French!
In college I had a total of 7 years of French classes. After those 7 years I was a mediocre French student, but I could have a small conversation in French and in general I could follow movies, discussions and books in French. Unfortunately, I didn’t go to France as much after those 7 years, so the language skills I’ve developed over that time were mostly lost.
On my Dutch blog about Life Skills, I wrote an article about how to reactivate your lost language skills. And to put power to the article, I decided to reactivate my own French language skills. End of august of this year we have planned a nice 1,5 week family vacation to France, and the goals is to get my skills back so that I can do at least the basic conversations and understand what they are saying.
I’m planning to do this in the following way:
- I’m going to watch a lot of French video’s and movies, with English or Dutch subtitles in the beginning.
- Next I’m going to read some French comic books. The storyline of a comic book is always easy to follow due to the graphic, therefore you get a little help of understanding the text balloons.
- Also I’m going to reactivate my vocabulary by reading a French-dutch dictionary. Just seeing a lot of French words will reactivate a lot of the drill sessions I did all those years ago, learning the wordlists for next day exam.
- In the last month before the vacation I’m going to study a little about the language rules, to understand how to construct sentences in complete discussions.
- And last I’m going to find me some word cards; cards where only one French word is printed on together with the explanation and a sentence example.
Lets see how this will go! I’m pretty curious and excited to see how much I can bring back. I’ll update regularly about this endeavor.
I admire anyone who can speak more than just their native language. Your endeavor to regain your French speaking ability is a wonerful effort. I too, took French in university and could read Camus, Victor Hugo, etc. but alas have forgotten almost every verb tehse!
I took some spanish to try to communicate with many of the residents in California where I live but need more study.
Jorg; your English is outstanding and I am so glad because I get to read your blogs. Thank you so much.
Bonsoir Carla! Merci pour le compliment!
Well, it’s a first start. After I’ve reactivated French, I’m probably going to learn Spanish.
Thanks for your comment and compliment!