VOCABULARY: HOW TO DEVELOP A LARGER FRENCH VOCABULARY

Hey everyone! Thanks for checking in. As the title suggests this week we will be talking about how to develop and learn new vocabulary; a skill necessary for both the internal and external assessments. I.e. the Internal Oral Presentations which I will talk about in greater detail later on, as well as Papers I & II. 

Because your ability to understand depends on your recognizing key words in context, the following tips will help you become familiar with many new words in the French Language. You need not be concerned about pronouncing these perfectly from the start; your pronunciation will become more accurate as you hear more spoken French. 

• Keep a vocabulary notebook. Your instructor will write key vocabulary words on the board (or share them with you via a classroom website, or simply check the vocabulary section of this website for new vocabulary); jot them down for future reference and study.
• Go over vocabulary frequently, and make an effort to visualize the person (for words such as "child" or "woman"), thing ("animal" or "person"), characteristics ("young" or "fat"), activity ("sit down"), or situation ("is wearing") conveyed by each word.
• Follow your instructor's suggestions for working with these words. Concentrate on recognizing their meaning when you hear and see them, and when your instructor uses them in class. 
• Create and study flashcards. Something that really helped me out when I first started learning French was creating flashcards using either 3 x 4 cards or plain paper cut up into small squares, use the resources available to you. What I really enjoyed about flashcards was the fact that I was able to utilize my creativity and made language acquisition fun for myself. I often found myself cutting out clippings from magazines, sketched and coloured, and even learned to use online flashcard apps, which by the way are now available on your mobile devices. I find that Chegg + has an amazing app with a great interface and, GET THIS, YOU CAN SHARE YOU FLASHCARDS WITH FRIENDS! I linked you to their website, all you have to do is click on Chegg+ up above.

Well that's all I have for you today. I know I've talked about this a few times in the past, but since I relaunched the website with a more user friendly interface, some of the content from years past has been sacrificed. ​