# How to move from intermediate to advanced French



## LeifGoodwin

I lived in Montreal for two years, that was thirty years ago, and for the last six months I have been revising my French to upper intermediate level using Duolingo, Anki and podcasts. I spend several hours a day on French. How can I carry on once the Duolingo course is complete? My brain tends to skip details, such as spelling, or word endings, which is why I like a basic course eg Duolingo, which picks up on the little things including false assumptions. And it has helped with constant repetition, to stick something into memory. My goal is to get to conversational level ie such that I can speak on most subjects in a general manner as per my English. I have no need to sound educated or learned, or to have deep knowledge of subjects. Thus I know le merle, le moineau and le pivert, but I don’t worry about birds such as jackdaw or red kite. General fluency with common day to day idioms is enough. 

Incidentally, I hate novels, but I’m fine with non fiction such as general history and popular psychology. However buying such books in England is not easy. I don’t have an opportunity to speak with native speakers, sadly.


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## Yendred

Take French courses with a human teacher.


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## LeifGoodwin

Yendred said:


> Take French courses with a human teacher.


Ideally yes, but I can’t really afford to do that. I already pay for a weekly ice skating lesson, and hockey sessions, and I won’t drop those. 🙂 As I might take that approach if the stock markets improve, in a year or two, how would I know if a teacher is capable other than spending money?

As an aside when I was in Montreal, there was a club called Moitié Moitié, half the time we spoke French, and half English, with very low fees.


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## Red Arrow

Read a lot of French and listen a lot to French. Learn every new word you encounter more than once, unless you think that word has no use to you. For instance, I am not going to learn bird names in French because it has no use to me. I only know the basic or easy ones like une cigogne, un pigeon, un canard, une oie, un aigle, un faucon, une poule, une dinde, un vautour, un hibou and un pic(-vert). On the other hand, I know basically all common names (les noms vulgaires) for beetles in French. (This might seem impossible, but it's only about 20 words... French doesn't care much about entomology compared to Dutch or English)


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## Yendred

Red Arrow said:


> une cigogne, un pigeon, un canard, une oie, un aigle, un faucon, une poule, une dinde, un vautour, un hibou and un pic(-vert)


 
Except _pigeon_, these are rather countryside birds. As a city-dweller, I would add _un moineau, une pie, un merle, une corneille  _


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## rarabara

hey, I wonder  whether you might have any linguistic lackness in your native language??
(Some basic contexts : conjunctions, structures, word types , literature/literal writing...etc.)


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## LeifGoodwin

rarabara said:


> hey, I wonder  whether you might have any linguistic lackness in your native language??
> (Some basic contexts : conjunctions, structures, word types , literature/literal writing...etc.)


It’s hard for me to answer that, in part because I am not quite sure what you mean. I have a decent standard of English, but no literary pretensions. Whilst I have a PhD, I do not speak like an academic. I have known plenty of people who are bilingual, or even tri or tetra lingual, but speak the languages in an ordinary manner, if that makes sense.


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## rarabara

LeifGoodwin said:


> I am not quite sure what you mean.


I meant the regular information/knowledge preferably  for whom had previously read/worked in a department of any of these (BSc):
---> English language and literature.
---> Turkish language and literature.
---> Arabic language and literature etc. (i.e. grammar of English language)

you may simultaneously have the lackness of your native language's grammar and PhD level of degree. This will definitely not be a surprise to me. 

anyway, please be notified that I have just given a potential probability. I neither allege anything nor do I tease with you.

one further explanation: I think that advanced / excellent level of any language is something which does not have just relevance with hard work but also with culture,so you may need longer times in order to internalize the language in the target. This is my personal idea.


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## Terio

You can also listen to songs and try to learn them, the words, at least. The lyrics are easy to find on the internet. Try classical ones Georges Brassens, Barbara, Jacques Brel, etc. I think it's a good way to catch the rythm of the language. The rhyme is a good way to remember vocabulary. It's just a trick among others, of course


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## merquiades

Yendred said:


> Except _pigeon_, these are rather countryside birds. As a city-dweller, I would add _un moineau, une pie, un merle, une corneille  _


Birds are abstract to me. If you told me to go out and find une pie or une corneille I wouldn't know what exactly to look for. I know they are both black.


LeifGoodwin said:


> Incidentally, I hate novels, but I’m fine with non fiction such as general history and popular psychology. However buying such books in England is not easy. I don’t have an opportunity to speak with native speakers, sadly.


I use an electronic reader and store hundreds of books on it. You can make a search online for these subjects that interest you. There are tons of French books on history and psychology. Then buy them and download them on the reader. You can find any language. I'm hooked. Beats the local bookshops by far. You can even get audio books if you prefer to listen.


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## Yendred

merquiades said:


> If you told me to go out and find une pie or une corneille I wouldn't know what exactly to look for. I know they are both black.


_Pie _(_magpie_) is black and white with blue reflections, while _corneille _(_crow_) is totally black.
_Magpie _is also usually bigger than _crow_.






_Pie (magpie)_





_Corneille (crow)_

But they both belong to corvids, a family of birds that is said to be the smartest birds, similar to apes.


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## jucami

If your goal is conversation, then *listening comprehension* is crucial. You mentioned podcasts and I think those are a great tool for listening comprehension. I have used podcasts as a learning tool in several languages -- not pedagogical podcasts designed for language learners, but real podcasts designed for native speakers. I search until I find a podcast that I find interesting and feels like the right level for me. The less scripted, the better -- the goal is to get used to following real conversations with native speakers. And then I listen to episodes daily, gradually finding that it takes less effort to understand. It's great to listen with the ability to rewind and re-listen, with no social awkwardness if you don't understand everything, and no pressure to respond -- almost the way babies learn their native language, with massive amounts of linguistic input before they even produce their first word.


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## merquiades

Thanks.  I guess I see these birds all the time.  Not magpie/pie/urraca though.  This bird comes to me through literature. The English terms are also abstract in my mind.  There is a swarm of two hundred black birds who like to gather in a tree outside, then they fly away in a group and come back later to roost.  They are the kind that squeal.  As per the picture, I imagine black crows much bigger and more menacing than a corneille though, and with a big beak. This bird doesn't look more than 15 inches long.


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## Red Arrow

Merquiades, you are even more hopeless than me regarding birds  A magpie is well-known for stealing stuff.


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## Yendred

Red Arrow said:


> A magpie is well-known for stealing stuff.


 
La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie)

They are said to steal bright objects, as they are attracted by the reflections. But this might be a legend:
'The thieving magpie'? No evidence for attraction to shiny objects.


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## LeifGoodwin

merquiades said:


> I use an electronic reader and store hundreds of books on it. You can make a search online for these subjects that interest you. There are tons of French books on history and psychology. Then buy them and download them on the reader. You can find any language. I'm hooked. Beats the local bookshops by far. You can even get audio books if you prefer to listen.


Good point, in general I prefer real books, but your suggestion does make sense for learning French.


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## merquiades

LeifGoodwin said:


> Good point, in general I prefer real books, but your suggestion does make sense for learning French.


Yes, yes, I know.  I prefer real books too, but I have learned to appreciate having a book I want to read with me everywhere.  You can even install dictionaries and click for translations or definitions.


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## merquiades

Red Arrow said:


> Merquiades, you are even more hopeless than me regarding birds  A magpie is well-known for stealing stuff.


I think the problem is I grew up with these birds in literature but not in reality.  Birds are different in North America. So I remember robins, owls, bluejays, martins, cardinals, oriols, turkeys, gulls, pheasants but not magpies, corneilles, storks, merles, larks, finches, cormorants, falcons, doves, starlings, tits, turtledoves, cookoos.  So they exist in my imagination from books, films, cartoons etc. but I was not in contact with any of them intimately.


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## LeifGoodwin

merquiades said:


> I think the problem is I grew up with these birds in literature but not in reality.  Birds are different in North America. So I remember robins, owls, bluejays, martins, cardinals, oriols, turkeys, gulls, pheasants but not magpies, corneilles, storks, merles, larks, finches, cormorants, falcons, doves, starlings, tits, turtledoves, cookoos.  So they exist in my imagination from books, films, cartoons etc. but I was not in contact with any of them intimately.


I think it is quite common to know a word, in the sense that you know for example that it represents a bird, or an animal, but you could not recognise it were one to walk across your path. I know the term wedding bands, but I don’t know what it actually means. As another example, Donald Trump has heard the words honesty, integrity, truthfulness, but he doesn’t know the meaning. (That was just a joke, people can make up their own mind about Trump.)


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