French Learning Habits
French Learning Habits
Les Habitudes D’apprentissage Du Français
What should you be doing every day to maximise your learning potential in French.
Follow these 6 French learning habits and maximise your potential.
1. VERB LIST!
Concentrate on trying to learn a new verb every single day. On our website, you will find verb drills for both Junior & leaving cert students. Pick one from the list, and practice writing it in the following tenses:
- Junior Cert – Present, Past & future.
- Leaving Cert Present, past, future, imperfect, conditional & subjunctive. There are actually a lot of tenses for the Leaving cert, but if you can write using the above, you are doing incredibly well. Note that the subjunctive is actually referrred to as a mood.
2. LISTENING
Go to your exam papers and take a section of the listening comprehension every single day, and listen to it, trying to answer the accompanying questions. Section D of the junior cert is the longest section, but should not be ignored. Take a look at some of our sample Junior Cert revision notes.
3. SPEAKING
While a lot of students at Junior Cert level will not have to do the oral exam, it is a huge chunk of the leaving cert. 20-25% of your total marks will depend on a 12-15 minute performance, so you have to make every minute count! On the website, we have over 60 clips designed and spoken by a state examiner. We have divided the clips into 10 videos, which cover you for typical questions which WILL be asked. Watch these videos, and then jot down your own responses to fit your specific experience.
4. WRITING
A lot of students ask me how to write French, and I take the analogy of driving. The only way to learn how to drive is by driving, albeit with an instructor for the first few months. Writing for the leaving cert requires dedication and commitment. You must take yourself out of your comfort zone, and begin. You are not expected to come up with revolutionary ideas, or be expected to quote facts and figures. At leaving cert level, you are however expected to have an opinion, and to be able to express it, using correct French. At Junior cert level, practice writing notes, postcards and letters.
Our website contains sample writing pieces, which you can check off against your own work, and take the odd phrase which will help your own technique. At Leaving Cert level, we have quite advanced sample written pieces, but you will also find more than 500 sample sentences on a wide range of issues. Practicing sample sentences is always a good place to start. Please refer to our blog entry on how to incorporate generic phrases into opinion pieces.
5. VOCABULARY
Take the time to learn a few new words on a given topic every day. We have vocabulary lists on the website, with accompanying tests, so that you can print the list, learn it and then check whether or not you really know the words.
6. EXPRESSIONS À LA FRANÇAISE!
For the diary entry and narrative writing, a nice turn of expression adds richness to your writing. The key here is not to overdo it! Frenchnotes.ie contains a host of written expressions, and constructions to help you develop a grammatically flawless writing technique.