5 Effective French Learning Habits For 2022
5 EFFECTIVE FRENCH LEARNING HABITS FOR 2022
HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope that 2022 will be kinder to all of us. If you haven’t done so yet, NOW is the time to start getting to grips with your French learning. Here we give five habits for learning French. Use these 5 habits to help you get there. There are approximately 22 school weeks left to the exams, and in my experience, this is plenty of time to really pull out all the stops and get your French sorted. Below are my top 5 habits for getting to grips with French.
1. THE FIRST THING TO DO IS TO ORGANISE YOUR NOTES…
- You probably have hundreds of dis-jointed pages. You may be one of those students who keep everything…just in case! My advice is to stream-line your notes. Everything that you need for your French exam should fit easily into an A4 copybook.You will have more than enough material to do well in the exam. When you come across a new word, get into the habit of writing it down and putting it into the correct division of your French Notes copybook.
Basically your copy should be divided into Important words…
- Thematic Vocabulary
- Synonyms
- Verbs
- Grammar Rules
- Adjectives
- Written Expressions etc
French Notes Copybook…
Check our French Notes Copybook template for Leaving Cert French, available in the Shop section of our website.
Get Organised with a French Notes copybook
2. KNOW YOUR VERBS!
- Give yourself a target of learning one or two verbs every few days.
Create a habit of verb learning. A lot of students mistakenly ignore the importance of learning their verbs. I suggest that knowing your verbs is different to learning them. I will give you an example. If I were to ask you to write the verb aller in the 3rd person singular with a preposition of motion and an object, you would possibly and justifiably, lose the will to continue with French.
However if I were to ask you to translate…
- He goes to the shop, you would probably have no problem writing – Il va au magasin.
- So my point is, grammar can be quite dry but using language for a purpose is easier, because of the way we think as humans.
- When you are learning verbs, use concrete examples and use names of people that you know and places that you associate with your own personal experience.
Let’s imagine that you have a sister called Anne and she likes to shop. You could then write…
- Elle (Anne) va au magasin. This is making connections, which is what language learning essentially is!
3. READ AND LISTEN TO FRENCH DAILY
When I was studying French at school, we only had the book and a dictionary. NOTHING ELSE!
So nowadays, everything you need to excel in the French language is at hand, literally!
- Take your beloved mobile phone.
- Download YouTube videos.
- Or read an article from a newspaper.
- Or if in Junior Level, look up 5 words a day
What should you do with these words? Refer to Point one of the blog GET ORGANISED!
4. USE YOUR EXAM PAPERS
French can be learnt for enjoyment, but the reality is that you have a state exam at the end of 3rd year and 6th year, so you are working towards a goal.
I suggest that…
- You get a set of exam papers and start working through them methodically.
- Cultivate a habit of learning.
- Exam paper practice will guide you through the timing.
For Leaving Cert students, I suggest that your timing would be along the lines of the following…
- 2 Reading comprehensions should take 1 hour to complete or 30 mins per reading comp.
- I would then allot 20 minutes per written piece. The best way to manage 20 minutes is to practice with a timer. If you are in the habit of attempting a reading piece every couple of days, this will pay dividends. The 75 and 90 word count suggested on the paper is only a guide.
- I advise that my students write about 3 quarters of an A4 page for the 75 and not go over a full A4 for the 90 word suggestion. To be honest with you, if you follow a well-defined structure, you don’t have to worry about word count. (I will do a separate blog entry on this).
- The listening is 40 minutes and this is easy to time, as practice in listening is up to you as the individual learner. Again, I suggest that students spend a little time each day and maybe attempt one section of the listening per day.
- If you run out of sections, you can always go to the state examinations website and download older listening pieces and the accompanying paper.
French Notes has approximately 60 listening clips, with more being added. Our clips have a downloadable .pdf file with each audio clip and the answers. All 60 clips are available to members of our Annual Leaving Cert Plan or selected audio is unlocked every month for our monthly subscribers. Click here for more information on our plans. Teachers have access to everything on the site, as part of their annual subscription.
5. CONSTANT REVISION
Language learning is an organic process. Get into the habit of revising!
- The words that you use have to be re-used and re-used in a variety of ways, in order that you get the word firmly stuck in your head. I was part of the Disneyland Paris opening crew in 1992 and worked with a lot of Irish people. Years after coming back from France, I noticed that a lot of my friends, who would have spoken French fluently during our time in Paris, had completely forgotten the language. Why is that? It is very simple. They had stopped using French and it is true, if you don’t use it, you lose it. This is why I always urge my students to keep up with their language skills.
- A lot of students come back in September, and have forgotten a lot of what they learnt the previous year. The only way to counteract this is to keep exposing yourself to French. When you come across a new word, make a note of it in your French Notes Copybook and then use it in a variety of ways.
- It is so important to realise the importance of constantly revising words. This is the only way of getting words to stick!
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