Yes, it’s true. I am doing my best to learn French. I have been listening to Pimsleur religiously in the car back and forth to my new job at ADP in Dayton, New Jersey.
The commute really isn’t that bad since I hop on the Parkway South to the Turnpike South and my office is right off of Exit 8A. With the Turnpike moving along like the German Autobahn, I get there in no time.
What this extra hour a day has afforded me is a great time to practice speaking French but learning it this way has not taught me how to read or write French at all. I’m not worried about that since I do not have any plans of reading it or writing it anyway as my goal is to simply learn enough French to converse better when Kerry and I travel back to France or perhaps up to Quebec in the hopefully near future. Once I learn that much French I’m going to learn the same basic material in German.
One of my newest learning tools has been working out quite nicely. I found a website that is France’s equivalent to our QVC or Home Shopping Network. Besides being an excellent way to watch TV in French and being able to figure out the subject matter very easily, the women are all supermodels and make the time spent learning rather fun.
The other Internet resource that I am really enjoying is the Anneberg program French in Action that has 52 half hour videos that are likewise done completely in French but in such a way that they are really easy to follow and learn. It uses the Capretz method of French Immersion. The storyline is rather cheesy but its cute. There are scenes where the guy keeps hitting on the girl relentlessly until she says “absolument pas” and storms away!
My goal is to spend at least 30 minutes a day watching or listening to the French language being spoken even though I do not understand what they are saying. I am able to pull out words or phrases that I do understand and then I seem able to figure out a few words around the ones that I understand.
Au revoir!
John Skowronski's Blog 