Use Those French Learning Tapes and CD's!

by Simi K. Valley

It is pretty much universally agreed that learning a language from a book is not the way to go, that the four skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing) need to be addressed, if not all at once, at least in a reasonable sequence.

This is all the more true with French, which has an abundance of homonyms - words that are spelled differently and with different meanings, but that sound alike.

For example, let's look at four words in French that are homonyms: cent, hundred; sang, blood; sans, without; and sens [I] feel. To contrast, let's look at these same words in Spanish and Italian, both related Romance languages:

Even to someone who knows neither Spanish nor Italian, it is fairly obvious that neither of these languages has the homonym situation for this word that French has. In addition, Spanish and Italian spellings are relatively phonetic, that is; words sound the way they are spelled. Not so in French, which compounds the problem. To further complicate matters, French has four nasal vowels, and if students cannot hear the difference, the resulting confusion can be considerable.

Since we study languages for various reasons but certainly to fulfill some desire or goal, let's keep the goal in sight and not let obstacles get in our way! The point here is to make things as easy as possible on the student, and thus not skimp on listening skills, particularly at the beginning of French study. There are many good sets of tapes and books available. Two that come to mind are Pimsleur and Ultimate French, available in bookstores and online.

Happy listening!

Simi K. Valley is the former About Guide to Hebrew

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