⡇Coucou la communauté des French learners !
Je vais maintenant parler en anglais pour vous expliquer l’approche du Français naturellement et la série de vidéos spécialement pour les débutants ou les « bébés ! »
I am now going to speak in English to tell you more about the approach to acquire French the natural way.
I have carefully designed a series of videos for beginner learners. Those videos are for total beginners to more advanced beginners who want to review the basics. I have called this series Baby Stage.
Why? Because when you were a baby, you probably don’t remember it but you could not speak. Before you ever spoke your first word, you spent a large amount of time, in fact all your wakening time, hearing your first language spoken to you. You listened to the people around you. Your parents and caretakers would talk to you a lot but you could not respond with words. They would talk to you in a way you could understand the gist of what they were saying. They would speak to you in a comprehensible way. This is the first stage of the langage acquisition process.
And exactly the same process applies to any other langages. Your brain is wired to acquire any langages this way. You first need to LISTEN before being able to speak. You need to listen with the intent to understand. When you understand what you hear, your brain is acquiring the new langage. It is a subconscious process. I am pretty sure you don’t remember practicing nor memorizing your first langage when you were a baby? That is because your brain subconsciously absorbed and acquired the new language.
Remember, we are talking about langage acquisition here, NOT language learning. The goal is to acquire French so that it stays in your brain forever.
That is why in this series of videos, I am only going to speak in French. I am going to speak French only and the subtitles of the videos will be in French. I am going to speak French slowly and I am going to use gestures and drawings on the board to help you understand what I am saying.
Your only « job » is to try to understand what I am telling you. NOT to understand everything, but to understand the gist of what I am saying (like when you were a baby!) No need to translate word to word in your head, no need to repeat what I am saying. Remember, speaking will come naturally later when your brain is READY.
In this series of videos, you are going to build a strong foundation. You are going to acquire the most frequent French words and structures used in everyday conversations. These super words and expressions will allow you to communicate in the greatest number of contexts. They will also help you understand the general gist of most conversations. They are super useful!
In each video, you will first listen to the key structure being explained to you. You will then watch a story which uses this key structure in context. After you have watched the video, you can read the story script which includes a glossary of the key words and expressions used in the story. But remember, there is NO need to memorize those words because you will hear them again and again in the next videos!
You will also find a list of other stories suggestions which you can read and listen to. The more you hear French, the more you understand, the more you acquire French.
Sit comfortably, listen, read, try to understand, ENJOY.
Happy Baby Stage! Happy French acquisition!
~ FIN ~
14 thoughts on “Baby Stage – Introduction”
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Absolutely love this! I am so so happy I found you, I can’t wait to go through all your lessons and start absorbing and acquiring the beautiful French language. Mālō e ngāue lahi! This means “thank you for all your hard work” in the Tongan language (my heritage).
Merci Stephanie 🙂 And welcome to the community! Please feel free to contribute and ask questions whenever you have a doubt. Happy French acquisition !
I wasn’t aware until recently that French is the only other language besides English to be taught in every country in the world in schools. That’s amazing! This journey is really opening my eyes how ignorant I am/was as a native English speaker, unfortunately we tend to be lazy and assume everyone knows English. I was also unaware just how strong the case is for learning French above any other language, have a look at this full and detailed list:
https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/french-foreign-policy/francophony-and-the-french-language/the-french-language-in-figures/
https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/french-foreign-policy/francophony-and-the-french-language/learning-and-teaching-french/article/10-good-reasons-for-learning
I think it can be said, if knowing English opens the front door to the world, knowing French most certainly opens the back door too.
Happy acquisition guys!
I love this image of front and back door, Andy! Thank you for sharing those very interesting links 🙂
I didn’t realise this either boomer, it is good to know. I carried on learning French because I started at school and it was familiar and of course it was once the language of diplomacy so all well educated people spoke it. I would quite like to learn Spanish too and can see that after learning French it will be so much easier as there are many cognates with French and English.
There is also a really good resource here if anyone is interested. It’s called French in Action. It’s a 52 part series which also lets you learn about French culture and how French people carry out their day to day interactions. It is quite fast though, I am used to Alice speaking slowly and clearly so I had quite a bit of trouble adjusting. I hope it helps you guys out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpXWdY5bksQ&fbclid=IwAR3KQ5K-5LpYlOIt2CQVUFKO9UpNpIGZbFwFyLsjZiPU6XOAHB3qJlqaVGo
Thank you for sharing this authentic resource Andy. I also noticed whilst acquiring German that I am getting used to the pace of the people I watch and then when I listen to other podcasts or videos, it is too fast for me. I think this is part of the process and the more we listen, the easier it gets to understand all kinds of speeches! Once the Baby Stage is over, the Infant Stage will be at a faster pace 🙂 Your comments are always valuable, merci !
Alice I am up to lesson 15 of your baby stage lessons. I was wondering what comes next? Is there a next stage and how do I get that?
Tony
Bravo Tony! Little by little I am adding more sessions. There are 24 sessions so far but there will be 30 sessions in total in the Baby Stage course. Once it is done, the Infant Stage will be released. You can also go through the hundred of stories which you can listen to and read, just enter a keyword in the search box, something you would like to read about like “animal” or “paris” or “tale” or the level you are looking for such as “easy”, “intermediate”, “upper beginner”…
Watch the exclusive videos https://www.aliceayel.com/videos-les-videos-exclusives/
Look at the new stories https://www.aliceayel.com/stories-new-resources/
Listen to the audio books https://www.aliceayel.com/audiobooks-les-livres-audio/
Happy French acquisitions!
Hi, I am so happy to have found you Alice. I studied French, at school, college and as part of my Eurpean Studies degree at university. I could write essays in French but that was over 10 years ago and I never learnt to speak French, I could not understand the listening exercises in the classes. I have forgotten the verbs although I have a large vocabulary.
I found you through LingQ and I could understand most of what you said and I could understand the rest when you rephrased it or through context. I am learning to teach English as a foreign language and can see the benefit of learning a language by acquiring it this way. The stories are so amusing and you are such an inspiring teacher. Your genuine passion for teaching is very reassuring.
Merci beaucoup Jane et bienvenue dans la communauté, I hope you will teach English with stories for your learners 🙂
Alice are you doing live lessons anytime soon on Verbling or other venue?
Not at the moment Tony but maybe later in the future for small groups. However the first step in language acquisition is very “lonely”. First, you have to get ABUNDANT input on your own everyday before starting to speak. So there is actually no point in having “lessons”. When you feel ready to speak and most importantly you feel you will be able to understand the person speaking to you then you can start looking for people to talk to. You don’t even need to find a proper teacher giving lessons 🙂 So my live sessions will be for more like “French book clubs” for intermediate learners who feel ready to interact. Thank you for asking 🙂
Thank you that is so good to know.