Bonjour

TIPS FOR A MORE PRODUCTIVE AND LESS STRESSFUL STUDY PERIOD:

• Drink water

• Take long, deep breaths

• Take regular breaks

• Write yourself an encouraging post-it every couple of hours and put it up where you can see it

• If your anxiety is getting in the way of your work, talk to someone. Stop for a break. Make a list of things you’re worried about and write a paragraph after each worry explaining to yourself why your worries are not helpful to your study and your mental health. Be kind to your brain and body and know when you’re struggling, and know that it’s okay to ask for help

• Write bullet point notes for a daily plan

• Move on to something else as soon as you feel yourself getting bored or frustrated

• Keep up to date with emails to avoid having that anxious feeling in the back of your mind of having incomplete tasks

• Walk around or do some exercise whenever you start to feel sluggish and sleepy. This will boost your mood, get all of those important chemicals in your body flowing and bring more oxygen to the brain

• Keep your room tidy

• Let as much natural light into your room as possible

• Don’t listen to music with lyrics, just don’t do it. You might think you’re okay with it but psychology says the brain cannot listen to two voices at the same time, ie. the voice in your head reading notes and the voice from the music. Try ClassicFM or soundscapes such as rain or cafe sounds if you like background noise

• Spend the morning at home, then after lunch go to a library or a café to switch up your environment

• If you feel tired, take a nap! It’s okay to nap. Just set an alarm to make sure you don’t sleep away the day

• Chat to housemates or family members often (in person) throughout the day to make sure you don’t feel isolated

• If you have glasses, put them on, don’t strain your eyes

• Organise your desk and notes

• Use stationery that makes you happy

• Don’t do one huge chunk of a subject in one go, do small bits and keep swapping to keep your mind active

• Put your phone on do not disturb (you can set it so that calls come through if you know someone might need to contact you) and put it on charge the other side of the room. TRUST ME, it works, your productivity will shoot up

• Send as many emails as you like to all of your lecturers if you need help with something. That’s what they’re there for

• Eat fruit and veg to keep away the winter viruses

• Vary your study methods. Don’t just read things over and over. Make lists, diagrams, say things out loud, walk around and pretend you’re doing your exam as a presentation, draw pictures, write post-its, etc

• Set a time in the evening where you stop studying completely, say 7pm. This gives you time to work hard throughout the day and an opportunity in the evening to make dinner, have a bath, snuggle up in bed and watch a film, etc.

• Every few hours or so, open your window for 5 minutes to let fresh air and oxygen into your room. Trust me, even if you feel chilly, it’ll wake you up and will be good for your brain.

• Although it’s tempting because it’s comfy, don’t lie or sit on your bed to work (unless you’re ill) because it slows your heart rate and makes your brain think you don’t need to be alert

• Get an early night and lots of sleep! Very important

peach - pêche

fishing - pêche/pêcherie

sin (noun) - péché

fishermen - pêcheurs

sinners - pécheurs

peach tree - pêcher

to sin (verb) - pécher

Hi everyone! A few days ago @unsuitable-for-engineer asked if I had any recommendations for French TV series or YouTubers. I actually don’t watch any series, but by golly do I love YouTube. Hopefully you can find something you like. * indicates my favourite channels.

Anil

Bee-Scuit *

C’est une autre histoire

Chakeup / Chakeup Vlog

Cyprien

Dazzling Drew

EimaDolly *

Emma CakeCup / Emma In The Kitchen *

Eppcoline

Français avec Pierre

L’atelier de Roxane

Lexie Blush

Little Gypsy *

Nino Arial *

Pastel *

Sananas *

Shiu Li

Squeezie

Hey guys, here are some of my favorite channels on youtube for learning French.

Francais avec Pierre  - great channel if you want to know more about grammar rules and expressions, how to sound really French and natural. He also makes videos about the DELF/DALF exams…

Comme une Française  - also very good if you are confused about certain things… you can learn a lot about used expressions and words you would not find in a book

1 jour, 1 question - the main purpose of this channel is to explain things to kids, but in a fun way. It’s animated and short, but it’s great for obtaining a wide range of vocabulary, because the themes go from politics, geography and history to something like animals and food. Also might be good for learning about some history things, and interesting new facts, not just learning French.

Learn French with FrenchPod101.com  - again… grammar, expressions, vocabulary channel

Cyprien - this is the only channel that is just a normal channel, not meant for learning French (but I am sure everyone knows Cyprien anyway). I just really enjoy his videos and it’s very useful for learning new words and of course for some listening practice.

.

I am sure there are many more channels like these… but I just wanted to write down my favorite ones for you guys

These are a few things that i think might be relevant to language learners that i don’t think I’ve seen on langblr! At the end of the day it’s whatever works for you, but i hope these might be helpful 💙

🗼pouvoir, vouloir and aller (to be able, to want and to go) are really useful verbs to learn confidently. If you want to use a verb you don’t know how to conjugate, you can often follow one of these verbs conjugated with the infinitive to express something similar. It’s always better that than guessing a conjugation!

🗼watch videos of french people speaking english! Most french people will still impose a little bit of french pronunciation even while speaking really good english, and this highlights french pronunciation that you wouldn’t notice in a person speaking fluent french. 

🗼for me, reading simple YA novels written originally in french is actually more beneficial than translated english books that I’m familiar with. This will prevent you from reading by assumption/context/memory. Also, french books tend to be more culturally relevant, and include phrasing and idioms that are more typically french.

🗼contradiction of my last point, but try watching shows originally in your native language with french audio and subtitles. For some reason, it’s far easier for me to understand and i know many people struggle with listening to french. Netflix often has the option of picking the  language of your show, i would highly recommend this if you struggle to understand french films/shows. 

🗼quizlet is the most effective method of learning vocab I’ve found! For me, writing out flashcards takes a long time, and typing in the answers solidifies spelling better than just repeating the words. 

🗼if you’re someone who struggles with pronunciation, some people find it helpful to have someone who doesn’t speak the language read aloud in it, as it highlights typical errors that a speaker of your language will make (and will probably make you feel good about yourself lbh) 

me: *understands one phrase*

In honor of the new year, here is my simple tutorial for setting up and maintaining a language journal. I’ve made 3 so far using this method for spanish, french, and italian because it’s so simple. Disfruta y espero que logres sus metas de lengua este año! <3

What You’ll Need:

composition book

highlighters

flashcard(s)

black ink pen

All of these movies have a French audio option! If you know of any others please let me know so I can add them :) 🎄

The holiday calendar

A photographer inherits an antique Advent calendar that seems to predict her future – including a budding romance.

A Christmas Prince

Christmas comes early for an aspiring young journalist when she’s sent abroad to get the scoop on a dashing prince who’s poised to be king.

The princess switch

One week before Christmas, a duchess switches places with an ordinary woman from Chicago, who looks exactly like her, and they each fall in love with each other’s beaus.

48 Christmas wishes

When a small town’s letters to Santa accidentally go up in smoke, two elves venture out of the North Pole to retrieve every missing wish.

The spirit of Christmas

Kate has three weeks to get a bed and breakfast appraised and sold. The uncooperative manager claims a spirit who lives there will not approve.

Christmas wedding planner

A wedding planner organising her cousin’s lavish Christmas wedding is thrown for a loop when a private investigator turns up.

The Christmas chronicles

i’ve gotten questions multiple times about how to start learning swedish and how to go about when starting learning a new language, so i thought i’d make a masterpost about it. obviously learning differs from person to person, especially with languages, but this is what i do to study french, and what i’ve found best works for me

apps to get started: 

if you know nothing about a language a good place to get started is with basic words and basic grammar. there are a lot of apps / websites to choose from, some of the most popular are

Duolingo, has the benefit of being free, and has 27 languages to choose from. with Duolingo you start with the basics of “hello”, “my name is” “i am” and it gradually gets harder the better you get. make sure you don’t only use it as an app though, because then you’ll miss the grammar explanations available on the website

Babbel, unlike Duolingo Babbel isn’t free, and Babbel only has 14 languages to choose from. starts off similar to Duolingo but with Babbel you get more detailed grammar explanations and you don’t fall into the trap of having to learn long lists of words relating to one very specific subject before learning basic grammar, as you do with Duolingo. In Babbel you can also choose the courses that feel relevant to you, and don’t have to clear a certain course to move on to the next one

Memrise, works similarly to the two above. there is a free version but you have to pay to get to PRO level

this type of course is a great foundation for learning a language, and almost vital when first starting out (if you’re learning on your own), but make sure it’s not your only source, and that you’re continuously talking to native speakers, reading, watching movies, listening to the radio and so on to get a grip on what the language is like when spoken naturally

hearing the language:

watching tv and movies

when watching tv and movies you could either do it in two different ways, with different benefits

with subtitles (in language spoken), the benefit with this is that you can read a word or sentence and directly see how it’s pronounced, and vice versa. the downside is that this way easily draws attention away from the speech, it’s easy to get carried away focusing on the subtitles

without subtitles, the benefit with this is that you have to really focus on what is being said and how it’s pronounced, and you learn to understand the language spoken, rather than just written as in the subtitles

watching documentaries

watching documentaries is a great way to learn how to understand the language spoken. the language used is natural and not simplified for people trying to learn it, but it has a naturally slow tempo which makes it easy to keep up with

listening to the radio

even if you don’t understand a single word of what is being said when starting, listening to the radio is always a great way to pick up pronunciation. after a while as you get better you’ll start recognizing words and sentences, and you start understanding more and more. listening to the radio is also good as you get to hear how native speakers actually talk, including slang, idioms, buffer noises and other things

listening to music

listening to music works in the same way as listening to the radio, but is often a lot more fun! you learn the pronunciation and can sing along. disney songs are usually quite simple and offer written lyrics, so i’d say that’s a good way to start!

reading: 

reading is one of the most important things to do when learning a language, and has the added benefit of learning about the culture of the language if you read literature from that country (which i recommend you do). i recommend starting with children’s books and cartoons and then moving on to more advanced literature the better you get. you can go about reading in your target language in two ways

reading continuously without pausing and trying to understand the words you don’t know based on the context. it’s also good to go back and reread, if you do this chances are you’ll pick up things that you didn’t understand the first time

pausing and looking up every word you don’t recognize. doing this won’t really increase your ability to read in your target language, but it can be a good way to build up a vocabulary

writing: 

writing a diary

writing in your target language is a good way to learn to think in your target language and to use it naturally. i write a diary in french every day, and it’s been incredibly rewarding! but make sure this isn’t your only source, as that could make your language sound quite alien and unnatural. i made a more detailed post about the benefits of writing a diary in your target language which you can find here x

chatting online

chatting with native speakers online is a good complement to writing a diary. it has the same effects of learning to think in the language and using it daily, but when chatting with someone else you’ll be corrected, which stops you from developing bad and unnatural habits in your target language. you’ll also see how the native speakers use the language and which formulations they use. there are two apps, that i know about, designed to let you talk to native speakers

HelloTalk

Tandem

they both work pretty much the same, you enter your native language and other languages that you may speak fluently, and which language you’d like to learn. then you’ll be matched with people who want to learn your language and who speaks the language that you want to learn

talking:

talking is the most essential, and hardest part of learning a language. i practice talking by repeating words from Duolingo and Babbel and reading out loud from books. if you’re using Tandem or HelloTalk you can also video chat and send audio messages back and forth. there’s always the classic way of practicing by talking in the shower or with your pet! the best way to learn how to speak in your target language though would be to go to the country where the language is spoken

Person: then study