It sounds bold, but it’s true: you really can master an entire season of Frenchpod101.com in just one or two days, using this method. How does it work so well? One reason is focus: you’ll focus only on direct French listening and responding. (No writing, no reading, no grammar-parsing, no listening to perfect explanations.) A […]
Those who know me, including myself, can assure you my memory isn’t remarkably good. But with the help of spaced repetition flash card technology at Frenchpod101.com and Anki, my memory was able to master 143 French survival phrases in just under two days. The total study time was about four hours. Presented with an English […]
How not to study grammar As a language teacher with over a decade’s experience in Nagoya, Japan, English conversation schools, and in U.S. classrooms, I’ve seen this killer mistake over and over in students’ personal study strategies. It’s this: memorizing grammatical rules, or rules of usage, as if you can reference them on the fly. It’s […]
Learning vocabulary (survival phrases are a kind of vocabulary, in my opinion) is incredibly fast with spaced repetition flash cards. It’s technologically-aided memorization, and it’s the difference between riding a horse and driving a car. No time here to go into details of why. See this post if you want the low down on spaced […]
Step 1: Go to the survival phrases section of Frenchpod101.com For each lesson do the following steps: Step 2: Create an Anki flash card deck, “My French Survival Phrases.” Step 3: Copy and paste the French and English of the Review Track into your newly-created Anki flash card deck. (The Review Track […]
Moi: I’m going to Montreal and I want to speak French. The Intern: What does that even mean, the second part? Do you want to order food in French and generally discuss the weather? Or do you want to conduct an international human rights campaign complete with spontanous rousing speeches at public rallies and arguing in heated […]