Choosing a French Learning Environment – It's All About People
What’s in a French learning environment?
If you want to start learning French… well first of all, good for you! It’s a great language, it’s my language, I love it, and it offers many hidden treasures. But I digress.
If you want to start French, a good idea is to start setting up a learning environment. Thanks to our technology-driven world, this environment can contain a variety of tools to help you get better at French:
French Books. Yes, books. Kids, those are the dust-gathering, non-interactive things made of paper in that old building called a li-bra-ry. Remember, paper? Yes, sometimes books are a great way to discover new language, new cultures, new worlds. Give it a try, but choose wisely. We’ll come to that in a minute.
French Audio resource: CDs and podcasts: My German teacher used to tell us that “every language is a music, every mouth is an orchestra”. Let’s practice: listen, repeat what you heard. Try again. And again. And again, until you accent improves, just like a musician does scales every day. Audio resources are great for that kind of French learning.
French Video / Video podcasts (or vlogs): Moving pictures are great, as they can give us so much extra information about what’s going on in the story – super useful for vocabulary. Extra context always helps. Plus, it’s like watching TV, only the smart way.
French learning software: even more context, audio text, interactivity, the whole shebang!
Interactive software is a great tool for learning and practising French.
Learning is all a big conversation anyway
All these tools are great, but think about it: in the end, it’s just all about people talking together. From French learning books to software, these are all tools for human communication, after all. It might be a conversation across geographical boundaries, across time even, it might be directed, formalised, toward a specific goal, but in the end, it’s just a conversation after all.
So, when building your learning environment, consider that you’re actually going to listen and speak with people, not just practice with objects and information.
Who do you want to talk to? What sort of personality does that spanking new French learning software have? Does it even have a personality? What about that book? Does it seem like the people who wrote it had fun, or did they just put something together for money, without thinking about who they wanted to talk to (you)?
Do you really want to practice with a system built by people who don’t care about you and your needs?
By thinking about learning French in terms of a conversation, and choosing your French learning environment accordingly, you will maintain motivation, maybe meet actual people, your learning will be more efficient and natural, and you’ll have great fun.
PS: for information, a few good French learning podcast are learn French with Alexa, the FrenchPodClass, and Easy French Poetry.
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