But what if you want your gap year to also leave you with a practical skill that will put you ahead in the job market?

There’s nothing better than combining your travels with learning a language, and enjoying a year out and learning French could be far easier than you think.

 

Apply your skills widely

Of course, the best way to make sure your knowledge of French is broad is to come up with new ways to challenge yourself. Go to the cinema during your year out and don’t look at English subtitles, visit a gallery and ask for the audio description, read magazines and books while you’re away – even if you have to buy them in the kiddies’ section.

By picking up cheap flights to Paris, Marseille, or even to the French countryside and embarking on a year out, you could be saving yourself years of trying and failing to learn French.

Classroom experience vs Life experience

It’s true that you could learn a lot in a classroom, especially if you have a good teacher, but there’s nothing like immersing yourself in a language and its culture for improving your spoken ability. Nothing will make you learn faster than being out there practising in real world situations.

Plus, let’s be honest – the classroom isn’t for everyone. Many people struggle to pick up French in a classroom environment, whether it’s because they don’t get the individual attention they need or the pace of the class is too slow or too fast.

Prepare before you go

A year out in France, Canada or Switzerland is an excellent incentive for starting to get your head around the language, so you’ll find it’s easier for you to start honing your skills when you have something to prepare for. Imagine how nice it will be to be able to converse freely when you arrive, and start studying before you go.

Choose your own methods

When you’ve taken learning French into your own hands, you can choose which methods suit you best and these can be very easily integrated into a year out. From audio books to lessons you can download onto your MP3 player, it’s easy to match your methods to your lifestyle and you’ll be able to tailor them to the type of holiday you’ll be taking.

Thanks to the people at FrenchPod 101 and to everyone who entered. If you’d like to claim a free trial of FrenchPod101, sign up here.

I’m a big fan of FrenchPod101 because they podcasts to teach you French – which means you can take it with you wherever you go and learn at your own pace. Plus, the Premium level users get access to amazing features like coaching calls with professional French instructors and a tailor made learning curriculum. Check out FrenchPod101 and sign up for a free 7 day trial account here.

How To Win

Post a comment below on what you would do if you could speak perfect French! It’s that simple. I will also pick a runner up at random who will win a free Basic monthly subscription.

You can be funny, creative, thought-provoking – but be quick, the contest ends Wednesday, October 6th. I will announce the winner the following day.

Be sure to use your real email address when you leave your comment as that is how I’ll be notifying the winner.

What are you waiting for? Leave your comment below and sign up for a free 7 day trial of FrenchPod101 now.

I had always wanted to participate in a French immersion program. I had always wanted to but didn’t really think it would ever happen. The plane ticket alone to Europe was enough to quell my dreams, not to mention housing, tuition, and miscellaneous living expenses once I arrived there.

And then came Ste. Anne.

Growing up in south Louisiana, where most people have Acadian heritage, I had heard about the summer immersion program at Université Sainte Anne in Nova Scotia; however, I really didn’t know much about the program until the director, Jean-Douglas Comeau, came to my French class one day to make his pitch.

He was a short, sturdy man well into his years, who definitely looked and sounded French. He knew just what to say – the exact words to gain our full attention. Everything he described was what I wanted in an immersion program:

• five weeks of French 24/7
• classes in the morning and activities every afternoon/evening
• possible credit transferred back to your home school (for high school or college students)
• and affordability!

The program requires a $150 deposit to reserve a spot in addition to the $2,300 program fee (paid in increments), but participants can cancel up to just a few weeks before and still receive a FULL refund because there is always another person ready and waiting to take their place. The program fee is all-inclusive: the price for room, board, classes and other activities! In addition, most participants don’t spend more than $200 for miscellaneous expenses during the entire five weeks. AND, a plane ticket from Louisiana to Canada was a lot cheaper than one across the pond.

I left class that day with newly-found hope. This program sounded great and was one I could afford. I immediately called several friends who had done the program themselves or knew others who had. Their words confirmed my desires. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” they all said.

Several months later I found myself on a plane from New Orleans to Nova Scotia, excited about my first time setting foot on Canadian soil. I arrived at the Halifax Airport and discovered several other program participants. We chatted in the terminal while waiting for the rest of the group to arrive and then piled into the blue and white school bus the university uses for round-trip service from the Halifax Airport to Church Point (it costs $100 each way and is well worth the price for the ~ 2-3 hour trip).

Arriving At Saint Anne

View from the Université St. Anne Campus.

We arrived at the university in the evening. The setting was beautiful with the campus shrouded in fog. The university lies next to a rocky beach, with a little wooded area and marshland in between. There’s even a lighthouse nearby where evening campfires are held and marshmallows are roasted.

Next door is Sainte Mary‘s Church, the tallest wooden building in North America, which hosts Sunday masses (completely in French of course). We were given our room assignments, rules and other paperwork, and had the rest of the evening and the next day to explore. We took placement tests the next day and spoke with each other as much as possible in English before the welcoming ceremony. This is when all program participants sign a pledge that says they will not speak English for the rest of the program (except in designated areas around campus when calling home)! The first few hours of “complete French” after the ceremony were quite amusing with more than half of the room at a sudden loss for words. But we quickly learned how to get by with synonyms and resorted to over-the-top hand gestures when our vocabularies failed us.

Of the three levels, Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced, I was placed in Intermediate 1, and attended classes each weekday morning from 8am-12pm. In the middle of each class we went to the light-hearted and much-anticipated “session d’information,” a 20-minute break consisting of hilarious skits, songs and updates about the afternoon and evening activities each week.

After class I joined friends in the cafeteria for lunch and relaxed a bit until it was time to go to “ateliers,” or workshops, around 2pm. Like class, everyone is required to participate in ateliers as it gives you a great chance to increase your vocabulary and practice using your French while doing something fun. I chose Tai Kwon Do, but there were plenty of other options such as music, art, conversation, scrapbooking, gardening, and dancing.

Life On Campus At Sainte Anne

Late afternoons and early evenings were often spent relaxing, attending short afternoon excursions to historical sites around the area, trips to the nearby grocery store or Frenchy’s (similar to a Canadian version of our Goodwill, only better!) On weekends, there were even more activities like canoeing, whale watching, longer sight-seeing trips, and, at night, themed soirees! Everyone really enjoyed getting into costume and heading to “Le Chateau,” the on-campus bar, for Soiree Hawaiian, 50’s, Graphic T-shirt, and Halloween.

In all, my five weeks at l’Universite Sainte Anne were some of the best in my life. I didn’t know anyone before I arrived, yet I left just a few weeks later with life-long friends and a wealth of French knowledge. But the best part about my experience at Sainte Anne was that it taught me not to be afraid of making mistakes and to just speak en français!

Guest post by Ashley Herrick. Check out her wonderful blog, Life In The French Alps, to follow her journey as she prepares for her move from Louisiana to Annecy, France to be an English teaching assistant.

“I wish there had been an emphasis on learning a foreign language where I grew up. It frustrates the hell out of me. I’ve studied French. I don’t speak it. I’m working on it. It’s real slow going. Oh, how I suffer. Those synapses never formed.”

So next time you’re tempted to give up on your French, remember you’re not the only one struggling. Learn French is tough even for Hollywood’s biggest stars. And ladies, just think, if you ever meet Brad in person you can bond over your French language frustrations!

In the second part of the article he quotes a few eloquent reasons to learn French that I wanted to share with you:

“We also know from research and experience that acquiring another language makes students better problem solvers, unleashing their ability to identify problems, enriching the ways in which they search and process information, and making them aware of issues and perspectives that they would otherwise ignore.”

“Learners of languages, by exposing themselves to other cultures and institutional arrangements, are more likely to see differences of opinion and conflicts by approaching a problem from perspectives that incorporate the values and norms of others as well as their own. Knowledge of other languages also fosters tolerance and mutual understanding.”

“Learning a language exercises the mind and enriches the spirit. It is a fundamentally humbling process by which students learn that their culture and way of expressing it are relative, not absolute. That perspective makes them more open to other points of view, and more likely to avoid one-size-fits-all solutions to the problems of the world.”

The emphasis is mine, I couldn’t have said it better myself.

I hope you have some serious time set aside, because www.imagiers.net features 7666 instructional French videos, over 25,000 French words on MP3, printable exercises, free learn French software, podcasts, and much much more. And it’s all FREE!

The more advanced French speakers out there might find the site a little basic, bot for everyone else I would highly recommend checking it out.

Let’s take a look at the two programs and see how they measures against the other on different levels.

Interactive Learning

Both courses offer lessons in interactive audio format. Rosetta Stone comes as a software you can install on your computer, as well as in an “Audio Companion” format of either CDs or MP3s. Since I had the lessons available on MP3, I could access them in the gym, on the bus, or anywhere else I had a few minutes to spare. The MP3 option was a great choice.

Rocket French lessons come in 31 audio CDs, complete with lesson transcripts that let you follow with your eyes whatever it is you’re hearing. You can also access the same audio material in MP3 format – which as I mentioned above, I found useful.

Another thing I liked about Rocket French was the games. They help you learn French without making it feel like you’re sitting in a classroom. The package includes three games to build vocabulary, grammar, and sentence construction skills. This helped bring the interactivity to another level.

Winner: Both packages offer interactive formats in MP3, which is great for a person like me who is on the go a lot. I would give a slight advantage to Rocket French here because of the games they offer.

Fair Price

Rosetta Stone French is offered in a number of different packages. Their most basic learn French software starts at $259. Their complete learn French package costs $549.

Rocket French is offered in two packages – the MP3-only version at $99 and the complete package for $299.

Winner: Rocket French was the clear winner in the pricing department. I opted for the MP3-only version of Rocket French and saved $159 as compared to the basic Rosetta Stone package.

Speaking French Quickly

Most people I’ve known who want to learn French are doing so in order to actually be able to speak French. In other words, they might appreciate the importance of things like grammar, but they are really considered with conversing with someone in French.

Understanding what a native speaker is saying, how they’re saying it, and getting a grasp of what they actually mean is important to give you the confidence to open your mouth and start speaking French.

Rocket French presents its lesson in a very French way – exactly like a real French conversation in France would go. You’ll learn what to say in common situations such as how to introduce yourself, greet others, ask questions, or ask for directions. As you go up the lessons, you retain previous learning because you need to draw on your store of stock knowledge to make progress with the present lessons. In other words, Rocket French lessons are not presented independently but chronologically, as part of an entire package. The lessons start small and simple and progress in difficulty as the learner advances in knowledge level.

Rosetta Stone’s French package will teach you French, but it will do so in a much slower way. It is also less focused on getting to speaking French right away. The pace of learning was quite frustrating at times, as I found myself being forced to learn terms I would never really use in the real world.

Winner: If learning French fast is a concern, I would recommend Rocket French. Rosetta Stone will teach you the same material, just a lot slower.

Overall Winner

Rocket French was the clear winner in the price and learning fast categories, and a narrow winner in the interactive learning category. Overall, if you want to learn French fast – I would strongly recommend Rocket French.

• In-depth French instructions with four levels.
• 850 hours of French instruction.
• Speech recognition software.

And is the software used by the FBI to teach their agents French! How cool is that!

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Looking for the easiest and the quickest way to learn French? Aren’t we all! While the prospect of learning a new language is a great opportunity, the challenge can feel daunting. Verb tense, vocabulary, idioms, and worse – subject-verb agreement – in French!

Then, when you’ve mastered all relevant theories, you have to learn the language’s twang and special inflections. Not surprisingly, trying to understand spoken French (rapidly spoken, at that) can feel like learning to drive on the left side when you’ve been driving from the right your whole life. It can get even more maddening when your vocabulary is limited and your listening skill is next to nil.

Does all these mean you should nip your desire to learn French in the bud? No. Rocket French is a great solution for people just like you. Acquiring functional mastery of the French language in 30 days for only 30 minutes every day may seem impossible. But with the right program, 30 minutes is more than enough to get the job done. How does Rocket French do it? Here’s the lowdown:

31 Audio Lessons. Language is best learned through the ears, not the eyes. Rocket French presents French in easy-to-follow 31 lesson audio CDs that allow you to interact with an expert teacher who speaks French as a native language.

Contextual Presentation. Worried that you might have to spend endless lessons pouring over grammar rules, verb tenses, and sentence construction? Don’t be. With Rocket French, you learn how to use French right away. Rocket French teaches you what to say and how to say it in actual, real-life French conversations.

Confidence-building Interactive Games. Rocket French includes 3 games to enhance your learning and encourage mastery of the French language.

• MegaAudio helps you recognize and understand spoken French.
• MegaVocab helps you build a powerful French vocabulary.
• MegaVerbs helps you learn French verb rules fast.

These learning enhancement games build your confidence so that you can confidently carry on a French conversation with a native speaker. Best of all, the lessons you learn are in the form of a game so learning won’t feel like a chore at all!

Visually-supported Audio Learning. With Rocket French, you won’t only learn to converse in French fast; you learn how to do it right. In addition to the 31 lesson CDs, the learning package includes the transcripts of each lesson – so you can follow with your eyes whatever it is you’re hearing. With audio and visual aids, lesson retention is made easier!

45 Grammar Lessons. You can’t say you have learned a language without a grasp of grammar. Rocket French includes a comprehensive yet surprisingly easy-to-understand grammar lessons to complete your understanding and appreciation of the French language. After all, grammar is as important as correct pronunciation and diction.

The Verdict. I recommend Rocket French. It delivers on its promise. Best of all, it not only teach you to speak French fluently; it helps you acquire a level of proficiency on par with that of the average French speaker!

Learning a new language is no walk in the park. But with the right tools at your disposal, you can cultivate a French tongue (perhaps even French sensibilities!) faster than the Donald can do a comb-over! Best of all, Rocket French is affordable – so yes, you can learn French with the speed of a rocket without killing your pocket.

Thanks Shawn for the Rocket French review! You can also read my Rocket French review here.