My 3 tips on learning French / German etc ... fast

I recently shared on LinkedIn that I reached B1/B2 level in French in less than a year, without taking much formal lessons and while studying the entire MBA courses in English. Some friends reached out to me and asked for my advice on learning French.

Honestly I also tried different apps like Duolingo, Busuu etc but the progress was too slow. Luckily through trial and error, I figured out a combination of study methods and apps that worked for me that I’m going to share with you. I hope these tips can help anyone who feels equally lost like me on the journey of learning French or other languages.

I had a simple goal at first. I hoped to understand 80% of any French news programs in 6 months, if I watched the TV or tuned in to a French podcast.

Tip 1 - Immersion by listening to the language whenever you can, until you can distinguish where one word ends and the next one starts in sentences.

• This step is important as it lets you ‘hear’ each of the individual words/vocabulary spoken at normal speed even though at this stage you don’t know 90% of what they mean.

• After a while, you notice some (new) words come up again and again that you can even repeat their pronunciation. At this point, you will feel curious and motivated to look these up as you can tell they are important due to their high frequencies.

• You also get more used to the sound, the rhythm and the flow of the language from this immersion training.

for TV: download myTF1 and france.tv, switch on sous-titres while watching.

for Podcast: use Spotify’s ‘Read Along’ feature while listening to these French podcasts. Easy French, Canapé Six Places, Les idées larges, Vivons heureux avant la fin du monde etc.

Tip 2 - Learn French grammar, tenses and rules by taking some on-demand online group lessons using services like Lingoda or by reading grammar books.

• I used Lingoda online group lessons about once a week to learn French grammar and expressions, as the platform has lesson plans catering to each level from A1. Since the teachers are located around the world lessons are available throughout the day, so lots of slots to fit with my schedule. Use my referral link to get $50 off on your first purchase :)

• If you are comfortable learning from a textbook, then this book called Grammaire progressive du français was highly recommended to me by a French tutor.

After you combine Step 1 and 2 and practice for a while, I suggest you try the powerful method, i.e. Step 3 to power-charge the game.

Tip 3 - Find interesting short videos on Memrise and watch these on Youtube with Language Reactor switched on.

• Memrise has many short, real-life videos by a variety of vloggers in the target language so you can learn how the language is used and spoken in real life situations.

• Find these videos on Youtube, and switch on Language Reactor to watch the content with dual subtitles (e.g. French + English) so you have very precise understanding of the sentences.

• With Language Reactor, if you encounter new words in the subtitle, you can mouse-over the words and the video will automatically stop while the translation of the word appears on the screen.

Voila! C’est tout! That’s it! Please give these three steps a try, and leave a comment if you found them helping you in mastering fluency. Ciao!! ❤️