4 Brilliantly Fun Ways to Learn French on the Go:
We spend around one year of our lives commuting.
Whether you are driving or bobsledding, that is a sizeable amount of time when you consider we designate a lousy 14 days a year to smooching… French or otherwise.
You might be rolling in more novels, podcasts and music than a francophile on Bastille Day, but finding the time to integrate French into your everyday life can prove more difficult than finding a seat in rush hour.
Just because we dedicate 365 undesirable days to transit in a lifetime, doesn’t mean we have to waste them harvesting crops on “farmville.”
Enjoy a well entitled bon débarras (good riddance) to peak hour procrastination and move toward some more effective time utilization.
How to Learn French on the Go: 4 Fresh Suggestions
1. Create Your Own Recordings
Not only is this accessible for any particular mode of transportation, but constructing your own recordings provides for a double platform to review and the opportunities to create are numerous. You could go basic and have current vocabulary spoken back to you, or you could create an entire dialogue for conversation in which you respond to the recording.
By initially registering the vocabulary into the device, you are in some way reviewing, and when you plug in on the train, in your car or on your walk, you have the more flexible option of reviewing. Make sure to leave time for yourself to make a verbal, internal or written response after the material is read. For basic vocabulary practice, try including your native language after your response to clarify your answer.
If you don’t feel up to constructing your own dialogues to begin with, check out these examples for some basic ideas. Most smartphones have a suitable function to make this method a hit.
This strategy is great for listening and speaking skills, but could also include some written and reading tasks as well—the world’s your voice recorder with this one!
2. Get Down and Dirty with Some Rap
America has always reigned OG (original gangsta) status when it comes to the birth of hiphop and rap, however, it may interest you to know that France was a close second back in the ’80s, and their interest in the game didn’t stop there.
Listening to rap in French as a learning device is a super dope idea. Just like you have to train your muscles to move without thinking when learning a musical instrument, the same goes for your mouth when mastering a foreign tongue. Rap can be more effective than other music genres because it exposes a language’s natural rhythm and sound more blatantly, which can prove most difficult for a beginner to grasp in conversation.
On paper you might be able to comprehend until your heart’s content, but when faced with a native speaker slurring out even the most basic of phrases you find it confusing to distinguish between content and sounds. This is normal, because we don’t naturally speak syllable by syllable, so often the written word is expressed quite differently in a sentence than on its own.
By learning French through rap you adopt a sense for the movement of the language. By mimicking songs perfectly, your own sound production can switch to autopilot, leaving more opportunity to concentrate on your content. That is why we suggest both learning rap songs by heart and imitating the singer to the best of your ability. This will have you sounding more français (French) every day—and you won’t even have to think about it.
Another clever strategy for creative crews is busting your own French rhyme. Take to the trains with a pen and paper like a true underdog, or work up the skills to freestyle on your walk. The benefits are numerous, and does wonders for your French sound input and output. Find the charisma in your commute, whichever way you do it, and comment on it like a true cinquante (50) cent.
Check these guys out for some impromptu inspiration, and if you’re interested in hitting up some sick French rappers, become acquainted with these household noms (names):
- IAM and NTM are old school pioneers who have been kickin’ it since the late ’80s. They are political, a little violent and authentic to the French rap of the era. You can google what the abbreviations stand for in your own time…
- Oxmo and Zoxea are also older boyz in the game, but have adapted as the years have rolled by to create a more modern sound.
- Stromae is a top contemporary artist who can be argued as not really being hip hop, but his rap-like verses and cool disposition give him enough cred to be suggested.
3. Tell a Story About Your Journey
Either written, spoken or internally, construct a story that relies on aspects of your trip, but that’s also topical to your learning material. This is a cool activity, as it encourages natural sentence making, but also draws on the location-based method of study mentioned earlier. By creating a story you are enabling other factors to support your memory retention.
For example, if you were learning the adjective, marrant (funny), and a man with a hilarious wig went by, you could link the situation to the word and have a greater chance of recalling the information in the future—thanks to the multiple contexts you’re creating. The more descriptively you connect your vocabulary to the physical world around you, the better you will be at recalling the words later.
If you struggle to describe a situation how you’d like to in French, jot it down in your native language and work on translating it sometime during the day. Then, on your return trip (or the next morning), you can review it!
4. Call a Tandem Partner
If you are lucky enough to have a French speaker inhabiting your neck of the woods with a similar schedule to yours, what better way to kick off your day than by arranging a commute time talk? Whether you are in public or holed up in your car, you can adapt the technology to suit you—think loud speaker function or trusty earphones.
Other options to call francophiles include Viber, Whatsapp, Skype and other applications that allow you to make international calls for super cheap or super free.
Sometimes the worst thing about a tandem is feeling like you are on a bad date, as the words run out of steam and the awkward nodding and sighs set in. As with creating a story during transit, you won’t be dry on subject matter while chatting and commuting. The world is right in front of your eyes, cringing through another 25-minute travel for the daily grind.
To get the most out of your rush hour ramble, have a way of recording the parts of the conversation that stick in your mind—whether they be for interesting or confusing reasons. Documenting such moments in your notebook or capturing them on your phone are both effective ways of doing this— depending on your mode of commute, of course.
To find suitable tandem partners, try Tandem Exchange or The Mixxer.
Whichever way you decide to use your time on the go, make sure it meshes well with your mode of transport, interests and learning capacity. It is true what they say though, if you don’t use it, you lose it—and no one wants to make up for lost time!
