Here are what worked for me and what didn’t work for me while learning French, in (roughly but not really) chronological order.

• Taking (free) courses from the university. The teacher (from my experience) took a random topic from a hat and was like “today we will now learn about parts of the body in French!“. It also didn’t help that my classmates were Italian and Spanish so everyone was like “Oh! Mouche sounds like our word mosca. It makes sense that they sound alike!” Great. I know the word in French and Italian, but I don’t know what it is. During the pandemic, I also tried a Zoom course but I quickly noped out of it because an enthusiastic student tended to monopolize (probably accidentally) the whole session. Glad I didn’t pay though!

• Reading books. Did not work at all. Too difficult to read a book in French, and I wasn’t really into reading fiction anyway. I like reading non-fiction, but it was too technical. Maybe someday.

• Read How To Learn Any Language book by Barry Farber. Bored during the pandemic, this quite helped giving ideas. He talked about cassettes, so some advice might need to be adapted from the olden days into modern times. The Multiple-Track Attack chapter gave me ideas and that sort of started everything else.

• Duolingo. Kind of worked to get me started? It helped with grammar, but it was quite mechanical. I started this during the pandemic and I got too competitive with the league and achievements. I guess the gamification worked, up to a certain extent.

• Michel Thomas. Worked for gettting started. After reading the Barry Farber book, I got an idea to try out this audio course. Michel Thomas’ audio course was basically a simulated “live” recorded course. The setup is that there was him, two recorded students, and you. He would teach phrases, then asked questions and the students would answer. You are technically given the time to answer too, by pausing and thinking. And he chose the students well such that one of them was quite smart, so that competitive people would like to compete with them and the other one was a bit slow, so you don’t feel bad when you yourself was slow.

• Flashcards. Still inspired by the Farber book, I tried flashcards to learn French while queueing up in the supermarket hoping that the pasta aisle was not empty. However, I wanted to use my own words for the flashcards since I wasn’t starting from zero. It was hard to keep up. But hey, if you can do it go for it. There are also apps on the phone like Anki if you’re into that. Personally, I think I ended up with Duolingo during these random 5 minutes to spare.

• Be unemployed. After my PhD defense, I was unemployed. After securing a job, I had to deal with French bureaucracy for about six months. I had countless calls with the Prefecture (for my residence permit) and the Pole Emploi (for my chômage). The employees from the latter were nicer and more supportive than those from the former. I had to assert myself in some phone calls, in some face-to-face meetings, and the pressure was good to motivate me to speak French and learn the particular vocabulary. Most of the employees are passionate people who took the job because they want to help, but the fact that they’re understaffed just stresses everyone — the workers and the clients. So any face-to-face meeting I get with the Prefecture people was important because they were so understaffed. (For colleagues who end up reading this: I’m happily to be employed now by the way and I like to keep it that way.)

• Watch shows I liked. I tried watching the news to be a good citizen, but news was not that interesting to me. Although recently, I started watch HugoDécrypte semi-regularly. What I do enjoy is karaoke, and so N’Oubliez Pas Les Paroles was entertaining. Plus there is the added bonus of having “subtitles” because the lyrics was the whole point of the game. Don’t know if it would work for you but it worked for me. There are also other French game shows. And of course, feel free to find shows that interest you. Most TV shows are available for streaming up to a week after they aired.

• InnerFrench.

  • InnerFrench Podcast. Bored during the pandemic, I got into listening podcasts. I found Hugo (no relation to the news YouTuber as far as I know) spoke fast enough in his podcast to keep it challenging but slow enough to not be demotivating. Plus there are a lot of episodes, so if an episode’s topic vaguely interested me, I’d listen to it while I wash the dishes. I did find the YouTube channel first, so he’s doing a great job in marketing himself.
  • InnerFrench Courses. I paid for the Raconte ton Histoire (B2) course and I think the way it was structured, plus the quizzes, plus the social aspect of all it was really well-done that I think it was worth the money — despite the fact I haven’t finished it yet. But that’s more of a me problem! Passé composé and imparfait is hard but this course makes it feel a little bit easier.

• Real people. Also, try to find actual people to talk to. Learning the language seems pointless if you don’t get to talk to people. You will find people use different filler words and have favorite phrases. I could write another post about the random words I learned from random people. It does help remembering stuff if you can associate it with a person, and a context. Like for example, I almost never hear chiotte at work so there’s some clue that it might be only used in familiar contexts.

The journey is not done, I’m still learning but I think I’m at a better place than before. Other life obligations and priorities have arrived but I’m still trying out the methods that I felt worked when I get the downtime. Which I should actually carve out more these days!