It’s difficult to avoid feeling a sense of achievement when I manage to carry on a spontaneous conversation with someone who speaks French and get compliments for my accent from a native. It took me a fair bit of hard work to sound ‘comme une francaise’ or like a Frenchwoman, but every bit of it has been an enjoyable journey in no small measure thanks to it being entirely a solo one. All I had for company was my collection of gadgets — smartphone, tablet and headphones.
Before I share the multiple methods I used to learn a foreign language – and there were many of them – I must point out that I made a hobby of the learning. Since there was no pressing need for me to learn French, I did it for relaxation, to keep my brain ‘oiled’ and to use my free time well. I could have joined a course, given the exams, and forgotten about it thereafter, but that would have made the exercise more compulsory than voluntary. So, I stuck with the gadgets and ditched ‘les professeurs’.
YouTube treasures
All languages aren’t born equal, just as people don’t seem to be, so every language won’t have the same amount of resources on YouTube as some of the most popular such as French, Spanish and German. I was taken by surprise at what was available. From the alphabet, to full-fledged TV series, it was there up the grabs. You could start with one of the crash courses, typically covering tourist talk.
My own interest in French was triggered off by an incredulous Parisian taxi driver who couldn’t understand why I couldn’t speak French. I vowed to be French-fluent by the next time I visited.
Tips for using YouTube to learn a language is to spend some time making a few playlists, because there could be just too much and it will begin to surface as recommendations when you start watching a few videos. Select a collection done in a style that suits you, download a few for offline re-watching, and take it from there. Don’t rush it and head for the movies and TV series prematurely. It took a while until I began to change the language from English to French wherever the option was available on Netflix.
Podcast parade
Watching things can sometimes take away the focus from listening. To correct that, I went on a hunt for podcasts and found many for my chosen language. I had to patiently filter out the useless ones as I found signing up for some only led to more spam in my email. But finally, I did find the most helpful and eventually, these formed the backbone for my initial learning. The one thing to be aware of is that the podcasts are often a short version of full lessons that are very expensive. I wasn’t up to paying the asking price for a hobby, so made full use of the short free versions and got what I could out of those — which was not that little.
Also on the audio front, I bought a few audio books, which typically come with text guides and exercises. And then I collected a few news channels, making sure I chose French as the base language, and just let them play for hours, paying attention when I wanted and even falling asleep when I didn’t. This is part of what helped me get the accents and inflexions and tones just right.
Invaluable e-books
I became interested enough in my chosen foreign language to populate my Kindle with dozens of French books, both grammar and dual-language short stories. The grammar books explain everything and keep you engaged with exercises. Short stories were a lifeline, setting text in the cultural context. I began to enjoy these so much, I often neglected my real work before forcibly stopping for a few weeks — a helpful practice, because it gives time for learning to consolidate anyway. It wasn’t long before I was ready to read simple but full-fledged little novels. Reading caused a step-change in my ability to speak and write the language.
Be careful to download a sample of an e-book you’re considering, because the formatting can often make or break the book as a learning tool.
Miscellany of methods
I used at least five or six more techniques because I found each added its own bit in the learning and kept me from getting bored with any one method. For instance, I often used Google Translate, but only after I was familiar enough to spot the inevitable errors in translation. I used it mostly to know a word and find out how it was pronounced. I also used the famous DuoLingo learning app, which presents you with short sentences of increasing difficulty on different topics. This was no complete way to learn, but was very addictive and gamified. I ended up completing the DuoLingo course twice over and eventually corrected many of the translations, getting the developers to include them in the app. This was gratifying.
I also downloaded the French language on the Swype keyboard I use on all my devices. This allows you to actually use a two-language option so that I would get predictive text in both languages at the same time. This truly helped my spelling and the understanding of which accent marks are used when. When you see the words again and again, you get accustomed to seeing how accents are used rather than having to read explanations of how they’re used.
You might well ask whether a human element factored at all in this learning journey. It did. On Skype. When I thought I had learned a fair bit, I signed up for conversation sessions with a French teacher. The next goal, is to get certification for all that enjoyable work.
(The article first appeared in BusinessLine.)