JUST DO IT!
Many students are often intimidated by the prospects of entering the French classroom at university level.
This blog is designed to reassure students that French Grammar is not necessarily the mysterious, confusing entity it could seem at Secondary School.
First of all, devoting a small amount of time – even if it’s ten minutes on the bus ride to college – can help you to begin to feel at home in the language and, yes it is possible, to enjoy the elegant jigsaw that is French grammar.
Everyone is different, never more so when it comes to learning a language. Some of us find that we learn best in ‘live’ communicative situations, others that a couple of hours with a podcast or French film help attune our ear, and still others that sitting down with a Grammar is the best solution for us. Whatever your learning style, rest assured, there is no ‘right’ way to approach a language. But finding what’s best for you sooner rather than later can help you to adjust to studies at university level, and to enable you to enjoy your studies of the French language.
I’ve listed some simple strategies you might like to experiment with below. I’ve found that these have worked for students in the past, and contribute greatly to their enthusiasm for and improvement in French.
Some Strategies for Language Learning:
- Keep a language notebook – customise your learning and keep a note of new vocabulary and grammatical structures. Keep it small and in your pocket for those times when you find yourself staring out the window of a train.
- Make Mistakes – yes, you heard me right. Many students are intimidated by the classroom situation in the university, and unused to getting below-par marks in written assignments. Never fear, language is a process. As children, we all had to mis-pronounce our brother’s or sister’s name before we got it right. Correction is a facilitation – it enables you to get personal with the language, find out what your bug bears are and address them.
- Read over your corrected assignments! Simple as this sounds, there’s no point in making mistakes if you’re not going to learn from them. Do read your lecturer’s or tutor’s notes. A simple ten minutes on the grammar mistake with the book or an online exercise can resolve the problem for you. Then go ahead and show off your new understanding by trying again in the next assignment.
- Use a dictionary – one of the most common mistakes at intermediate (and indeed advanced) levels is the anglophone disregard for the gender of nouns in French. Try and think of this not as a hassle, but as a new way of regarding words. The more you use the dictionary the more accurate your language will become, and eventually you’ll develop an instinct for the gender of words – It’s true. In your notebook, always note the gender of a new noun.
- Learn to skim and scan – so it’s the first time you’ve had to read a novel or short story in French. Don’t be afraid. New words are not the enemy, and you know a lot more than you think. Try and avoid looking up every single word you don’t know – this will only frustrate you and leave you feeling defeated, and at worst, stupid. You’re not. No matter how much you master a language there’s always going to be a word that trips you up. That’s half the intrigue and exoticism of language – anyone who has read the English translation of Nabokov’s Lolita will know how many rare and unusual words there are in the English language. French is not as dense as English. If a word you don’t know keeps cropping up, by all means consult your dico, but make sure you read for sense and style, not as a vocabulary exercise. That’s what’s important to your literature tutorials.
- Use Podcasts – these are free and effective ways of improving your ear and allowing you to learn French while in the gym or on a walk. You’ll find some podcasts on this site. Podcasts are also a handy way of keeping abreast with French culture and society.
- Use the Language Laboratory – whatever facilities your university has for Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) be sure and avail of them. CALL has many benefits – for one it means that you can tailor your exercises to those grammar points you have particular difficulty with. Alongside this, CALL allows you to go at your own pace, to check your answers immediately and re-do the exercise without having to worry about what your teachers think of you (which by the way is normally good!). It’s been proven that students who regularly use the language lab see marked improvement in their language and communication skills within a very short space of time.
