Learning French as a Second Language
I have wanted to learn a second language for quite some time now, French in particular. I suppose there is no specific reason that I want to learn French – French makes up a small percentage of my ancestry, I have never been there, I don’t know any native French people – I mostly just like how it sounds.
Last night I officially started learning French. I sat down with my red and white striped shirt and baguette and went through lesson 1 of Rosetta Stone French. I have been considering Rosetta Stone for a while, but was always turned away by its prohibitively high cost. Fortunately for me, I mentioned my desire to learn French near a co-worker who was just given a copy of disk 1, and he had no desire to learn. He let me check it out, and then promptly got a job in a different city and skipped town. Unfortunately, this will leave me in a bit of a predicament when disk 1 is over; disks 2 and 3 will still be looming out there at a cost of over $400. I will make the decision on whether or not to continue on the Rosetta Stone train based on how disk 1 plays out.
What I like so far…
I am only one lesson in, but so far I think it is going to be a success. I am learning all about the boy under the ball and the man on the house, the new white car and even the woman drinking milk. They don’t start with the most useful phrases up front, but I am optimistic that this is all part of Rosetta Stone’s grand scheme. What I like the most is that there is no English involved. In language classes in high school, I spent the whole time trying to translate things into English instead of allowing myself to hear the words and then directly connect them to whatever object or action that they refer to. High school language classes also had the discouraging aspect of 30 people nearing adulthood all struggling through what is essentially a kindergarten class.
Another thing that like is that every lesson is can be presented in multiple ways to help with different aspects of learning the language. For example, you can both listen to and read phrases at the same time, or only do one or the other. There are also exercises where you need to type things out, and even some sort of speech recognition function which I have yet to try.
What I don’t like so far…
I understand that there will probably never be learning tool that can take you from zero knowledge to fluency on its own. After only the first lesson, there are a few problems that I think will end up being consistent throughout the program. First of all, I do not see where the grammar lessons will come in. The endings of verbs change based on how they are used in sentences, but they never lay out the rules for you. The lessons seem to leave it up to you to pick up on these changes over time and somehow remember what the rules are. Another shortcoming is that it is possible to blow through some of the questions without knowing what all of the words mean. One word (aliment which means food) was always used in a way where it was unnecessary for answering the question. It actually took me a few questions before I realized what it meant.
My recipe for success…
1. As I stated earlier, I do not have the full Rosetta Stone series. After finishing disk 1, I will either complete the set or buy one of its cheaper counterparts.
2. I plan to get a French learning book with some exercises in it to help nail down the grammar.
3. To help with words that I hear and can’t figure out, I will keep some means of translating close at hand.
4. I will get some French movies queued up on my Netflix. I figure the more I hear people speaking in French, the more it will sink in. This will also help learn how French is actually used opposed to how it is taught. For example, if I were to tell somebody who recently learned English as a second language that I wanted to nail down some grammar, they would potentially be dumbfounded.
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Leave a Comment November 4, 2009
