How to improve my French? (1 Viewer)

[bunnie]

I want to improve my French in writing and speaking, but I don't know how. Any tips?

Also, do you have any recommendations on French preliminary and HSC textbooks because I hardly get any homework for French and I'm willing to do extra work. Is Envol any good?

Merci beaucoup!

 

[chepas]

Bienvenue notre petit monde francophone sur BoS, bunnie!

Hey, if it's your writing you wish to improve - you have this forum at your disposal! The "Parlons-nous le franais ici!" thread is good cos it's just so random, though sometimes it breaks into English, hehe - but yeah. Jump in! Everyone's nice and either suffering with you are already suffered it, like sugaryblue, and a lot of others have been on exchanges to France/Belgium etc so they could prove invaluable for slangy and really up-to-date things to do with your written.

The textbook my French class used in year 9 and 10 was Tapis Volant by someone Chamberlain, and it was good as it was an Australian focus-ey type of thing (all these new Board of Studies syllabi seem to love Australian everything :angry: ), and it was always really clear. The Tapis Volant 3 I think caters for Prelim/HSC so it might be worth checking them out. I do French by correspondence and they have their own textbook that their "Leearning Materials Centre" or something produces, and you can actually order along with the cassettes/CDs - it's called Noir sur Blanc, and because it's pretty much designed around the student's own capacity to 'teach themselves' it doesn't go to fast, in fact at times it can be really repetitive and annoying, but repetition is good! - They can be bought through the Open Training somethingorother - OTEN, anyway, so yeah. I think they have a website through the TAFE site at www.tafe.nsw.edu.au

But of course that all costs money so, is your teacher good in the way of hunting down stuff for you? (I haven't heard of Envol, though )

On the speaking improvement. I find trying to think in the French brain is good, also talking to yourself, however tacky it sounds, is good... I think a lot of other BOSers can vouch for that - just talk to your bookcase, describe it, what it holds, ask how it feels. Just start worrying when it starts replying in French.

In a few weeks/months before the oral (maybe in the July hols) I'd like to organise maybe a meet up of all the French studiers on BOS so that might be a chance to meet up some total strangers and go "Comment a va?". Though it might be a massive undertaking, particularly if one is not in metro Sydney, hehe...

Anyway, quelque chose sur toi maintenant. O est-ce que tu habites? Tu es en quelle classe? Quelles autres matires tudies-tu?

Alors, bonne chance avec tes tudes!
Chpas

 

[bunnie]

Merci beaucoup chepas!!!

You're so smart and knowledgable about French!

I'll check out the "Parlons-nous le franais ici!" thread, even though my French ain't great.

My school uses Tapis Volant as well, but we don't use it often. We mainly on vocabulary, listening, speaking, but not much written work (which is my weakest!) The tape that my teacher uses (not sure which one), the people talk so fast, I can barely catch a word they say, but my teacher repeats so it's easier to understand. I'll have a look into Noir sur Blanc, thanks!

Do you think maybe I should practice a piece of written work, say each week and hand it to my teacher to mark it for feedback and to see my mistakes?

The meet up with all French studiers is a great idea, except I'm in Year 11. I probably won't know half the stuff Year 12ers' do.

J'habite dans la banlieue de Beverly Hills au sud-est de Sydney. Et toi?
J'tudie Extension English and Maths, Modern History, Economics and French.

Thankyou again.

 

[chepas]

Salut encore,

I forgot to ask - are you doing Beginners or Continuers, lol! cos the Noir sur Blanc is a continuers' book so... oops if it's a bit of useless info for you! But there is bound to be a Beginners equivalent. My experience with Tapis Volant is that they were really clear and did everything slowly and then gradually picked up tempo as the course went on... but things may be different now, hehe.

That writing practice/handing it in for feedback sounds excellent. Good idea! Do you need any ideas on what you need to write about?

Re: meetup - it's all good. We're all at different stages so it'll be good. Just conversation etc. hehe. Still not really sure how it will work though!

One other place, you'd probably already be familiar with is that the past HSC papers are all on the www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au site, under about 235396539865 links, so have a look there and there might be material that good be useful, though it's the final HSC exam though, hehe.

 

[bunnie]

Salut encore chepas!

I'm doing Continuers.

I might need some ideas to write about. We've basically covered the basics - family, past times, hobbies, what you look for in a friend, and we've written responses about these and gotten feedback from teachers. I usually get 8 or 9 out of 10 for these, because I write too little. Any suggestions on what topics to write about would be good.

Thanks for the link! Might not be able to attempt HSC exams though.

Merci encore!

 

[Persephone87]

Originally posted by bunnie
I want to improve my French in writing and speaking, but I don't know how. Any tips?

Also, do you have any recommendations on French preliminary and HSC textbooks because I hardly get any homework for French and I'm willing to do extra work. Is Envol any good?

Merci beaucoup!

We use envol, but it is only good on a couple of areas, the rest is a bit useless iunless you want to read extra. I've found our other text books Previsions and Revisions to be quite good...hmm, if you want tutoring, I have a friend who goes to an Alliance Francais course and she says that they are quite good to supplement your lessons, apparently.
Hope i've helped

 

[chepas]

Originally posted by bunnie
... written responses about these and gotten feedback from teachers. I usually get 8 or 9 out of 10 for these, because I write too little. Any suggestions on what topics to write about would be good.

Just dug out my Prelim Yearly exam - though the questions may seem really argh, have a go and give the question to your teacher as well for feedback etc.

This exam actually mirrors the format of the HSC exam, so yer, I'll refer to sections/parts/etc as they're relevant to the actual format. This message will be long so I'll do it in a tiny font

Sometimes the teachers just steal the dialogues etc from other exams or even HSC exams, so sorry if this doesn't seem very original!

SECTION II: READING AND RESPONDING - PART B, 15 Marks

The rubrik (the blurb thing that says what your answer needs to contain) often gives more information than the question! They can be found on the HSC papers so I won't reproduce it here.

QUESTION 12:

"Imagine you are Odile. You have just reveived a letter from your French penfriend Jacques. Answer Jacques' letter.

Bonjour Odile,

Comment vas-tu?

J'ai une trs bonne nouvelle t'annoncer. Mes parents viennent de me dire que si j'obtiens de bonnes notes en anglais la fin de l'anne, ils m'offriront un sjour linguistique de trois mois dans un pays anglophone. Comme ils savent que tu es australienne, ils sont d'accord pour m'envoyer en Australie. Ne trouves-tu pas que c'est une nouvelle fantastique?

J'aimerais tellement venir chez toi. Mais je ne sais pas encore grand-chose de ton pays. Tout ce que je sais c'est que vous avez beaucoup de kangourous et de koalas. C'est vrai? Parle-moi de ton pays, s'il te plat.

Et tout d'abord, est-ce que je pourrais loger chez toi? Et est-ce que tu penses que je pourrais aller ton cole? Est-ce que c'est vrai que l'cole en Australia finit 3 heures de l'aprs-midi?

Il est dj 8 heures du soir. Il faut que je fasse mon devoir d'anglais maintenant! Rponds-moi vite! J'attends ta rponse avec impatience.

Amitis,

Jacques.

_____________________

SECTION III: WRITING IN FRENCH - 10 Marks

Answer one of the following questions.

Write 100-120 words in French.

a) You have just attended an event. Write a diary entry describing the event itself and one person you especially like at that event.

OR

b) You have just had an argument with a friend who thinks that school subjects like music and languages are not important. In his/her opinion, only maths and science matter. Write a dialogue between you and your friend.

_____________________

OK. Hopefully that should keep you going for a while They might be a bit difficult to tackle at this stage in the continuers cos I don't remember covering the conditional (that "J'aimerais..." tense) until virtually just a few weeks before the yearly exam... we didn't have a half yearly!!! Twas good. hehe.

Thing with anything we have to write, they seem to love letters from pen friends, or email exchanges or diary entries. So get those down pat and you could be set for bigger things If you're getting 8/9/ for out of 10 hat's excellent...

Nice hint, bit obvious though hehe, if in the Reading/Responding part where we need to write, in the text like a letter if in the letter they ask us a lot of questions, voil there is a wealth of material ready for us to crap on about.

So, you could even try posing yourself questions and just writing responses. Dunno, might work...

Alors, la prochaine...

 

[bunnie]

^ That was the similar format as my half yearly exam! We had a comprehension as well, but that was the same format as the written part. Thanks for that!

Thankyou for typing that out! You didn't have to, but I greatly appreciate it.

Thanks for feedback about Envol, Persephone. I don't think it's necessary for French tutoring for me yet, but I may be interested next year.

 

[iambored]

make sure you write heaps for your teacher to mark, if she/he is nice enough to mark it for you. it helps to not make the same mistakes and to have some great sentences up your sleeve. (although i never did this). also use a HUGE dictonary and get very familiar with it and where everything is in it.

and if you write too little, just try to keep writing. try to include all the tenses so when you run out of things to say relate it to something in the past, or say what you will be doing sometime in the future. give your opinions on it.