Bon Soir!
So I’ve given you a few basic tips on how you can effectively learn how to speak french. So what’s next? That depends on you and what your situation is. If you have the time and patience you could always enroll in some college courses at your local university. However, this can be pretty spendy in the end.
My situation may be the same or may be completely different than yours. I had planned a long field trip to Paris and I only had a few months to learn as much as I possibly could – and I didn’t have several hundred or thousands of dollars to spend on professional college courses. So I went to my local Barnes and Nobles and bought a few “French Courses.” After a month of frustration and $100 later I realized that I was not learning or retaining anything! Luckily, I lived with my parents at the time and my mom recognized the dilemma I was in. Without me knowing, she bought me this online French language course.
You can check it out here: Rocket French
To be honest, I was hoping she would pay for me to enroll in some College courses. However, being a broke high school student I took what I could get =) So how did the new course pan out? Well, I didn’t have high expectations – that’s for sure – however, after about 3 weeks of using Rocket French daily I found myself retaining a LOT more than I had with the boring French guide I bought from Barnes and Nobles. I attribute this to the course focusing on vocabulary from real world situations, instead of focusing on boring grammar lessons that my other French guide did.
I can honestly say that it prepared me well for my field trip to Paris. I wasn’t FULLY fluent in French yet, but combined with the online course and the experience I had in Paris – I was able to pick up everything extremely quickly. I’ve even referred a few friends to Rocket French and they’ve had nothing but good things to say about it.
Again – you can check it out here: Rocket French
The only reservation I have about the program is that you are not going to get fluent in French by this course alone. You need to supplement your learning with real world practice by holding conversations with people fluent in French. I’m not sure if that is really a con about the course though – I think this rule applies to any language that you learn. No amount of course (college or not) is going to fully teach you a language without real world practice. You’ll see what I mean once you think you’ve got a language down and then you visit the country!
But regardless of your situation, I think the best combination to quickly learn the French language is by using Rocket French with real world conversation as much as you can.
Here is their homepage one more time: Rocket French
Thanks for reading my story and if you guys have any more questions please feel free to send me email. I would also love to hear about your success stories and your trips to France!
Au Revoir!