Language Learning

Mr Biglesworth · 08-30-2008, 11:51 AM

Has anyone been learning/learned/wanted to learn another language lately?
My program at school required that I do a couple years of language courses, so I picked French because a) it's Canada's second language, and b) it's widely spoken internationally. I pirated myself teach-yourself courses online which was a good start, then started class in the fall. After two years of classes, I could read a fair amount of french but still didn't have confidence or much of an ability to speak. So this summer I went into a 5 week french-immersion program in Quebec in a small french town. It was pretty impressive, once you're forced to speak a language you start to put together all the pieces you learned in class pretty quick. I'd say i have fluency now in that I can hold conversations in french on any topic and live my day to day life with it, but I still have a long ways to go. It's still hard to follow the french while i watch tv/listen to the radio, plus my vocabulary is still fairly basic. But it's a good start, I'm able to seek out conversation groups and other french communities to continue learning.

I also started to learn Swahili while I was in Kenya last year, which got put on the back-burner when I returned and went back into French, but it's becoming my main interest again. I'm obviously just a beginner, and it's hard because there's very little opportunity to practice it with native speakers, but I'm just working from books and some other learning programs to learn the most essential grammar and vocabulary, which is moving along fairly quickly.

I've used a lot of different learning methods for both languages, so if anyone would like some insight into which ones I found useful I could offer my experience (ie. Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone, Michel Thomas, podcasts, textbooks, classes, etc...).

08-30-2008, 11:51 AM	#1
Mr Biglesworth Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: I live in London Posts: 862	Language Learning Has anyone been learning/learned/wanted to learn another language lately? My program at school required that I do a couple years of language courses, so I picked French because a) it's Canada's second language, and b) it's widely spoken internationally. I pirated myself teach-yourself courses online which was a good start, then started class in the fall. After two years of classes, I could read a fair amount of french but still didn't have confidence or much of an ability to speak. So this summer I went into a 5 week french-immersion program in Quebec in a small french town. It was pretty impressive, once you're forced to speak a language you start to put together all the pieces you learned in class pretty quick. I'd say i have fluency now in that I can hold conversations in french on any topic and live my day to day life with it, but I still have a long ways to go. It's still hard to follow the french while i watch tv/listen to the radio, plus my vocabulary is still fairly basic. But it's a good start, I'm able to seek out conversation groups and other french communities to continue learning. I also started to learn Swahili while I was in Kenya last year, which got put on the back-burner when I returned and went back into French, but it's becoming my main interest again. I'm obviously just a beginner, and it's hard because there's very little opportunity to practice it with native speakers, but I'm just working from books and some other learning programs to learn the most essential grammar and vocabulary, which is moving along fairly quickly. I've used a lot of different learning methods for both languages, so if anyone would like some insight into which ones I found useful I could offer my experience (ie. Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone, Michel Thomas, podcasts, textbooks, classes, etc...).