My story : Why I created a blog about learning French

My story : Why I created a blog about learning French

Hello everyone, welcome to this video, I am Thomas Ricomard from the blog Fast French Learning. In this video I'm going to share with you what is my project,

blog about learning french

Why I created a blog about learning French ?

blog about learning french

1 ) How to improve my English ? How to improve learning a foreign language ?

blog about learning french

I lived 7 years in Geneva, in Switzerland, which is an international city.

It's a city, separated into language groups : French speakers, English speakers , Spanish speakers, ...

It is impossible to meet the people from Geneva (the French speakers), the Swiss people stay between them.

The only way to meet people was to speak English, to improve my English, to meet the English speakers.

-French-English exchanges :

Every Saturday in a restaurant bar, we made groups from 2-3 to 4-5-6 people, we talked during 2 hours. I had a notebook (I still have it). At my place, before sleeping, I watched movies and I wrote in my notebook what I didn’t understand from the movie, I came back to the language exchange with my notebook and I asked to native speakers

  • “What does it mean ?”
  • “How do you pronounce this word ?”
  • “In which context can we use this expression ?”
  • “Are there different ways to say that ?”
  • …..

That was very helpful, I improved my English → it was a time to learn the language. I never improved enough to have the same talks I have in my mother tongue (French), it is frustrating but we have to go through steps to speak fluently, whatever the point we want to reach we need to go through steps.

With some of these people, we became friends and we continued to see each other during the language exchange and as well out of this moment (we went to eat at the restaurant, in bars, we went to karaoke nights where I sang in English, I should make a video about learning languages with songs and only music, that’s very interesting). During these moments I spoke the “real english”, the one you need to know to meet people, to party, to have fun, it was a time to really speak !

Only with this event I had more than once a week to improve my english, which was very nice !

-Meeting between foreigners :

blog about learning french

Every Tuesday I went to foreigners meeting : Mundo Lingo. It was more to meet people than to learn more the language, but I spoke English half the time, so it was very good to practice the “real english”, the english you speak when you meet people randomly in a bar or somewhere else. That was very cool as well because I met people from all around the world (Americans, South Americans, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese,…)

I met friends and we saw each other at other times during the week, to continue to speak sometimes in English and sometimes in French, because some English speakers wanted to improve their French.

-Cultural exchanges :

blog about learning french

Every Tuesday I went to foreigners meeting : Couch Surfing. Meeting people from all around the world. Speaking French and English, having fun.
I met a lot of English speakers, the French language is very hard for them.
So I asked myself the questions :

  • What are the links between English and French ?
  • What are the common elements between these 2 languages ?
  • What in the English language makes it easier to learn French ?
  • What in the English language is a barrier to learning French ?

I started asking questions and I continue to search.

2 ) What are the memorization techniques ? What are the ways to learn and effectively remember a foreign language ?

blog about learning french

I went to Geneva to study psychology.

I love psychology, during the study I never studied the languages techniques, how to learn a language more effectively. We studied a bit the memory but not how to remember better of something, not the memorization techniques.

So I asked myself the questions : What techniques can I use to really improve my English ?

Not the same I learnt at school obviously, they didn’t work.

I look for it and I share that with you on my blog.

3 ) How to transmit the French language ?

blog about learning french

  • Giving French lessons

After my studies I looked for work, I did not find any, I received money from the government for 1 year and a half. I did courses, to make a nice CV and a nice cover letter, so far I did not find a job as a psychologist. I spoke about it around me, many people knew that I had finished my studies and that I was looking for a job, and I had never thought to teach French.
A friend sends me a message "I have a friend, she is looking for a French teacher, are you interested ?" I answered right after and a week later I gave my first French lesson. I liked it, I thought "I can make a living teaching French and laughing with my students, it's nice". I started to make myself known as a French teacher in Geneva. I built my classes according to the requests of the students, and little by little I was able to answer the students' questions quickly. As I liked to teach French, I also taught in a popular university, to people from different cultures : Portuguese, Brazilian, Spanish, Zimbabwean, English, ... I love this mix of cultures 🙂

  • Learn French through music and movement

I had organized French classes with music and movement. I had prepared music (Irish music, African music, ...) music to dance, I used the rhythm to integrate more easily and quickly the language : the conjugation of a verb, the structure of a sentence, the pronunciation. I thought it was great, the participants too. Unfortunately it only lasted a month because I had to pay to rent the room and it would have taken more people come to continue.

 

4 ) What to do with my life ?

blog about learning french

I had several students, which allowed me to have money but not enough to make a living. At that time a friend told me about Digital Nomad event, Digital Nomad refers to people who have a job (work that is often done on the internet) that allows them to travel. I immediately loved the concept, I thought, "It's great, I want to have this life now !”. I went to this meeting where I met Digital Nomads and people who are interested in this way of life or who want to become Digital Nomad.

I said to myself

  1. I like to improve my English, speaking foreign languages is very important and that is a great wealth.
  2. I love psychology and I like looking for ways to improve my English (techniques to learn foreign languages) - Apply psychology to language learning
  3. I like teaching French. How to transmit the French language for effective learning, to give to English speakers an easy and fun way to learn French ?

If I receive testimonials from English speakers telling me "with your method (the Fast French Learning method) I improved my French, I went on holiday in France and I spoke French easily, I understood what people were saying, I could make myself understood, I did my shopping in French , rent an apartment in French, ... ", it would be really great 🙂

And I love Digital Nomad's lifestyle, so I can mix these 4 things and create the life I want.

So I asked myself several questions :

  • What training to create so that an English speakers can learn French easily, quickly while having fun ?
  • How to create my training to learn French ?
  • How to create my website ? I learned to create a blog through the training Blogger Pro from Olivier Roland : it is a training in French that explains how to create a blog and share my project with my community on the internet.
  • How to create my company ?

My Project :

  1. Creating a training for English speakers, to improve French, so that improve your French is easy, fast and fun.

  2. Create my business to be independent.

  3. Travel to learn new languages and discover new cultures.

When I created my blog what I knew about foreign language learning was my experience of improving my English, now I am learning more about foreign language learning and more specifically about how to teach French to English speakers.

What are the difficulties that English speakers face in learning and improving French ?

You can tell me in the comments, below the video on Youtube or below the article on my blog Fast French Learning.

I share all this with you through articles and videos.

I hope you enjoy and that helps you.

Leave me a comment to tell me if you liked this article or not. If you liked it, please, share it on social networks.

And see you soon on my social networks :

Thanks for reading this article🙂

What do you want to learn about the French language? What are your needs ?

Let me in the comments, I will write an article about it !

Thomas Ricomard

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