version française

Learning a new language, as any other kind of skill, requires patience, perseverance, and a certain amount of hard work. It is often said that children learn so much more easily than adults, but in my opinion children learn because they have no other choice - and plenty of time to make mistakes!

In my opinion three simple criteria are essential for effective language learning - if you don't want to be just wasting your time and efforts and actually want to show real progress:

1. you must want to learn
2. you must need to speak the language, without being able to resort to English
3. you must have the opportunity to speak the language, for more than just the odd hour each week

Clearly the easiest way of uniting all three criteria is to go to a French speaking country and live there for a while, away from English speakers in an all-French environment.

If this is not within your possibilities, an easier alternative may be to take a language course, preferably a residential course in France.

The final alternative, which is perhaps the most common, but the most testing in terms of personal motivation and the least likely to be effective, is to buy yourself a French language course, using a book / CD-Rom / video / cassettes. Self-discipline is all-important for this method, which requires regular hard work, preferably on a daily basis, but it requires some form of concrete implementation to satisfy the two last criteria - through a stay in France for example, again preferably away from English speakers.

To find out about residential language courses offered by language schools in France, visit our directory of language schools.

To find out about self-learning language resources, visit our language tools page.

 

Comments may also be sent by email to: webmaster@gofrench.com

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