6 Top tips

What are your best tips for learning French vocabulary?

So, a few tips for learning French vocabulary. I always found it easier to remember vocabulary connected with things that interest me. So, I’m very interested in classical music and I teach the piano, so I found it quite easy to remember the type of vocabulary that might crop up in French classical music. Although that’s pretty niche I guess! I also really like to travel, so vocabulary around booking a hotel or choosing from menus really stuck in my mind. But my absolute top tip would be to always try to learn the gender at the same time as you learn the noun.

One major piece of advice is to make sure you always learn the article with the item, so write them both on any stickers or labels, so that you learn the gender of the item at the same time.

If you watch French films, you expose yourself to new vocabulary. That’s a way of learning the language. And most importantly, write it down. So, whatever vocabulary you come across, just make sure that you write it down or keep a note of it somewhere, and keep referring back to it.

What strategies can you use as a beginners’ French learner to memorise vocabulary?

As a learner, I would say that in order to memorise vocabulary, it’s really important that you keep a record of it somewhere. I would say write it down in a notebook. It could be on flashcards. Ask somebody to test you on these, or test yourself even. Just keep referring back to these.

Practise, practise, and practise. Use the words. Say them out loud. Write them down. Sing them. Shout them! Get used to hearing yourself saying them and envisaging what the words mean in an imagined conversation. Once you've learned enough vocabulary, you'll find you can start to construct some conversation. If you know someone else who’s learning French too, practise with them. You’ll be doing each other a favour getting used to speaking and listening and responding to the words.

There’s probably a few strategies that you can incorporate as a beginner when you’re trying to memorise vocabulary. I think it’s easier to try and memorise the vocabulary in groups of subjects, rather than a random list of words. And if I’m learning nouns, then I want to learn them in context. So maybe try to learn a noun within a sentence, so that you learn the other vocabulary that might go with that noun. For me it just seems to stick better that way.

What are the general learning strategies that you’d recommend?

So, if you’re a new learner of French, there’s a few strategies that you can adopt and develop. The best one is probably ‘little and often’. Try and have some exposure to French every single day. Maybe watching a film in French – even with subtitles is absolutely fine. Maybe listen to something on the radio – there are loads of radio stations available online. Or try to read something in French – maybe it’s a news story that you’ve already read in English, and then read it again in French. And perhaps try to write something out, even if it’s only a ‘to do’ list, or a list of vocabulary that you want to learn.

I think one of the main strategies is to enjoy it! It is new and different, and you need to enjoy the fact that you are going to be challenged. It’s a bit like going into a gym for the first time. There are lots of machines and you need to learn to use them so that you can achieve your goal. It’s quite scary! In learning French, you will need to do a lot of learning, and then a lot of repetition of that learning. Just like in the gym, it's a great workout for the learning muscles in your brain! You will be learning new words; learning the grammar; learning pronunciation; how to write and type the words and full sentences; how to listen, and hear the language being spoken. Once those learning muscles get going, they'll start to remember the routine, and you’ll be able to add more and more, and it’ll become more and more enjoyable and motivating. So: practise, practise, and practise. The more you do, the sooner it sinks in, and the sooner you gain competency to achieve your language learning goals.