Bonjour!
Donc, nous sommes venus à trois jours de la liste des projets qui me demande de vous aider à apprendre une langue. Maintenant, étant que le français est la seule langue que je suis étudiant, c’est celui que je vais mettre l’accent sur.
Bonne chance!
Don’t worry that’s about as far as the French will go. I would never call myself an expert at french. In fact, I’m pretty much useless at it. Why we felt the need to have different languages is beyond me, however ignorant that sounds. However, there are different languages and according to the posters around the modern languages department as our school, it could be the difference between getting a job or not. So what are my tips to becoming a great linguist? If you’re unfamiliar with having to memorize an extract of French for your GCSE’s, then your very very fortunate. I know that for me, memorizing words I don’t even understand is one of the most difficult things ever. I would say memorizing a different language is actually harder than understanding it. You have to bear in mind that I’ve never actually used my knowledge of French outside the classroom, so the following tip is more so about learning an essay, rather than learning a language in general. So basically I’m here to help students rather than people who are just wanting to learn in general. Sorry guys.
From personal experience, I’ve found writing down a sentence at a time, over and over, saying it after every time you write it can help it go in. It’s like I can almost picture myself writing the sentence when I’m trying to remember it. It can take a while, but for me, it’s the best method.
I’m quite lucky, because when I learn my piece, I don’t forget it at all. It may sound stupid, but I took very opportunity to say it myself or some else – recording is a great method, because you can pick up on any mistakes you may not of noticed. Some people find recording yourself reading it helpful, because they then just listen to it dozens of times, until it’s finally unforgettable. It’s like a song – if you play it enough times, the lyrics will finally stick. I don’t really find this useful, just because I find the recording becomes a kind of background noise and I tend to drift off, just letting it play. Another tip I’ve heard of, which I used myself, is to make the essay into a song. It was in fact on my last speaking exam that I sang mine to the tune of ‘Happy Birthday’ and this worked really well. I suppose our generation are pros at remembering song lyrics, so it almost comes natural to us. Sometimes I’d start singing the real lyrics half way through, or when reciting to another person, I’d start singing it instead!
When I feel ready to recite the whole essay, I make around 20 notes. I think younger years can use prompt sheets anyway, but it’s not allowed in GCSE unfortunately. So my technique means I’ll know it with 20 notes, then I’ll take away a few notes, learn that and so on until I can say it without any notes. These notes might be small pictures, the topic of the sentence/paragraph usually in English) or even key words from the extract.
So my key tips would be:
-Be patient.
-Make sure you’re comfortable with every single sentence.
-Give yourself plenty of time to learn it.
-Don’t allow yourself to get stressed – take a time out if you’re feeling at all stressed or panicky.
Good Luck!
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