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How to Learn French by Making it Fun

Articles By Dr. Dennis Dunham

If you’re learning French, you should have some passion for the language. If you’re listening to a tape that has you saying “Hello. How are you?” over and over again, you may well find yourself getting bored with this beautiful language. Sometimes it’s very helpful to learn a language in the context of a story. It’s not too hard to understand why this is the case when you think about it. After all, people even learn fictional languages used in sci-fi to the point of fluency for one reason alone: they’re attached to the story.

Learning the French language through a story is more of an experience than a language class. In a way, you’re tricking your brain into learning by keeping it amused. Instead of a robotic voice repeating phrases over and over, you hear French spoken between people who are involved with one another, with the premise of the story and who, because you’re experiencing their lives viscerally, are important to you. You hear the language spoken in casual tones, in persuasion, in sorrow, joy and anger, which helps you to develop an ear for the words being said, no matter what the context.

You’ll also find that adding some excitement to the story makes it a much easier affair. Experiences that get us excited tend to cement memories in our brains for life. When you hear people speak French during a high point in a story’s action, you may well forget that they’re speaking French at all and just start understanding what they’re saying. If you’ve ever wondered what becoming fluent feels like, that’s a good description. At some point, you’ll just hear the words and not have to translate them in your head anymore. That can take years if you’re just learning by rote.

If you want to know how to learn French more quickly than that, storytelling is a great example. When you care about the characters and what happens to them, you’ll find yourself skipping over your frustration to understand what they’re actually saying. Because you’re figuring it out for fun, it doesn’t feel as tedious as it does when you’re just doing it to pass a quiz or to learn a boring phrase. You’ll also get a chance to learn sentence structure, when to use the casual and formal forms, and much more very quickly.

Learn French without Trying …..Really?

It probably sounds a bit Zen to do something without trying. There is a reason, however, that such concepts are oftentimes part of very ancient and wise traditions. The idea is that, by not expending the energy on the effort, you’re able to spend the energy on actually performing the task. Where learning French  is concerned, you’ll be glad to know that this means learning the language without boring audio programs that contain thousands of phrases repeated over and over again.

This is not the same thing as subliminal learning. In that philosophy, you learn something without directly hearing or seeing it. The idea behind learning French without really trying is to hear a lot of French being spoken in specific contexts. The spoken French is written around a real story, however. This means that when you hear a phrase repeated over and over, it’s because it’s simply a very common phrase: “Hello”, for instance, or “Thank you very much”. This doesn’t eliminate the work from learning French; it makes that work a lot more fun.

There are a lot of subtle aspects of language. French, specifically, has very unique rules involving spelling and grammar. This means that reading the language before you speak it—or as a means of learning to speak it—is usually pretty counterproductive. It also means that speaking before you’re ready is a very bad idea. If you think you know a lot of French Words because you read them without hearing them spoken, rest assured that you’re wrong. This language sounds unlike any other and, before you speak, you need to sit back, relax and enjoy the experience of listening to it spoken. This is one of the rare cases where sitting back and relaxing is very productive.

You’ll find that the more you relax and listen to the story the faster you’ll learn. This is because you’re learning the French language by hearing characters you have an attachment to speak it. It’s much more engaging to listen to an actual character speak than it is to listen to someone just blandly recite phrases. Some people like to listen to these materials in their vehicles, as it’s a nice, solitary place to listen to a story. Others may want to sit down for some peace and quiet and listen to the story. Learning French music can also help you learn by relaxing.

Using the Right Brain to Learn French

If you know anything about the French, you know they have a proud tradition of art. Art, of course, is more connected to the right brain than the left and it’s only appropriate that it’s easier to learn French by using this part of your brain. In fact, the same can be said of any language. The right brain does not judge, does not deconstruct and functions more on intuition and emotion than does the left. To stimulate this part of the brain, art is called for. The art of storytelling is a good way to go about it.

Where languages are concerned, there are numerous ways to learn. French is rather predisposed to being learned by listening to people converse. The French tend to blend one word with the next and, if you’ve only seen the language written, you’re in for a surprise when you hear it spoken. French has a musical quality to it-it’s often described as one of the most attractive of European languages-and this is something you can learn to understand by hearing it over and over again. Hearing it over and over again, however, should be enjoyable.

Hearing an engaging story is a good way to learn French. When we hear stories, our right brain is stimulated to create images that go along with those stories. We also experience the fear, joy, disappointment and accomplishments of the protagonists by hearing stories. All of this takes the process of learning out of the left brain-think memorization and critical thought when you think about the left brain-and transfers it to our right brain, where we create instead of assess. The creative process is very effective for teaching people new things.

Learning French should expand your mind, not pin you down with endlessly boring rote exercises. You can learn how to say “Hello”, “Good Evening” and “Thank you” by listening to people use those phrases in real life situations much more quickly than you can by memorizing them with no context. Instead of trying to remember what was said on a page, you’ll be remembering what a person said in a similar situation when it comes time to use your new French language skills. You’ll also know pronunciation very well, as you’ll have heard a word pronounced over and over again in different contexts, rather than all at once.