TouteFrance

Some readers of this blog may know that I studied French at university, which without revealing my age, was quite a while ago. At the time my French was quite fluent having spent a year in Toulouse as an ‘assistante’ and also having a few jobs in France afterwards.

Since living and working back in the UK for the last 15 years, I’ve had to find other ways of keeping it up. I have a few French friends but don’t get to see them that often as they don’t live locally and my husband doesn’t speak French so can’t really practice much when I do see them!  I do, however, go to a French class most weeks which is a French conversation group where we more or less talk about anything in French, with help from our teacher. Over the last few years that I’ve been going, it’s really helped to maintain my French. But the challenges come when I don’t go for a while and this week proved that not having been since the end of June means my French was already a bit rusty!

The hardest thing I find is remembering vocabulary, especially words I don’t use very often. The grammar isn’t such a problem although I do make mistakes but pretty much remember the grammar as it was hammered into me at school/university. My French teacher at school was so good that nobody in my class failed the ‘O’ Level (that’s showing my age!) and she inspired me to carry on with it.

So what do you do to keep up your French? As someone not living in France who doesn’t get to visit as often as I’d like, do you have any tips that you think have helped you to maintain your language skill away from the country, particularly any good French radio stations that can be picked up over the internet. Any tips are gratefully received!

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