Nice Books to Read in French

Books in French

Why Bother to Read in French ?

Reading is a great tool in language learning. It is both pleasurable and pragmatic. Reading stories that you like is not only a great language builder, it can also be a great motivator to move forward in your language learning.

However, what I find great in reading, even difficult French texts, is the suspense, the discovery I’m making with every word I’m learning, with each comprehension of each sentence that is building up as I progress through each page. That feeling is awesome. It feels like I’m deciphering some coded message.

Choose the Book YOU like.

What some of us may not realize, going through a story in a foreign language is a great vocabulary builder. Of course, you may feel overwhelmed by the number of words you need to look up. It is also advised to write them down for better memorization. Very often language learners do not consider reading a book in French as an option because of this.

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Great Language Learning Tool Kent Boogie Board

Language Drills Writing

Writing and Language Learning

I’m a big fan of noting things down. I write, I draw and I do it all the time. I do it on paper most of the time.

I’m a big believer that in language learning writing with your hand is one of the great techniques to remember things. That’s why I was really happy to have discovered a board that allows me to write as many language drills as I want and without wasting any paper ! 

Boogie Board Language Drill
Boogie Board Language Drill

Continue reading “Great Language Learning Tool Kent Boogie Board”

French Grammar Deconstruction (à la Tim Ferriss)

french-language-deconstruction

You may have heard about How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language 1 Hour article by Tim Ferriss. Here is a quick overview of his approach and how it applies to the French language. You can also test yourself in deconstructing the French grammar at the end of the article.

French Grammar Deconstructed

So if you are interested in deconstructing the French language Tim Ferriss’ way, you may dig right into it.

French Language Deconstruction (Tim Ferriss Way) of the French Language Grammar.

English French
The first 6 basic sentences from the Ferriss’ blog  
1. The apple is red. 1. La pomme est rouge. [sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://simple-french.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/01-deconstruction.mp3″]
2. It is John’s apple. 2. C’est la pomme de Jean. [sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://simple-french.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/02-deconstruction.mp3″]
3. I give John the apple. 3. Je donne la pomme à Jean. [sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://simple-french.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/03-deconstruction.mp3″]
4. We give him the apple. 4. Nous la lui donnons. [sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://simple-french.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/04-deconstruction.mp3″]
5. He gives it to John. 5. Il la donne à Jean. [sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://simple-french.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/06-deconstruction.mp3″]
6. She gives it to him. 6. Elle la lui donne. [sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://simple-french.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/07-deconstruction.mp3″]

Additional Sentences from this video, where he actually decided to
extend his range of grammatical structures to cover.

 
7. Is the apple red ? 7. La pomme, est-elle rouge ? (Est la pomme rouge ?) *  [sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://simple-french.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/08-deconstruction.mp3″]                                                
8. The apples are red. 8. Les pommes sont rouges. [sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://simple-french.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/09-deconstruction.mp3″]
9. I must give it to him ! 9. Je dois la lui donner !  [sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://simple-french.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/10-deconstruction.mp3″] / Il faut que je la lui donne ! **  [sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://simple-french.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/11-deconstruction.mp3″]
10. I want to give it to her ! 10. Je veux la lui donner. [sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://simple-french.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/12-deconstruction.mp3″]
11. I’m going to know tomorrow. 11. Je le saurai demain. [sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://simple-french.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/13-deconstruction.mp3″]
12. I can’t eat the apple. 12. Je ne peux pas manger la pomme. [sc_embed_player fileurl=”http://simple-french.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/14-deconstruction.mp3″]

* Even though it is highly unlikely to hear this kind of sentence in France (it is more probable to encounter something like La pomme, est-elle rouge ? or Est-ce que la pomme est rouge ?) the subject / verb inversion to create a question is correct but rather formal and rarely used in speech.
** When it comes to expressing obligation in French, it is more common to use the il faut que structure. Eg. Il faut que je la lui donne !

The Method

Learn any language by deconstructing it, that is by stripping the language you want to learn to (almost) its bare bones and finding all the positive and negative for you aspects that you can turn into your advantage.

The Opinion

The good thing about this approach is that it gives you a rather global view of the basic grammatical structure of the language to learn. You get the impression of grasping the language, and thus the quantity of grammar to acquire less daunting. Its strength lies, in my opinion, in outlining the core of a particular grammar and thus the language itself. It is much easier to go further into details later on as opposed to trying to grasp every detail from the very beginning and quickly run out of your steam, a very common pitfall for all foreign language learners.

The Conclusion

The concept itself is nothing new in the way it approaches the understanding of the mechanics of any given concept. Let’s take learning any computer programming language for example: the most general teaching method consists of explaining the basic concepts (variable declaration, managing strings and numbers, control flow, lists or arrays, etc) which are common to all of the programming languages but which structure may be expressed differently in each of them.   

Nevertheless, the idea is somewhat new in teaching a foreign language as it compresses all of the grammar of the language into the most basic but also the most relevant things that will make the learning easier for us. We obtain an insight into what is already familiar to us, i.e. what the language(s) we know has in common with the one we want to acquire and what differentiates it from our native tongue(s).  

As far as the usefulness of the French language deconstruction is concerned,  I’m leaving it to your own judgement. I can only hope you will find it useful.  

Please, tell what you think about this French language deconstruction in the comments section.

Thank you !

PS: Don't confuse this article with the deconstruction, a philosophical and literary notion coined by Jacques Derrida, a French philosopher.

Test Your French Grammar

Exercise 1 A (easy):

 

Exercise 1 B (easy):

 

Exercise 2 (difficult): 

 

Videos

 

 

Resilience, brain workout and foreign language learning

brain, resilience in foreign language learning

The way resilience and the foreign language acquisition are connected is pretty straightforward. If we are to believe two renowned scientists, one a psychiatrist, the other a neuroscientist, in a recent article in TIME magazine (June 1, 2015), different people have different degrees of resilience. You may ask: so what ? This might explain why some people think they are bad language learners. Not without a reason. Simply, the resilience in that particular psycho-sociological case is not the same for everyone.

What the heck is resilience?

Well, according to the American Psychology Association, it is the individual’s ability to “bounce back”, or “to pick oneself up” after hardships or difficult situations experienced in life. It generally refers to pretty traumatic things (catastrophes or war experiences for example), but according to the TIME article “The Art of Resilience” people’s lives, especially nowadays, comprise of multiple small but stressful situations, and those are quite obvious: work, an angry boss, quarrels with other people. The key thing here however is that the brain can be trained in order to cope with these kind of situations, and even the big ones, better. In other words, the resilience, and that is your brain, can be trained to do that well. Or at least do better than it used to.

Some conspicuous extreme examples of weak / strong resilience and how different people react to it are: people suffering from heart disease and brain disorder, Alzheimer’s disease frequently, on the one side, and Navy SEALs, highly trained US soldiers, or POWs on the other.

brain, resilience in foreign language learning
Brain. Allan Ajifo, Flickr.

How does resilience refer to Language Learning?

If we are to apply the way the resilience works and how different people deal with it, it becomes clear why some people (referring only to adult learners in this case) are better foreign language speakers than others. It comes down to the person’s psychological response to a psycho-social stages of development in foreign language acquisition while learning and especially interacting in that new language. Some of those experiences can be more traumatic than others and thus influence the individual’s resilience accordingly.

To make it simple: here are some psychological factors that may deter from effective language learning:

[wp-svg-icons icon=”arrow-right-3″ wrap=”i”] fear of being ridiculous: at the early stages, learning involves saying some unexpected and funny things.

[wp-svg-icons icon=”arrow-right-3″ wrap=”i”] fear of being ridiculed: perception by other learners or native speakers, traumatic experience)

[wp-svg-icons icon=”arrow-right-3″ wrap=”i”] lack of control: some people might be scared at the idea of not being able to express everything they want. It may be psychologically interrelated with the two previous concepts.  

[wp-svg-icons icon=”arrow-right-3″ wrap=”i”] language inferiority: when an adult learner starts to learn a language, she/he doesn’t even speak as well as a 4 year old child. It might be quite frustrating. 

How can you improve your resilience ?

The good news is that resilience can be trained almost the same way the muscles are trained: you give your brain some stimulus at the right time and at the right places and thus progressively build up the brain’s strength (or resistance) to fight off more efficiently the traumatic and unpleasant emotional experiences. On the side note, the physical exercise increases brain’s resilience too in its own way.

The article gives several interesting and simple things that help developing resilience. Here are some of them that I find also easily applicable to a better language learning:

[wp-svg-icons icon=”arrow-right-3″ wrap=”i”] Developing a core set of beliefs that nothing can shake

[wp-svg-icons icon=”arrow-right-3″ wrap=”i”] Try to find meaning in whatever stressful or traumatic thing has happened

[wp-svg-icons icon=”arrow-right-3″ wrap=”i”] Don’t run from things that scare you: face them

[wp-svg-icons icon=”arrow-right-3″ wrap=”i”] Learn new things as often as you can

[wp-svg-icons icon=”arrow-right-3″ wrap=”i”] Find an exercise regimen you’ll stick to

[wp-svg-icons icon=”arrow-right-3″ wrap=”i”] Recognize what makes you uniquely strong – and own it

That set of tools could be particularly useful in a successful language acquisition. It can also be seen as what people don’t do and thus fail in acquiring the language or at being a successful foreign language speaker. All of them equally important but the most frequent, in my opinion, are:

[wp-svg-icons icon=”arrow-right-3″ wrap=”i”] a consistent, well defined and interesting foreign language exercise regimen to stick to

[wp-svg-icons icon=”arrow-right-3″ wrap=”i”] recognizing what your unique strength is,

[wp-svg-icons icon=”arrow-right-3″ wrap=”i”] and running away from problems and challenges.

This also proves several interesting points about language learning :

[su_list icon=”icon: arrow-circle-right”]

  • foreign language acquisition can be trained in a similar way the body is trained (but how and in what way, it is a different story): it accounts for 50% of successful language learner
  • psychology and personality of the individual: they make up the other 50 %.

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The sum of both gives a truly individual result, superiour to the sum of the both parts. You may take a look at the study case I did on Arnold Schwarzenegger (to be published ) as an adult foreign language learner to get an example of how it looks in practice.