I’ve been brushing up my French language skills since mid-August. It’s going well. My grasp of grammar is not as good now as it was in college, but I’ve gotten much better at reading in French, and I’ve learned some new vocabulary. All things considered, I am probably close to the level I was at when I graduated. That’s not bad. Two months of study to refresh a skill that I abandoned more than 25 years ago seems like a small price to pay.
The reason I started studying French again was because I wanted to finish what I had started so long ago. I wanted to finally learn to speak French. I had always assumed that I would someday, but I hadn’t yet as of earlier this year. I was then approaching my 50th birthday and realizing that my supply of somedays was running out. I knew it was now or never, so I started taking lessons online, and now I feel like I am on my way toward my goal.
But what exactly does it mean “to speak French?” At what point do I say, “OK, now I am fluent”? A goal isn’t really a goal without some mark to let you know that you’ve reached it.
What I mean when I say “fluent” is being able to comfortably and competently handle all four basic uses of the language: hearing, speaking, reading, and writing. My goal, then, should be to prove that I can do all of those things. I’m not sure yet how to test my writing skills, but the other three should be simple enough. My plan is to . . .
- Finish all the courses in Babbel. This is the minimum and the easiest, most clearly defined goal.
- Read an important work of French literature (such as Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le Noir or Dumas’s Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) in the original French.
- Watch a French film without English subtitles and understand it well.
- Have a good, long conversation in French with a native French speaker and without feeling like an idiot.
And I will achieve these goals by . . .
- Finishing all the courses in Babbel.
- Continuing to read children’s books in French. I am currently reading Le Lion, La Sorcière Blanche, et L’armoire Magique (Le roman original de C.S. Lewis). The level of writing in children’s books is what’s comfortable for me right now. I will move up to more challenging fiction when I am able.
- Creating lists of vocabulary to memorize from the books that I’ve read. I get a lot of words from context, but I don’t always remember them later, and I depend too much on cognates. I need to get more French words firmly into my head.
- Taking some live online classes so that I can talk to other people in French. Live classes are pricey, though, and I won’t start taking them until I’ve improved my grammar and my vocabulary.
- Watching French films with English subtitles, and watching American films with dubbed French tracks. When I get to a point when English subtitles seem superfluous, I’ll turn the subtitles off.