginners? Because inside there are hints and templates of phrases that facilitate communication at the initial stage.

A detailed overview of the Hello Pal service.

Multitran

I often encourage you to use monolingual dictionaries. And I recommend that you start using them as early as possible. Read more about this and. But for beginners, a proven dictionary with Russian translation is a must.

Study French

Lots of cool information on all aspects of learning French. There are sections devoted to grammar, vocabulary, ready-made topics, tests, dialogues. If you wish, you can even find a tutor, courses or a conversation club.

Italki

Not a single review of resources can do without this site.)) But this is not just. I am really very satisfied with this service. When you go there for a specific purpose, you get results.

A beginner can set himself the task of mastering communication in French on basic topics, listing a specific list and finding a teacher who will help with this. Italki is the best tool for this. I am currently looking for a native speaker teacher, as I need to improve my conversational level.

A detailed overview of the Italki service.

Explore these sites, they will be enough to start learning French from scratch or remember what you once learned.

Where are you in learning French now? If you have good resources in mind, what would you recommend?

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French belongs to the Indo-European language family. It is spoken by over 200 million people. In addition to France, it is common in Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, as well as African countries. On the Internet, French is the third most commonly used language.

If there is a desire or need to learn French, you can do it in two ways: contact a specialist who teaches languages ​​or learn it yourself.

Currently, there are many courses for learning different languages, including French. In addition, you can use the services of tutors. Therefore, learning French is not a problem even for a person completely unfamiliar with it.

If there is no time to attend courses or a tutor, or there is not enough money, you can learn the language on your own. This will also require some material costs, but first of all, desire is needed.

Before you start learning a language, you need to decide on the purpose, that is, what it is supposed to be used for. This depends on the scope of the training program. So, for a tourist who wants to communicate with the local population, the ability to build simple sentences in different tenses will be enough, and the necessary vocabulary for this is about 3 thousand words. If the language is needed for work or life in a given country, then the minimum vocabulary is 20 thousand words. Moreover, an in-depth study of grammar and complex lexical structures will be required.

For self-study, you need a textbook or tutorial. You can choose the right textbook by reading the description or reviews, it is also advisable to review it yourself, if possible.

Since correct pronunciation is very important in French, it is necessary to purchase audio materials. You can find cassettes in the store, or audio files on the Internet. Some textbooks and tutorials are released complete with audio recordings. In addition, there are video tutorials.

You also need to get a dictionary, and preferably several. You can choose them according to the same principle as textbooks or tutorials, although this does not require such a careful approach, since in many respects the same type of dictionaries are similar and differ mainly in volume.

In addition, you need your own dictionary. It can be a regular notebook, which will be updated with new words as you learn the language.

By the same principle, they fill out a notebook of notes. There are notes, comments and rules.

When learning any language, you need to clearly allocate time and follow the schedule. Classes should take place daily for at least 40 minutes, but one and a half hour lessons are usually recommended.

To consolidate the studied material and accelerate learning, you can study the language outside of school hours. For this, watching films in French, listening to music or educational material is suitable. If you have difficulty memorizing any words, it is recommended to stick cards with these words around the house in the most visible places. Later, when the vocabulary is large enough, you can read books in French.

As you know, the fastest people learn a language are those who constantly have to use it. It is very important to practice in the formation of speech. To do this, you can meet a native speaker on the Internet and communicate with him regularly. Correspondence of audio materials will help the development of grammar and spelling, and oral conversations - vocabulary, pronunciation, as well as skills of quick sentence formation.

The main difficulty in French is pronunciation. There are sounds here that do not exist in Russian. As mentioned above, the solution to this problem is listening to audio materials and repeating, or speaking to a native speaker.

Both learning methods have their advantages and disadvantages.

Classes with a highly qualified teacher will allow you to perceive by ear more material than with self-study. In addition, the courses and tutors with great experience have well-established programs over many years that allow you to achieve maximum results. However, it is not so easy to find a good specialist, and classes with a low-skilled tutor can give much less than you could get with self-study.

Studying on your own, you can create a program yourself, including the required type and amount of material. It is also much easier to allocate time, and material costs are much lower. As can be seen, none of these methods has significant advantages over the other, and it is impossible to unambiguously determine which one is more effective. A lot depends on the circumstances. Therefore, the method of learning should be chosen based on your desires and capabilities.

However, regardless of the chosen path, first of all, in order to successfully learn a language, you need to love it, treat it as a hobby and enjoy acquiring new knowledge.

This material was sent to us by our regular reader Sanzhar Surshanov (his twitter @SanzharS), who shared very interesting ways to learn a new language for you.

Since the beginning of this year, I started learning French. I do this with the help of English, since I began to speak English confidently, I can say that I found the key to numerous Internet resources.

Below I want to list and describe how I learn French:

1. Duolingo

The site was founded by the creators of CAPTCHA and RECAPTCHA, students of Carnegie Mellon University. By the way, every time you enter recaptcha, you help digitize thousands of old books. The main idea is for people to simultaneously learn languages ​​and translate the Internet into different languages.

All material is divided into different categories.

After you finish the exercises, you will be given real material taken from the Internet for translation. At first, simple sentences, as you learn more and more complex. By translating sentences you strengthen your knowledge and help translate web pages. You can also look at the translations of other users.

The exercises include text translation, speaking, listening. As such, there is no emphasis on grammar.

In addition to French, you can learn Spanish, German, English, Italian and Portuguese.

Audio lessons go like this: 2 students come to him who do not know French. It turns out that you become the 3rd student. Michelle talks to the students and that's how they learn the language. He explains the difference between English and French, first talks about new words, then asks to translate from English into French.

The main difference and rule of the Michel method is no need to try to memorize words, phrases, etc.

I don’t know how to explain, but after the first lesson, on an intuitive level, you yourself begin to guess how it will be in the language you are learning.

I personally really like this method.

3.Memrise

I use the memrise website to build up my vocabulary.

On the site you can find a lot of different courses, you can even learn Morse code. I'm learning - Hacking French.

By learning new words, you "grow flowers." Planting seeds, watering, etc.

The main feature is that you create memes for unfamiliar words and associate with the English language. I did not create memes myself, I use the creations of other users.

You grow flowers like this: at the beginning, memorize the meaning of words, then repeat them repeatedly. Click on the correct answer, write the translation yourself, listening to the phrase, choose the correct answer from the list. This ends the first part.

After 4-5 hours, you will receive a notification by email that you need to repeat the course. Repeat the above, if you make a mistake in the translation, the word goes to repeat. That's pretty much how it all happens.

4. News in slow french

Thanks to twitter, just recently I found a link to another wonderful resource.

Very cool site for French learners - newsinslowfrench.com/french-for-beg… They have grammar for beginners and News in slow french for intermediates

Decided to learn French? French is spoken in over 43 countries around the world. Many consider this language the most beautiful. Lingoust will give you the opportunity to check if this is true.

For beginners placed in the form online lessons popular tutorial V. Panin and L. Leblanc. The first 12 lessons are devoted to the rules of reading and pronunciation. It is important to learn these lessons well, otherwise you will not be able to read normally, and listening to the text will be even more difficult, given the speed of voicing. Having mastered these lessons, one problem will become less. for example, in English, it is very difficult to read the text correctly without looking into a dictionary. Here you can learn this, although it will be more difficult than, for example, in German, where you don’t have to look into the dictionary for pronunciation at all, but in Chinese every now and then you need to carry a dictionary with you ... A little distracted ... :)

Then there will be 20 lessons on grammar and vocabulary, accompanied by tests to consolidate the material. Data lessons suitable for both children and adults. Having mastered them, you will be able to communicate in French on everyday topics, read intermediate French texts, and get rid of the awkward feeling of a stranger by going on vacation to Paris or any French-speaking country without knowing the norms of language behavior.

The exercises are accompanied by forms for entering text, the answers to the exercises are located below them on the right in the form of a key. To see the answer, you need to move the mouse over the key. Audio, if present, is usually placed immediately after the description of the exercise.

Go to -› lesson list ‹- (Click)

What other reasons to learn French?

• For fans of good literature, France has the highest number of Nobel Prize winners in this field.
• France is visited by more than 60 million tourists annually - you will not be bored.
• France is renowned for the quality of its high technology, and French is an important technology and business language in the world. (Second language on the Internet.)
• More than 50 thousand English words are of French origin. A large number of them are also in the Russian language.
• France offers a huge number of generous scholarships for our graduates.
• French is the second most popular language for learning after English.
• French is one of the two official languages ​​of the Olympic Games.
• French-speaking Africa is a larger area than the United States.
• Montréal is the second largest French-speaking city in the world.
• Do not forget about the masterpieces of music and cinema!
• many other reasons.

You must have found something interesting on this page. Recommend her to a friend! Better yet, place a link to this page on the Internet, VKontakte, blog, forum, etc. For example:
Learning French

Given:

September 2008- a naive young lady with a level of French: under A2. Random scraps of knowledge in my head after foreign language courses. Phonetics, grammar, vocabulary - the initial level, conversational skills and listening comprehension tend to zero.

November 2010- level of French: B2 according to the young lady, or C1 according to DALF.

Hello, my name is Galya, I am the same young lady and I learned French on my own (almost). Two important caveats:

• I was taught to read (and in French this is important!)
• I was not raped by Popova-Kazakova (this is about the second part of the title of the article).

After documenting my knowledge, I taught and continued to learn French, and now I have become so bold that I give out advice on self-study. So, the best advice I can give so far is to go to the country of the language you are learning! I did this in my time with French and never regretted it. Now I'm learning Spanish, and I would gladly move to Latin America for a year, if not for a million “if only”. If your “ifs” don’t let you do it yet, another piece of advice: create a language environment at home.

What is a language environment? If we take away the romantic and enthusiastic cries about “aaa there are French around”, “aaa I saw Paris and did not die” what did I do differently? It took me 5 years of teaching to understand: NOTHING.

I just devoted more time to the language than at home.

No magic pills and secret secrets. There are no miraculous introductions of language into the brain in the language environment. I did the same things as in the courses, the same things as at home, I just spent a lot more time on it.

I read a lot

First, children's books were used (I worked as a nanny, and my wards were 4.5 and 10 years old). First of all, I dealt with preschool publications, then with comics, then switched to teenage literature. Then I began to look at the library of my parents, but this happened after the first 3-4 months of being in the environment. But even without the environment, you can download yourself interesting adapted books.

In addition to books, I read everything I saw: for example, after visiting museums, I took with me booklets in different languages ​​with descriptions of the paintings and the plan, and then translated the French version, looking into the English/Russian translation. But what is stopping me now from opening the Louvre website http://www.louvre.fr/ and doing the same?

I listened a lot

I listened to radio and TV, understanding only 10% for the first couple of months. I watched news, series and cartoons. I never believed in “passive listening” before, but it really improved my listening skills and helped me to speak faster.

If only I knew about this magical “immersion”, I could do this from the very beginning and accompany my studies with daily listening, and not once a week 5 minutes in courses. I could choose the right level of listening: listen to the news en français facile, for example. Listening to French is not just important, it is a must if you want to understand more than just written language.

Speaking of writing. Although the French themselves can sometimes scare you with their spelling, deal with all superscripts from the very beginning and learn how to type correctly.

I spoke with the natives.

You will say: it is easy to look for carriers when there is no choice. But there was a choice. There are plenty of Russian-speaking people in Paris: ours are everywhere and you yourself choose with whom to communicate.

My classmate moved to New York and for the first year of her life did not speak English at all. She knows the language very well, it was just that there was no one to practice it with. Her employers, colleagues and friends spoke Russian. Here is the language environment. If you create it at home, then you have excellent italki, polyglotclub and many more places where you can find a friend to chat on Skype to talk with native speakers.

I studied according to authentic textbooks.

This will not surprise anyone now, however, some prefer Popov-Kazakov. Let tomatoes and slippers fly at me, but how good it is that no one gave me this famous “base”. Then I still had to go through it, but I'm sure that you need to start with a modern textbook, from the very beginning gaining live vocabulary and listening to live dialogues.

Conclusions of this story:

1. Intensive is the best pace for taking the language. Stretching pleasure, we lose the fuse, desire and, accordingly, regularity.
2. You can create a language environment without leaving your computer. For this you need the Internet, desire, and also concentration. So stop reading about how others learn languages ​​and start doing it yourself!

If you decide to immerse yourself in French next year, then keep an action plan for beginners:

1. We are looking for someone to teach you to read or check your well-read texts. If you understand yourself, then this is the only exception when it is better to take a Russian-language textbook. But in any case, let someone control you and correct the mistakes. The worst thing you can think of is not knowing the rules of reading and taking on the Passé Composé. Learn the pronunciation once and for all. It is logical and also beautiful.
2. We take the Latitudes 1 textbook - it will be the basis of your program. Go through it, in no case skipping the audio and tasks in the workbook. The answers to all this wealth can be found for free, as well as the manuals themselves.
3. You can “dilute” this textbook with the books Grammaire en dialogues and Vocabulaire en dialogues, pulling up grammar and vocabulary. But no more than one chapter a day, because the learned material must be repeated. To practice new words, use the method that suits you.
4. Every day we listen to French speech - the more the better. You can start with Coffee Break French podcasts, Extra series. Watch movies with subtitles, sing karaoke songs, watch interesting interviews or musicals. Dive in, in a word. Here is a list of resources you can choose from.
5. After the first month of classes, we begin to read regularly. First, adapted or children's literature, like Petit Nicolas, then light books that you read in Russian, then something from modern authors. Balzac and Flaubert will wait for your confident B2.

In moments of despair, read Kato Lomb's "How I Learn Languages" and you will understand how lucky you are in the age of the Internet. There are so many authentic materials of excellent quality now that it will last more than one life.

P.S. If you have already started, quit or are in the process of learning a language, then all these tips are already clear to you, and you, of course, have not learned anything new.

I just wanted to say that the language environment is not a panacea. In the language environment, laziness is exactly the same and “I will do it tomorrow” in the same way. Moreover, neither a collection of links to valuable resources, nor advice from polyglots, nor unlimited Internet will save you. It's all about motivation and discipline, and then you'll be able to learn French on your own!

As for me, I did not stop learning foreign languages, although I returned home. My little secret: like-minded people from Language Heroes. It's more than a language environment :)

Many thanks to Galina Lyapun for writing this article. You can find even more excellent and useful materials on French on her website.