Monday, March 4, 2013

Learning French - I - Introduction

I am starting a new thread by name - Learning French.
I always wanted to learn French and so I joined Alliance Française. But, learning French or any other any language for that matter in institutes like Alliance Française or similar ones could be problematic for some.
Normally, they give lessons which run continuously for two hours. So, five sessions in a week, means 10 hours of foreign language dose, which is pretty much hectic for a normal mind. If you are a dedicated Foreign language learner, you may survive. But if you wish to learn it as a hobby, managing it with your regular routine work, then soon it starts turning into a burden. 
Learning a new language is not easy. You have to remember  new words, their meanings, their pronunciations and  then how to use them in a sentence making sense. By the time you come to senses, understanding first set of words you learnt, you are bombarded with another set. Over the time, it becomes difficult to keep track of what you have learnt and what you are learning.
Later part of this exercise, is to be comfortable with the words when some body speaks it to you. I went through this situation when people are talking to me French and I could not understand a single word, even though I had taken some elementary lessons. So, I started learning it on my own. Making use of internet    lessons, help from colleagues.
One thing, I learnt is learning French or any other language sitting in a class 2 hours per day, 5 days a week is not the way. Its a slow process which automatically comes to you as you spend some small time regularly. Even now, I am not much comfortable with French, but now it hasn't remained totally alien language to me. I am still struggling with the pronunciation part and so the conversation, which is a difficult part if you have been speaking English for some time.I will share some simple French words and their usages as I learnt out of my experience in this thread. The lessons will be designed keeping the audio lessons given by Michel Thomas as a base. He gives a very sensible and simpler way to learn European languages. But they won't be strictly following his lessons. I will be modifying them as per my experience of learning French. It will be a fun exercise to learn some french with out putting pressure on mind.
Looking forward to create a good thread to learn French and share with all.

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