Some time ago, I blogged about my love of languages and how I was learning Esperanto, Latin, Irish Gaelic, and Scottish Gaelic. And how I was refreshing myself on French.
Then my eye problems started and I was focused on what little writing I could do. The language learning went by the wayside.
Until I started thinking about it again. I thought about how much I loved it and how badly I wanted to continue. But with one major change: I’d focus on one language. And given that most of my education is in French, and I happen to love it, that became my #1 choice to pick back up. (I haven’t given up on the others. Just taking a bit of a vacation).
So, the first thing I wanted to know was: are there any good free courses in French? I couldn’t afford to take a real course in it (you know, for money and in a classroom), but I wanted something that would be fairly easy but would challenge me. Turns out there are a lot of free language lessons online. It’s actually freakish how many. However, I ran into a big problem. Some of those so-called “free” classes are actually previews of paid courses. Yeah, so you sign up for one, get your free lesson (s), and then you’re hit with the dreaded payment options. (I think it’s kind of crappy that they advertise as free when they really aren’t). So I probably signed up for two or three before discovering this. And they looked good, too! I just couldn’t afford them!
So then I refined the process a bit. I poked around the site before signing up. I found one that’s essentially a study on language learning, and it’s totally free. You can agree to being part of the study, but it’s not a requirement. I’m still waiting for a nice block of time to sit down and dig in.
About.com has an amazing language section. It’s actually a bit overwhelming. I signed up for the newsletter and get one in my inbox every day. And there’s a lot of material. I’ve already gone over some of it, and it gets a thumbs up from me. (You can even take quizzes and use their forums, too!). So that’s most definitely on my list.
Frenchpod101.com is pretty darned cool too, except it’s one of those “free but not” sites. I get French “Mot du jour” (word of the day) newsletters and stuff. It’s cool.
Babbel.com is another “free but not.” This one really impressed me before I discovered that it wasn’t free. If I had the money, I’d definitely enroll in one of their classes.
I found a bunch of podcasts that are, thankfully, free. (And a Latin one, too!). I listened to 2 of them so far, and they’re great. One’s on verb conjugations which is my new weakness (I used to be so good at them back in the day. Le sigh). I tend to get confused between the conditional and the future tenses. They are similar. So I’ve decided to focus on one tense at a time, master the hell out of it, and then move on to another. It’s tough.
I’m also considering switching to all French on the dialog boxes in Win 8…or is that just too much? (Did I mention I’m a freak?)
I’m very excited and I’m so jazzed about the entire thing. And…I’ve run out of things to say. So this is your freaky language geek Erin Zarro signing off for the night. Bonsoir! (Good evening!)