Beginner questions...

So I've been learning on my own for a little while. That's seeming to be a pretty difficult thing to do. I have some resources; Rosetta Stone and a set of CD's called French with Michel Thomas. I had at one point a set of short films called French in action. Can anyone point me to other resources I may find useful? These are great tools for vocab, but as for grammar and things they are not so useful.

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Permalink Reply by Eileen driscoll on October 20, 2011 at 5:52pm

Someone suggested watching cartoons, movies or reading french. Newspapers or perhaps a child's book.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on October 20, 2011 at 11:53pm

The truth is that many language courses like the ones you mention are more like glorified phrase books. Most learners simply don't get very deeply into grammar, and so most mainstream language courses don't go overboard on grammar.

The thing you need to find is what resources are right for you: for different people these will be different things.

What level have you reached so far, would you say? For example, are you comfortable with the basics of determining what verb form to use where? Or are you still looking for grammar a bit more basic than that?

With a few reservations, there's a book Correct your French blunders (link is to a review I wrote a couple of years ago), which offers some "medium level" grammar and vocab information in a fairly "pragmatic" way. That means it doesn't go into very very advanced topics, and like many typical textbooks aimed partly at school exam takers sometimes tells slight white lies for the sake of giving a rule that will work "much of the time". But it does pack quite a lot of material in and as I say is quite good if you want a fairly "no nonsense" explanation of points even if linguists looking for more technical information will cringe slightly at some of the content.

You might also want to see this site's grammar section: http://www.french-linguistics.co.uk/grammar/

If you've reached the level yet, try and listen to some French news such as the free programs available on France 24, look for magazines in French on your favourite topics...

And you might also want to ask whatever questions you have here on the forum-- that's what it's there for!

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Permalink Reply by Noob Maunier on October 23, 2011 at 3:45am

I've tried to do some watching movies i know well enough in english with the french audio/subs on. sometimes that is useful. as for my ability to do conjugation of verbs, i am still not well at it. i find myself using a free linux program called 'verbiste' alot to see the different forms.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on October 23, 2011 at 5:34am

Re verbs specifically, just to let you know that if you go to the "Verb conjugations" section of the grammar page I mentioned (the green box towards the bottom of the page), you can type a verb and see/hear the conjugation -- I don't know if that's also useful.

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Permalink Reply by Al Graham on October 23, 2011 at 10:51pm

Neil, re your comment about the usefulness of the "Verb conjugations" section of the grammar page and being able to see/hear the conjugation: just wanted to let you know I find this feature very useful.