![]() ![]() Like any other, skill, practice is of course important and the more spoken French that you hear, the better.Ĭamille says: "Definitely listen to audio as well as studying in books, but make sure you pick audio that is at the right level for you - if you rush straight into a complicated French film you will just get lost. "Getting the gist of it is fine, and when you come to reply don't be afraid to borrow parts of what the person has just said, you don't need to construct a perfectly formulated sentence in order to reply to their question or comment." Once you hear a phrase or a word that you don't understand it's easy to start panicking, but you don't need to understand every single word to get the gist of what a person is saying to you.Ĭamille says: "Don't try to translate every single word, listen to the whole sentence and you will probably be able to pick out enough words to understand, even if the person doesn't use the exact word order or question structure that you were expecting. French people make mistakes when they talk, plenty of people avoid the subjunctive and some use contractions." "This also applies to the word order, in spoken French it might not be the same as the formal French you have learned in your class. And there are loads of examples like this. This is not incorrect, it's just relaxed, everyday French and you will hear everyone say it, but for language learners it sounds very different to the full je ne sais pas. "It's written with all four words, but when you say it, the ne frequently disappears and the je and sais are run into each other, so it sounds more like chez pas. "A good example is Je ne sais pas (I don't know). And everyone does it, it's not lazy or incorrect or limited to a certain group - I do it, my 80-year-old mother does it. Perhaps more than other languages, French has differences between the written and the spoken forms and if you are learning it in class, you might be focused on written French.īut when French people talk they frequently run words together and miss out words.Ĭamille says: "It's important to point out that this is not slang, it's just French as people speak it. "The basics are really important in French and if you don't have those in place you won't progress, unless you one of the rare people who are gifted linguistic geniuses." "I find even the word 'grammar' scares English-speakers, because the typical English school curriculum doesn't insist on sentence structure the way European schools do, but in French you need to really understand the word order and the agreement / functions of the words: and that's what grammar explains. ![]() "But if you are to progress to a level when you can have an actual conversation, then you need to learn the grammar. It's no-one's favourite topic, but French is a very structured language so doing the boring hard slog of learning the grammar is essential if you are going to progress.Ĭamille says: "I see so many language-learning tools focused on 'fun' language like learning phrases or slang or matching words to videos, which completely neglect the grammar. READ ALSO: Understand Spoken French Pronunciation - with audio recordings Don't expect to be able to do it straight away." "To be able to have an unscripted conversation, even on mundane topics, with varied vocabulary and maybe some slang, is more complicated than you might think. And it's the same with a language, you need to be patient."Īlso bear in mind that a full conversation is a lot more complicated than just ordering a coffee.Ĭamille says: "When I ask people what their language goals are, I often hear 'Oh nothing advanced, I just want to be able to chat to French people' - but that's actually very advanced. If you went to a yoga class you wouldn't expect to master all the poses after a couple of lessons, it takes years. ![]() So what are the most common reasons for this and how can you overcome them? We asked French language expert Camille, founder of French today, for some tips.Ĭamille says: "People have crazy high expectations of themselves as language learners. Whether you're living in France or just visiting, there comes a time in every French learner's life when - flushed with confidence at how your lessons have been going - you strike up a conversation with a French person and find yourself embarrassingly lost as you instantly lose the thread of what they are saying.
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