What does it take to succeed in this dive?

Like studying any foreign language, to succeed with French, you will need to spend a lot of time reading, writing, speaking, and listening. These four skills together will help you to master French.

This shouldn’t be too hard to learn because French is considered easy for English speakers. The hardest part for most is the conjugation, which varies to match the subject of the sentence. It may seem like a pain to remember all of the conjugation endings, irregular verbs, and varied tenses, but there are patterns to follow and songs to help memorize patterns. In addition, like all romance languages, there are genders for nouns: some words are masculine, while others are feminine. Becoming familiar with these is a matter of time and practice, and then you’ll be a French whiz!

For those who really wish to master the language, they should make the commitment to make the pursuit of French a lifelong hobby.  Every day, more and more people are learning French, so it will be time well spent.

You will have to find good study materials, good teachers, and good practice partners. More importantly, however, you will have to find the discipline to study and practice and improve regularly. If you don't study regularly, you won't make much progress, or worse, you'll make lots of progress and then forget what you've learned!

The secret to fluency (since we know you want to know) is quite simple: master reading, master writing, master speaking, master listening, improve your pronunciation, and improve your vocabulary. The issue is that most people don't actually do any of these tasks well.

You see, most people only focus on one or two of these skills, or they focus on all six, but at a very cursory level. If you wish to become fluent, however, you need to focus on all six, all the time, and spend enough time with each so that you see regular progress.

Bottom line, if you want to become fluent, do this:

  1. Read 20 minutes a day in French, and from varying sources

  2. Listen to French TV and radio every day

  3. Write a new essay or short story every week and get it corrected

  4. Speak weekly with others, and ideally those who can correct your mistakes

  5. Make sure your pronunciation is as spot on as can be

  6. Improve your vocabulary constantly

Do these things regularly, and within 4 - 7 years, you can almost certainly become fluent in French. The question is: will you actually do these things? Ahh, that is the question. We hope you will!