How to learn French for free or very cheap

One of my Bucket list challenges is to improve my French until I can speak it fluently. I already can do the basics.

Here in Belgium, French is the second language. In the North, where I live,  they speak Dutch officially, but they also often use the term Flemish. This is mostly because there’s lots of different dialects here and it’s slightly different than Dutch in the Netherlands. (It’s fun the Disney company is catching up on this and are translating their movies in Flemish now, which makes it more enjoyable for me). People from Belgium and The Netherlands can understand each other, with a few jokes here and there.

In the South and in the capital Brussels, they speak French, with some slight differences from the French in France.(Mainly vocabulary. But I think they could survive in France.) There’s a small part in the Southwest where they speak German.

With French being the second language here, I had the opportunity to learn French in school, but it wasn’t so great. Although the teachers were amazing people, it’s just that French in schools here is mainly focussed on grammar and written skills. (That’s what I experienced, it might not be the case for you)

These skills are ofcourse very important too, but I feel now that I’m way to insecure to talk the language as I make many mistakes. It improved a bit with my French mother-in-law, but I’m guessing she isn’t very impressed. I really try though. She tries to be nice and starts speaking in Dutch, but I try to keep talking in French as I’m really determined to get there.

But I must get there soon as I’m planning to move to France with my family in the future. So the only solution is to practice a lot.

 

The best way to learn French is to immerse yourself in it and to hear people speak the language, preferably natives. So I’m very lucky with my French in-laws. 😄

But when your not around them, you can search for native French speakers on YouTube. That way you can be more certain of the pronounciations.

Here are a few links to a few French YouTube lessons that I found useful

LearnFrench with Vincent 

LearnFrench with Frenchpod 101 

LearnFrench with Alexa 

 

Fun websites to learn

Duolingo 

The Frenchexperiment 

 

I also find it helpful to read children’s book or comics in French.

If you go to bigger libraries they often have literature or courses in other languages.

I also listen to children’s songs in French together with my son, it’s a great way to bond with singing and dancing. ^_^

This is my favourite website: 

Monde des Titounis 

Children’s tv in French: 

Gulli 

Listening to the Disney songs in French is also fun. These kinds of songs are often easier to learn. You can listen to them on YouTube: 

 

Prefer to stay with the adult songs?

I’ve created a small playlist on Spotify here with some famous French songs in different genres. You need an account to listen. (free)

Disclaimer: I don’t own the rights to these songs or videos. This was the only way to share it legally I found.

You can also watch the news in French, this helped for me:

France 

TF1 

I hope this helps you out. 😊 Is there a language you really want to learn?

 

I’ve placed this challenge as ‘ in progress’ on my day zero account. I’m setting a time frame on this of a couple of months until the end of December 2020.