[Dr. Worm]

Hey everybody, I need some advice. I am a fluent spanish speaker looking at the possibility of picking up french as a third language, mostly as a means of enhancing my marketability as a secondary teacher. I need to take some college french courses to be eligible to teach it, but this would add a lot of time on to my licensure program, and I would love to be able to pass out of maybe the first two classes (Intro I and II). How realistic would it be to self teach...myself...beginning french, given that I already have a background in romance languages? Or would this not even help me at all? And what is a recommended way to do this as cheaply as possible?

[Tracy]

Since I mostly learned my French through my preuniversity education, I'm not familiar with the resources available for learning basic French on your own. Perhaps someone else here will be more helpful in that regard, as well as with your other questions. I have found the French site at About.com useful. They seem to have a lot of resources for all levels as well as suggestions for software or books you might use.

Good luck!

[Chrysostom]

Originally Posted by Dr. Worm

Hey everybody, I need some advice. I am a fluent spanish speaker looking at the possibility of picking up french as a third language, mostly as a means of enhancing my marketability as a secondary teacher. I need to take some college french courses to be eligible to teach it, but this would add a lot of time on to my licensure program, and I would love to be able to pass out of maybe the first two classes (Intro I and II). How realistic would it be to self teach...myself...beginning french, given that I already have a background in romance languages? Or would this not even help me at all? And what is a recommended way to do this as cheaply as possible?

See if there is some sort of accelerated course you could audit at a local university. Normally an accelerated course will compress the first two semesters into one, and obviously an audit will make it a lot cheaper. The most important thing for you, assuming you put in the work to memorize everything, will be getting used to the pronunciation, which is very different from Spanish.

Also, you should be able to find a book called 501 French Verbs at a used bookstore.

[Grasshopper359]

Originally Posted by Dr. Worm

Hey everybody, I need some advice. I am a fluent spanish speaker looking at the possibility of picking up french as a third language, mostly as a means of enhancing my marketability as a secondary teacher. I need to take some college french courses to be eligible to teach it, but this would add a lot of time on to my licensure program, and I would love to be able to pass out of maybe the first two classes (Intro I and II). How realistic would it be to self teach...myself...beginning french, given that I already have a background in romance languages? Or would this not even help me at all? And what is a recommended way to do this as cheaply as possible?

The best self-study programme on the market to my knowledge is Rosetta Stone. The software is a little bit more money than most self-study packages, but it's a lot more effective. I've done a lot of self-study language programmes, and they're all more or less the same, and produce more or less the same results. I picked up Rosetta Stone for basic Pashto, and decided that the rest were junk. In my opinion, it's worth the extra fifty bucks or so, because it's easier, faster and more effective. It takes a bit of getting used to at first, because there aren't any translation drills, but that's what makes it work. You basically learn the language the same way you learned your first one.