Are you learning French? Whether you are a beginner or an advanced pupil you will probably have been wondering whether you need a teacher to learn French. Why not use a teach-yourself method?  It’s simpler, cheaper, and I can organise it the way I want and progress at my own rhythm, can’t I?

We have bad news for you: unfortunately this technique does not always work...

Here are five reasons why you can’t learn without the presence of a human being:

1. It’s very hard to choose by oneself the information that one really needs in order to speak French well. For example: you open up your French grammar book and encounter tenses for the first time: passé compose (perfect), imparfait (imperfect), plus-que-parfait (pluperfect), passé simple (preterit)… You start studying and learn them by heart without realising, for example, that the passé simple is a tense that is never used in oral conversation and even the French don’t always know it by heart…
   Then you take your vocabulary book and open it up at idiomatic expressions…  how can you know which expressions are really important and in which everyday situation they are used?  in a family context?  or more formally?
2. Teaching oneself is time wasting. You are learning French but you are stuck on a problem?  Finding the answer on the internet or in a book usually takes 10 minutes. Asking a teacher directly and receiving an immediate answer with a good explanation takes 2 to 3 minutes.  On average you spend five times longer if you are learning on your own…
3. There is no one to correct you. You make mistakes in pronunciation, comprehension and spelling, but you don’t even realise it… Little by little these mistakes become automatic and it is very difficult (or even impossible) to lose these bad habits and reflexes.
4. There is no-one to motivate and evaluate you. When you begin learning French you are full of motivation. But you lose it very easily. Let’s take an example: you are planning to study French this evening but a friend invites you to the cinema. What do you do? If you have reserved a lesson with a teacher you will probably go home so as not to miss the lesson. If it’s only your book that is waiting, you may say “it doesn’t matter, I’ll go to the cinema and then I’ll study my French” (unfortunately one often breaks one’s promise..).
5. There is no-one to provide feedback. You have decided to sit for a French exam. How can you be sure that you have the appropriate level? If you don’t want to waste time and money you need to ask a teacher for his opinion. He will be able to tell you whether you have the required level to take the exam and how much time and effort you need to get up to speed. If your progress is followed by a teacher your success is guaranteed.

While you are learning French make sure that you are always accompanied by a competent teacher.  If you want to learn French 100% on line, discover French lessons on Skype, the way to learn French using a real relationship with an experienced native French teacher. To discover how this works, click here.

The first thing that you need to know is that anyone can put absolutely anything on line.  Consequently there is unfortunately a lot of rubbish on the internet, which means that you have to sort through the material, documents and services which are supposed to help you learn French. You will find some that are paying and others that are non-paying, but unfortunately you cannot make your choice on this criterion alone, since much that is useful is offered free of charge and much that is useless is very expensive. In spite of this, one has to admit that you have a better chance of finding a quality material or service when the supplier considers that he has the right to ask for a certain sum for his product in which he has invested significant amount of time and money. It’s not a hundred percent sure, but it’s very probable.

If you really want to avoid paying, there is another possibility, provided that you have a lot of free time. You can undertake painstaking research on the internet and list all the documents, methods, services and material that you may find useful for learning French. But who has the time for this? Not many of us…
We have most of us 20 to 30 minutes a day to study French, so it would be a pity to waste our time surfing the internet…

To be brief, one thing is certain: to learn to speak French correctly you need to invest something, either time or money.  However, taking into account that all of us are always running late these days, money seems to be the more logical choice.

The second argument is about motivation. Let’s be honest: if you pay for something, you make the most of it. You don’t want to lose your investment, so you dedicate all you energy to it… and that’s how you learn French successfully.

And above all don’t forget: the time that you spend learning French is precious, so use it really FOR LEARNING.

If you want to save your time and learn French 100% on line, discover French lessons on Skype, the way to learn French using a real relationship with an experienced native French teacher. To discover how this works, click here.

DuoLingo is a website and mobile phone application that offers free tuition for various languages, amongst others, for French. Taking your level into account, the software proposes appropriate exercises and invites you to translate, repeat words or sentences or write out sentences pronounced by the programme.
We recommend the use of DuoLingo, if you want to learn French in a fun way from anywhere (a bus, a café, etc.) and if you have only 10 to 15 minutes a day to revise. You will have a solid language base and you will easily memorise the most important vocabulary in French, that which is used in the daily papers.

There are nevertheless various situations in which you will need another method along with DuoLingo software:

• if you want to learn to speak French very well;
• if your objective is an exam in French ;
• if you want to take part in conversations, express your opinions with ease and speak continuously in French on various subjects.

To acquire this proficiency you will need the help of a human being, a teacher, who will ask you questions, correct you, adapt the lessons to your specific needs and above all answer your questions. If you want to save time and money, choose 45-minute French lessons on Skype that put you in contact with a native-speaking French teacher!

• Start by choosing a film that interests you. Whether you are attracted by the story or the actors, watching a film that you like will help you to work hard to understand it.
• Find a film with a level of complexity that corresponds to your level of comprehension in French. Chose a film with 60-70% of the dialogue that you can understand and you will probably be able to understand the rest by its context. An idea: if your level of French is elementary chose a film that you already know in your native language.
• Watch a film three times. The first time with subtitles in your own language, a second time with French subtitles and a third time without subtitles at all.
• If you don’t want to watch the same film several times, choose a series where the subjects and the vocabulary used by the actors are more or less the same in each episode.

Bear in mind that French films in the original version are harder to understand than foreign films dubbed into French. In a French film the actors talk faster and you need to know not just the language, but also its cultural references.

A tip: If you are already having lessons on Skype you can work on films in a more elaborate way. After watching each film you can resume it orally for your teacher, which lets you to rework its vocabulary (and helps you memorise it!) and speak continuously for several minutes in French. Later you will also be able to resume the story in writing or give your personal opinion on the film, which your teacher will correct for you!

You are learning French and take an interest in current affairs. Have you ever thought of linking your two interests by consulting the news in French?
There are numerous sites on the internet that let you consult articles and watch videos in French about events from all over the world. After you specify your level, the sites in question will offer you documents that are neither too easy nor too difficult for you. Sometimes you’ll find multiple choice questionnaires about the news item that you were consulting, to make sure that you have fully understood everything.
All that is very useful, but once you have understood the text and looked up all the new words in the dictionary, what do you do next? How can you go further and get even more out of the article?

If you really want to memorise the words and expressions in the news you will need to reuse them both orally and in writing. If you take lessons on Skype you can really practise these exercises.

• after you have been reading the news your teacher will ask you questions: What is the subject? Who is it about? What sort of news item is it (political, economic, social)? What took place? Where? For what reason? What were the consequences? What is your opinion on the article/video?, etc…  Answering these questions will enable you to reuse all the new words that you have learnt and speak continuously on a subject. Depending on your level, you can answer questions spontaneously or prepare them in advance before the lesson.
• after your lesson on Skype you will also have the opportunity of answering these questions in writing. It’s a very good exercise for working on your debating skills (the reasons, consequences, ambiguities, contradictions, etc…). Once your report is ready you can email it to your teacher, who will correct it without delay and email it back to you before your next French lesson on Skype.

Advice + : you want to understand a new item, but you haven’t managed to do so first time. No matter! Go ahead, listen to it a second, a third … a tenth time! The aim is to understand the text however long it takes!

Advice ++: don’t for get to let your teacher know the fields that interest you: politics, sport, economics, society, etc… If you really want to know the contents of the article you will understand it all the more easily.