Dix Semaines de Francais: Un post bref

I just finished my tenth week of French and am finally feeling if not at home in my new language, at least as a welcome visitor.

This will be a brief post. I’ve had a lot going on in the past two weeks so while I’ve been able to keep up with my goals for French, I have only just been able to meet my expectations for ~12 hours of practice per week.

Speaking Simply

The most gratifying part of the past two weeks has been actively speaking with someone else in French. While at the French language meetup last Saturday I started up a conversation with the woman next to me about traveling to France and the philosopher Michel de Montaigne. A little bit later, I listened to a professor speak about the Syracuse conjecture. In both cases my ability to interact was somewhat limited (and in the second case required some English augmentation) but it’s progress I’m very happy to have!

Outside of the little bit of interaction I mentioned above, I have enjoyed reading Le Monde. Most of the articles are too long for me, but it’s irreplaceable for learning the practical vocabulary of everyday conversation.

DuoLingo’s exercises have started feeling a bit more basic so to introduce variety I have been using grammar worksheets from this site.

Conclusion

I’ve pretty happy with the progress I’ve had and look forward to trying to use French more actively in the coming week. This will be more emphasis on reading French periodicals and maybe some interaction however practicing the language live may be difficult.