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Bonjour, and welcome to what I hope is an eclectic mix of French content that reflects my day to day encounters with news, commentary and learning materials, mainly from a variety of francophone sources.
Check out the Social Media page for more day-to-day content.
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Categories Content Archive

Oral Comprehension
Dix stratégies pour échouer en compréhension orale
Filed in: Articles |Language
A somewhat unusual approach from Commun francais setting out ten strategies that will cause you to fail at oral comprehension, rather than tips on how to succeed.

This is not as daft as it might sound since we all sometimes do things with the best intentions that hinder rather than help our progress.
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Content: Comprehension,Language

Spoken French
French Today - Spoken French
Filed in: Articles |Language
French Today is a useful resource if you want to learn about French as it is spoken by the French. This article compares modern spoken French with written French, that's to say what many people are taught when they learn the language. And, of course, having learnt French as it is written, it's hardly surprising that it comes as quite a shock when you encounter a French person speaking how they normally speak, which is quite different.
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Content: Conversation,Language,Grammar

Lawless French
C'est or Il est ?
Filed in: Articles
"The French expressions c’est and il est can be tricky because they are synonymous but not interchangeable. Which one to use depends less on meaning than it does on grammar."
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Content: Language,Grammar

Language Fluency
How do we measure language fluency?
Filed in: Articles
If you mention to somebody that you speak a foreign language the response often will be to ask whether you are fluent. But what is fluency?

This article considers that question.
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Content: Language,Learning

Les Locutions Latines

Les 47 locutions latines les plus utilisées par les francophones

Les locutions Latines
Filed in: Articles
An article in French from the site La Langue française. We are told that these 47 locutions, or phrases, are omnipresent in French literature, being used to show culture and refinement. But in some cases the usage has become so popular that they are now used naturally in the day to day language.
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Content: Language,Vocabulary,Learning

Conversational French
Impersonal verbs
Filed in: Articles
"Most verbs are personal: they must be conjugated for different grammatical persons, such as aller (to go): je vais (I go), tu vas (you go), etc. But some verbs are used impersonally, meaning they have only one conjugation, the third person singular. This is usually the impersonal subject pronoun il, meaning it."
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Content: Language,Grammar

Conversational French
Conversational French
Filed in: Articles
"It’s an unfortunate reality that the French you learn in school is not at all the same language as what you encounter when speaking to people in real life. The foundations are the same of course, but there are all kinds of shortcuts, informalities, and other differences that you need to be familiar with in order to carry on a conversation. Check out some resources that focus on how French is actually spoken."
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Content: Language,Conversation

Learning vocabulary
Success in memorising word translations using four different methods.
Learning vocabulary
Filed in: Articles
Taken from an article that considers memorising techniques - The Art and Science of Remembering - this particular example considers recalling the translations of foreign words flashed on a computer screen. Four groups used different methods and were tested a week later.
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Content: Language,Vocabulary,Learning

Hello in different languages
Five reasons English speakers struggle to learn foreign languages
Filed in: Articles
An interesting article from The Conversation giving five reasons why English people might find the acquisition of a foreign language difficult. These are:

  • Noun gender
  • Gender agreement
  • Formal and personal forms of you
  • Applying the 'case system'
  • The effect of mood - verb inflection
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Content: Language,Learning

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