8 Summary of Week 2

This week, your language notebook will probably contain notes about how to say what you dislike, and you may also have started building up some useful vocabulary with all the new words you’ve been learning for the different food and drinks. But remember to be a bit selective: you don’t need to remember every word you come across, just concentrate on the ones that will be important to you.

Think about the way you might group the words you learn. In your notebook you may prefer to keep verbs (you learned the verbs aimer and préférer last week), nouns (naming words like le pain) and adjectives (like italienne, petit for example) in separate sections. Or you might have a section for useful phrases (J’ai horreur des champignons).

You should now consider how you’ll remember vocabulary and find your favorite and most effective way of doing this. It takes practice and repetition to learn a language, and in order to remember vocabulary, French expressions and structures you’ll need to revise frequently and regularly.

One good way for you to remember vocabulary is through the listening activities. When you listen, repeat a phrase such as Je n’aime pas du tout les petits pois. You are not only remembering the vocabulary but you’re also practising the pronunciation, and this is a very good way to build up your vocabulary. By doing the pronunciation activities, you’re also adding to your bank of vocabulary and expressions. So, don’t just write everything down but record yourself speaking and build your listening skills. You can also improve your intonation by varying your pitch when you imitate the voices of the speakers in the recordings.

Before you move on, take some time to check that your language notebook is up-to-date, and reflect a little on what you’ve been doing this week.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University badged course LGXF002 - Beginners French 2: bien sûr! [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .