Are looking to up your French Speaking Skills?

Then this will be the ultimate guide to overcome a real challenge in learning French

Let’s dive right in.

Fine, but how exactly will you do it?

What type of skills are involved?

When learning French, various skills are engaged and needed.

Six to be precise.

Four of them might seem obvious to you as they are well known and they are the most worked on in schools:

1. reading
2. writing
3. listening
4. speaking

However, I would add an extra two to this list: pronunciation and memorization.

Indeed, without them, you cannot actually become fluent in French. They serve as a sort of backbone to everything else. So now that I have told you about the different skills, what you need to know is how to measure them in order to be able to reach your different learning goals and to check your progress as well as your degree of fluency.

In this blog, I will focus on how to measure your French speaking skills.

The latter are definitely extremely important skills that you must practice regularly (and, by this, I mean daily or, at least, as often as possible) and probably the most.

Practicing your speaking will also help with your pronunciation and therefore with your capacity to be understood. Here are 6 ways to measure your French-speaking skill.

1) Pronunciation

Pronunciation represents a very significant part of the speaking skill. Indeed, without a good pronunciation, you can’t fully master your speaking. However, it is important not to get “having an accent” and “mispronouncing words” mixed up. Indeed your accent is part of who you are and, somehow, you should be proud of it when you speak French language (even though, yes, not having a French accent when speaking another language is what we all aim for but this take time to achieve, if ever). Why am I telling you this?

Well, how many people have I seen giving up on learning French simply because they felt ashamed of their native tongue accent? What a shame that is!! So please, don’t get into that mindset. Plus, don’t you find it sexy when someone speaks with a French accent? You do?… So do I.

Anyway, let’s come back to pronunciation. Why should you measure your progress in that area? The main reason for this is because a poor pronunciation can prevent your meaning from getting across and it can make your conversation rather obscure and confusing.

How can you measure it then?

For me, you have to focus on three main points: articulating clearly, appropriately pronouncing words (especially the ones with an unusual spelling) and intonation.

Now, the question is: how can you progress in these three fields? First, you need to learn French sounds (one letter sounds and two or more letters sounds which often create new sounds altogether). Once you’ll master all the different French sounds, you’ll have to practice them.

To do so, you can listen to French and repeat, record yourself and listen to how you pronounce the words in comparison to how a French native speaker does and adjust your pronunciation. You can also read out loud. Indeed, you’ll realize when you’ll read out loud, rather than in your head, that you might struggle with some words’ pronunciation.

Realizing this will allow you to practice and therefore to progress! Finally, the best thing you could ever do to practice your pronunciation is to speak to a native speaker.

2) Vocabulary

When it comes to vocabulary, it is possible to distinguish two categories of words: the ones belonging to your vocabulary comprehension and the ones pertaining to your vocabulary production. What exactly are these? The first one, vocabulary comprehension, contains all the words you actually understand when reading or listening to French but that you wouldn’t necessarily use yourself.

The second one, vocabulary production, includes all the words you actively say when you speak. When learning French, it is essential to develop a great range of words both in the recognition vocabulary category and in the production one.

How can you measure your skill in this area?

First, you can ask yourself if the words you’re using are precise enough or if you could choose some more appropriate ones. You could also look for synonyms to extend your knowledge and obviously look for the meaning of any new words you don’t know (WordReference is a fantastic online dictionary by the way).

You’ll know you’ve made some serious progress once you’ll be able to use a greater variety of words (without any prompting).

Now, let me quickly give you some practical ideas to help you develop your French vocabulary. First, saying new words (and more generally any word) out loud is a great way to memorize them as, not only, do you practice your speaking and more specifically your pronunciation but you also work on your listening.

Moreover, associating these two skills will help you to visualize, to hear and to remember the words better. Another trick is to write lists of words belonging to the same topics. Indeed, categorizing vocabulary into different themes will help you learn more words.

A great vocabulary exercise (and rather fun too) is to label everything surrounding yourself at home and at work. Doing this will enable you to read and read again the same words (words you’re very likely to use in a conversation as they belong to your everyday life). They will definitely stick in your head!

Another tip I’d give you is to do some mots fléchés (crosswords). Not only is this a rather entertaining way to learn new words, it will also help you measuring your progress as you can increase the crosswords’ difficulty. Finally, it is vital to put the words you’ve learnt into context to give them a tangible meaning.

3) Spoken grammar accuracy

Grammar represents such a big part French.

It actually plays a key role in learning the structure of a language, French in your case. Accurately using it in writing in one thing but doing so when speaking is a totally different matter. Indeed, many students (maybe you included) find it a lot easier to correctly use the various grammar rules (and French does have many…) when writing and totally understand them when reading.

However, when it comes to speaking, many second language learners find it a lot more difficult.

Why is that?

Well, it’s simply because when you speak, when you’re having a conversation, you don’t have as much time to think everything through. You’re on the spot and the grammar lessons you learnt aren’t always automatically coming back to you (well, not as fast as you wish anyway).

What can you do about it?

How can you improve your spoken grammar accuracy?

My first piece of advice is for you to practice, practice, and practice.

An interesting method to enhance your French language accuracy is done in three stages:

1. Noticing
2. Comparing
3. Integrating

What do you have to do?

Well, basically, in the first stage, you have to notice some grammatical characteristics of French. By finding them yourself, you’re more likely to integrate them better.

In the second stage, you have to compare these French grammar rules to the English ones and see what are the similarities and differences. Naming them will also help you memorize them better. Finally, the last stage allows you to transfer the rules from one language to another. This very self-directed learner method is ideal to become responsible for your own learning. To work on your spoken grammar, you can record yourself having a fake conversation about a chosen topic.

Then you listen to it and try to find all (maybe none eh) grammar mistakes. You write them down and state the actual rule next to them.

Next, you repeat the exercise and try to avoid the previous mistakes you made. How can you measure your progress in spoken grammar accuracy? By analyzing and reflecting on your output. You will have reached a great level of accuracy once you’ll be able to name and correct your own mistakes.

4) Communication

This is an extremely important point. Essential even. Indeed, communication is at the core of French learning. You learn French to communicate with people, to open to the world. However, communication is not (only) based on vocabulary and grammar. It goes a lot further than that. Communication is how you get your message across. Therefore, body language, facial expressions and gestures represent a great part of communication.

While learning French, you must realize that yes, of course, you need grammar structures, of course you need to know a lot of words but you also need confidence. Confidence to accept that you are on a journey to become fluent but you’re not there yet. Still, though, you have things to say in French, and you need to be confident enough to accept you’ll make mistakes.

Sometimes, getting your message across passes by finding a different way to make yourself understood. That is communication. I have a little anecdote for you. A friend of mine who is French once met an English guy. Neither of them spoke each other’s language. Well, she spoke a bit of English but he didn’t speak any French. They obviously liked each other (a lot) and had to find a way to communicate and to understand each other.

The beginning of their relationship was mainly based on drawing little pictures and miming what they needed to say. That’s how they started to learn each other language. Beautiful story. Love and language learning all in one! How can you improve your communication skills? Again, by practicing. Imagine a situation (maybe one you will have to live, something you will need to ask to someone) and act (not necessarily in front of people. They could find it a bit weird…). It could be when you’re in your car for example. This will stop you from sounding hesitant or from mumbling under your breath. It will give you confidence.

5) Interaction

What is “interaction”?

Interaction is the capacity to exchange verbally with someone. That means you must be able to speak but also to listen and comprehend. There is no interaction if you haven’t got the ability to listen carefully to someone speaking and to respond appropriately.

In order to check whether or not you are able to interact with someone, you can ask yourself a few questions. Are you able to listen, understand and reply to questions? When someone speaks to you in French, do you give correct responses in the conversation or do you miss the point completely?

To improve your interaction skills, I would definitely advise you to listen to what people tell you as well as to what you actually tell them yourself (this, in order to reflect on your message. Do your words match your thoughts?). You can observe whether or not you’re making progress by checking whether or not you have appropriate responses to others in a conversation.

6) Fluency

Last but not least skill to measure your spoken skills is fluency. It probably is the easiest quality to evaluate. Being fluent means finding it easy to speak, to communicate, to interact in French.

Would you say you feel comfortable when speaking in French?

Do words easily come out?

Is your syntax correct?

If so, you’re likely to be fluent (or, at least, not very far off). Fluency does not happen overnight. It is indeed a long learning journey. It gathers all the skills mentioned previously (pronunciation, vocabulary, spoken grammar accuracy and interaction). It is the result of them all combined together.

Speaking French isn’t always easy to evaluate as so many different skills are actually involved. Measuring your French speaking skills will mainly get you to check whether you can express yourself spontaneously in various situations (personal and professional), if you precisely formulate ideas and opinions, if you answer correctly to questions and if, when you are part of a conversation, you listen and reply accordingly to what is said.

Side Note: Want a light introduction to French grammar and vocabulary? Check Out Our French Course for Beginners

Conclusion

Enjoyed this article?

Which French speaking skills you are facing difficulty and let me know by leaving a quick comment below right now.

We will help you to solve those issues

Struggling to learn French Quickly?

Learning French is a long and difficult journey. For this reason, most people quit before becoming fluent. It’s an absolute shame as, yes, learning French is tough but, it is not impossible!

One important thing to remember before start learning French is that, your learning journey will take you way beyond a simple academic learning. You will discover a new culture, a new way of thinking that will open your mind and change the way you approach life. Learning French will enrich you.

In this blog, I will give you some useful free and useful tips to make sure you can reach your goal of learning French quickly.

Motivation

This might seem obvious but you do need a good reason for wanting to learn French. Indeed knowing exactly why you want/need to speak French fluently and quickly will keep you motivated and focused.

I would advise you to have visuals around your house or simply above your desk, anywhere really as long as you see them every day. You could, for example, write in big bold letters your reasons for learning French and hang them up on the wall or put pictures of Paris on your fridge.

Set yourself goals

One of the most important thing when learning French is to be rigorous and consistent. You must set some time slots in your diary.

Sticking to your schedule is essential. Having a good reason for learning French and being motivated (as mentioned above) will help you to keep on track. Set yourself precise goals. You could maybe decide to study French twice a week for one hour and to read or listen to 15 minutes of French daily.

Get into the routine of doing it so it feels part of your normal everyday life.

To come back to the visuals I mentioned previously, I would advise you to actually write down on your calendar or wherever you write what you have to do for the day the following sentences “French learning journey: 1 hour of studying” / “French learning journey: 15 minutes of daily French reading/listening” and tick them off once you have done it.

It will help you to measure your progress and it will be very satisfying to see that you are managing to stick to your plans!

Be realistic about your goals and about how long it will take you to achieve them

You need to be very clear about what you can and cannot do. For instance, you cannot strongly believe you will be fluent in two weeks because you really want to and you will give it you everything.

No!!

You do have a life and everything that goes with it (work, children, family life…). Learning French quickly is possible but be realistic on what quickly actually means and involves. Think your French language learning journey in stages and plan short and long-term achievable goals.

Find a method to learn French quickly that is effective and works for you

Before starting, try to find your learning style.

How best you can learn French quickly?

We usually count eight different learning styles: logical/mathematical (you enjoy using logic and reasoning), verbal (you need to read a lot and write things down to remember them), visual (using pictures, charts helps you learning), musical/auditory (you prefer sounds and music. You make songs up to remember new vocabulary or grammar rules), physical/kinesthetic (you need to touch or to do play roles), social (you need to be part of a group, a class to share your understanding of things as well as learning from others), solitary (you prefer self- study and concentrate more when learning on your own), combination (your learning style is a combination of these).

Once you will know exactly which method suits you best you will maximise your daily learning journey and you will notice faster progress.

Don’t focus on French grammar

Remember why you’re learning French?

To communicate with people. As an adult learner, you probably don’t want to feel like you’re going back to the good old school days!

And this is exactly how you’ll feel if you start your learning journey with grammar books. Obviously, I am not saying you should avoid learning grammar.

However, I would personally advise you to allow yourself to make grammatical mistakes (you’ll learn from them) as long as you manage to convey your message. This, after all, is the most important thing when you start learning French.

When you’ll gradually be able to make yourself understood by native speakers, you can start polishing your linguistic skills and study grammar in more depth. In other words, relax, take it easy and don’t forget that the most important thing when learning French is to be able to understand people and to make yourself understood. Perfection will come in time.

Remember the importance of French vocabulary

Like I mentioned it above, it is essential to make yourself understood and to understand native speakers when learning French.

To do so, you will need to know a wide range of words. As carrying a bilingual dictionary is not always handy nor practical, you will have to go through the stage of vocabulary learning. And I promise you, it’s not as bad as it seems especially when you know that approximately 70% of French words are similar to English ones (thank you William the Conqueror and your invasion on British soil in 1066!).

I would advise you to make lists of words belonging to the same topic. This will ease your learning and help you memorizing more French vocabulary. For example, you could write a list of the most common words in French, a list of numbers, another one of words needed to introduce yourself…

And, if despite learning your vocabulary lists, one day you’re stuck and you don’t know a word, have a glance at the following website: WordReference. I use it every time I’m unsure about a word or whenever my mind goes blank.

Immerse yourself

This is crucial.

To learn French quickly, you must speak French, think in French, dream in French. French needs to become a very important part of your day. Whether you read French books, watch French films and/or TV, or listen to French music/radio, you must be surrounded by French. French, French, French everywhere!

The best thing would obviously be to visit a French-speaking country to hear native French speakers, their accent and the musicality of the language. But if you cannot go to France just yet, make sure you follow my previous advices!

Speak with French speakers before going to France!

Of course, you’ll get to speak French to French people once in France but practicing speaking French before going over can be very useful as it will get you used to it and it will boost your confidence up!

Your first time speaking to someone in France won’t seem as daunting then! It could be very interesting to speak to local people around you, maybe real native speakers or people who, just like you, have learnt French as a second language.

Indeed, beyond practicing the French language, you will also discover French habits and cultural aspects which is always a bonus before going over there. Enquire about local meetings which gather people who want to speak French or ask your family and friends if they know any French speaker who would want to have a little conversation with you!

Have a French pen pal

To carry on what I was saying about immersing yourself, you could have a pen pal.

This would obviously help you with your actual learning (grammar, vocabulary, syntax) but not only. Indeed speaking to a French person either by letters, on Facebook, Skype, WhatsApp or whichever other way you might prefer would make learning French meaningful.

It would give it a real purpose as well as making it fun.

Don’t be ashamed to make mistakes nor of your accent

Unfortunately, many people give up learning French because they feel stupid either because they don’t perfectly speak (yet) or because they don’t have a perfect French accent.

Realistically, who cares about little mistakes or a strong foreign accent as long as you can communicate?

No one but you.

People will actually envy you as being multilingual is such an amazing achievement and can take you so far in life. It shows true dedication and motivation.

You should be proud of yourself. And don’t forget, everyone actually finds foreign accents and little mistakes cute (if not sexy!).

Dispel that false (but unfortunately so fixed and believed by many) idea that

Do you think learning French is impossible?

Let me be very (very, very) clear: no, French is not that hard and even less impossible to learn.

Learning French is achievable just as long as you are motivated, focused and consistent (which, if you’re reading this, you must be). What makes learning French (or any other language) difficult isn’t grammar, vocabulary nor syntax.

It’s our everyday life and a lack of motivation because yes, as much as you want to become fluent, some days you will not feel like studying, you’ll feel more like watching your favourite TV programme because, let’s face it, you’ve had a long day at work so you do deserve to relax after all.

Well, that’s when an important motivation and a very good learning routine come in. In these wandering moments, remember why you have decided to learn French and go and have a look at that beautiful picture of Paris you’ve put on your fridge!

Don’t give up!

Have you ever been in that awful situation where you’re having a drink (or more likely a meal in France!) with native speakers and conversations are coming from every angle, everyone is talking and smiling and you’re just sat there in your own world pretending you’re part of it all, pretending you understand everything when in fact you clearly do not have a clue what’s going on.

You see people laughing at that joke you’ve not understood so what do you do?

Well, you fake a laugh too hoping no one will ask you anything about it or about anything else for that matter…

This situation is psychologically and physically exhausting but do remember: it will not last forever! You need to keep going, you need to carry on learning and socialising with people. And one day, you will finally get that joke you didn’t understand before, you will gradually grasp more and more of each conversation. And one day, you will speak French fluently.

Never give up and believe in yourself and in your learning capacities!

I hope these 12 tips will help you on your French learning journey and that you will learn French quickly as possible. And remember, French isn’t that difficult to learn.

You’ve got it sorted!

P.S If you want to learn French quickly and easily at a pace that suits you, try out our Beginners course or demo with Amelie Hurford today.