Organisez votre temps d'apprentissage du français | Podcast en français COURANT avec sous-titres.

Hello and welcome to the podcast Fluidité, episode 123. Today we are going to talk about learning strategies. You will see how to organize your learning time, whatever your level. So stay tuned! Before starting, I invite you to join our VIP club. This is my Patreon page where you have material to deepen my content and become better in French. For example, for each content I make, you have bonuses like the vocabulary list, bilingual transcriptions, the audio version and a private group course where I explain the grammar of the contents. The VIP club is also a large community with more than 300 members, 300 learners. And we talk together every day on the Telegram group and on the Discord server. We do different activities to practice French. So you can also practice your French, find or share resources with other students, other learners. And it's very important for you to not feel alone in your learning and to always be motivated. So you have the link on podcast platforms and on YouTube to sign up for the VIP club and you can stay as long as you want. Come with pleasure! In the description of the episode, you also have the YouTube video version, if you listen to me in audio, with subtitles in French or in other languages to improve your oral comprehension. And you also have the free transcription in French in the description. To be able to speak fluently, how do you organize your learning time in French according to your level, if you are a beginner, intermediate or advanced? This is a question that I am often asked, so I decided to answer it in this episode to make everyone benefit from it. How long does it take to listen, read, speak, write and study grammar? That's what we're going to see together today. So I think you know it, but speaking fluently and fluently is the most difficult skill in a language because you have to find the right words, put them in the right order, conjugate verbs well, etc. We don't have a lot of time to think and it has to be spontaneous. Whereas when you write, you can take the time to look in your head or in resources, vocabulary, conjugations, grammar and everything you're going to use. But to speak, it's hard to talk to someone and ask them to wait because you're looking for the word in the dictionary or the conjugation of a verb. In general, the person in front of you will not wait for you to find the word. It has already happened to me to take out my smartphone in the middle of a conversation to look for a word while speaking to a Mexican. I know they are very patient and very understanding, so I was able to afford it. But it's not always feasible. So to speak fluently, you have to be sure of what you're going to say and you absolutely have to know the words, the conjugations, the structures, the prepositions, etc. You have to remember all this information, all the language. And it's a huge amount of information, but really huge. And that's why it's so difficult. So we're going to start by talking about the beginner level. For my part, for three weeks, I've been learning Greek. So I'm a beginner. But I don't learn to speak it, I just learn to understand it. Because I don't need the language in my daily life. I learn it by passion and to test different methods. And I did the same with other languages. I love Greece and we might go on a trip with my wife. But that's not why I'm learning to understand Greek. It's also because it's a language that has built words in other languages, so it seems interesting to me. Anyway, for three weeks, I've been doing 100% immersion in Greek. So listening and reading simultaneously. It's a language that is completely different from the languages ​​I already know. So when I started three weeks ago, I didn't know any words. And as a result, I didn't understand anything at all, but really nothing. Not even the word yes or the word no. Whereas when I started Italian, I already understood well thanks to French and Spanish. So I didn't start with a level of understanding of zero. But here in Greek, I have to learn a lot of vocabulary. Even to be able to understand very, very simple things. It's as if I were a one-year-old child who was trying to understand his new world. That means that at my beginner level of zero, I would be unable to speak. So if I were to live in Greece now, it would be complicated to speak Greek. So at my level, the most effective and relevant thing is to listen and read at the same time. To gradually understand words thanks to translation. I could study grammar, but I don't do it. Because I have so much vocabulary to understand that it would be a waste of time. Since I already spend 30 minutes a day trying to decipher simple sentences. And it's already mentally difficult and very tiring. So if you are a beginner of zero, you will have to spend most of your learning time listening and reading at the same time. It will be difficult to speak if you have not yet memorized the language. Except for the basics, hello, goodbye, thank you, etc. But very often you learn French because you want to live in France, Switzerland or Quebec for example. So some of you arrive in the country as beginners and have to speak French in their daily lives. In this case, you will have to speak. And it will be difficult at first, but you will do your best. So you don't have to speak from the start. I think it's better to wait a bit before speaking if you don't have to. A bit like children. As a beginner, we will spend our learning time listening and reading. To understand at first and naturally memorize the language. I repeat, you will need to understand and memorize a huge amount of vocabulary. So you have to start doing it as soon as possible and as much as possible. When you learn a foreign language for the first time, you don't realize the astronomical amount of things you will have to memorize. On the subject of grammar, the theoretical rules of the language. If we explain the theory to you without you having experience because you are a beginner, you will not have context and the rules will not make sense to you. It's like in all disciplines, you learn the theory as you progress. So grammar can wait for later, it's not the priority. And if you spend 100% of your time studying grammar, you will spend 0% of your time in immersion. And that's a big problem. Despite everything, there are methods that allow you to fly over the grammar, so to study it briefly, like Assimil or Michel Thomas for example. So you can try to fly over this grammar at the rate of once or twice a week, but without going into detail or sacrificing your immersion time. Pay special attention to the very academic group courses that are made for those who want to take an exam and who have very precisely measured levels like A1.2 or A2.2++ etc. In these courses, they teach you very precise grammar with all the exceptions, while you still can't understand the basic language. So I would say that if your personal situation allows it, you can wait a little before speaking. And above all, train yourself to understand by listening and reading, and you will also memorize the language as a result. You can also add a few minutes of flashcards, like with MosaLingua. It's still immersion. But if you live in France or in a French-speaking country, you will have to speak, so you will have to do your best to say a few basic words and move forward little by little. That's why it's better to prepare for the language as soon as possible before moving to a country, at least 6 months before and the sooner the better. I've already been told, I'm going to France in 15 days, I need to know how to speak. But it's too late to do miracles. So you can speak from the start, some prefer, but think about listening and reading a lot to understand, assimilate and memorize the language. Because anyway, if you don't understand anything when the person speaks to you, you won't be able to answer them. As you become an intermediary in understanding and assimilation of the language, you will have to practice more and more. Because to speak well, you have to talk a lot. You have to train a lot. To start practicing your oral, the best thing is to do it with a professional, like the tutors on my website, LeFrenchOutai, with someone who will be patient, tolerant with your mistakes, who will want to communicate with you first, talk about your passions, but who can still correct you. Because when speaking to someone, you will also hear him speak, so the dialogue is an exchange. It will help you to speak and listen, to practice and immerse yourself. You can also write a little, like an intimate journal for example, it will help you find the words and build your sentences, so it's also useful for the oral. Being an intermediary, you have to learn grammar. It is thanks to it that you will optimize your oral speech, find the right preposition, conjugate the right verb at the right time and to the right person, set the time, etc. It is grammar that will take you to the advanced level. It is thanks to it that you will refine your language, but you will have to continue to immerse yourself, so continue to listen or read, because you will still have essential vocabulary to learn or strengthen. You can start to separate the two activities and do only reading or only listening for example. You must have a lot of varied contact with the language, that is to say, use it in your daily life, in different uses, for research on the internet, in your work, in your personal relationships, etc. So the ideal would be to share your time between immersion, grammar and practice. About 20% of the time on grammar, 40% for immersion and 40% of the time for practice. By going to the advanced level, you will have less and less essential vocabulary to memorize. The new vocabulary that you will meet will be mostly useful only for your understanding. So being at the advanced level, you will have to continue to listen or read difficult content to maintain your level and progress a little bit, but it is less necessary than before. On the other hand, you will have to practice as much as possible and increase the time spent doing daily activities in French. So it would be good to spend, for example, 80 or 90% of the time practicing and using French. At this level, you should already know most of the grammar, but do not hesitate to review a rule if you have ever forgotten it. Even the most expert people in a field review the theory, but only when it is necessary. In summary, we start with a lot of immersion that we reduce as we progress, and it is the opposite with practice. We increase it as we progress. For grammar, we can start by overcoming it at the beginning, but it will be necessary to study it at the intermediate level to pass the plateau and then review it as many times as necessary. That's how I advise you to organize yourself. If your goal is to speak French fluently, of course, everyone has different conditions, so maybe you won't be able to follow these indications. But I wanted you to understand the general idea so that it helps you as much as possible. Thank you everyone for watching or listening to this episode. I hope you have learned a lot of things and French. Listen again several times to assimilate and improve your understanding. And if you have stayed until now, the episode has interested you, so put a like, otherwise tell me why in the comments and subscribe to my podcast and my YouTube channel. Bye, see you soon!