Emily Wieder French/Francophone Studies Ph.D. student
Practice Tips:
Study Tools
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GETTING STARTED
Duolingo offers great vocabulary and introductions to grammar. I prefer a live class to solidify those concepts and to practice the language; however, when I used Duolingo for Spanish, I repeated the words aloud to work on my pronunciation in a judgement-free setting.
Fluent U uses videos to help people learn languages and offers language-learning advice, both about the general process and specific languages. Their list of free language-learning resources is one of my favorite posts. *They offer a weekly newsletter too.*
Open Culture contains more language-learning resources.
Lawless French is dedicated to articles on French subjects, such as grammar and culture. *I prefer Lawless French's emails to those of Fluent U, but both are informative blogs.*
L'Organisation internationale de la Francophonie provides background information and acts as a principle resource for anyone learning French.
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WEBSITES
TO BOOKMARK
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Word Reference: reliable translator with example sentences and discussion boards.
Larousse: free, reliable French-French dictionary. [Le Petit Robert is another reliable option and can be purchased in print or as a download]
Quizlet: flashcard maker that I have used since high school and have made over 50 lists for French.
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PHONETICS
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Symbols used in French with links for further exploration
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Audio clips for French phonetics
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I found this list of “barbarisms” funny and informative.
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WRITING
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For word variation, I use Thesaurus.com for English choices then go to Word Reference for the translation, if needed.
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Reverso and Synonymo are okay French thesauruses.
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*** Be careful that the synonym accurately fits in French [“selon” and “quant à” are not interchangeable, for example, nor are “excité” and “content”] ***
Transition, argumentation phrases
Dico des rimes: rhyming dictionary
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ANALYZING LITERATURE/ART
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Mythologica helps me understand allusions to mythological figures.
Études littéraires is roughly the French Sparknotes.
Bac de Français, French literary movements overview.
Surrealism overview on the Art Story, which features other art movements too.
Profiles of various modern artists, French and non-French, on the Art Story.
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For versification, see this explanation of masculine and feminine rhymes and an example of the French sonnet structure.
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