Vocabulary
If you don't know the word in French, you won't recognise it when you hear it!
It's blindingly obvious, but there is nothing more important in learning a language than vocabulary. And unfortunately, it's not that easy to do. All very well making lists of new words, or buying a book with vocabulary organised into themes - what is the best way of learning it ? How do you test yourself
About six years ago I came across The Collins French-English computer dictionary. It's a rather modest dictionary, but it has a facility which I find very useful. When you look up a new word it allows you to record the word in a memo file, so you can easily build up word lists.
Even better, it offers a little Shooting Gallery game where you select your word list, and it tests you. While the little man with the gun tries to shoot the rabbit, you try to enter the French word for the English word shown
It's simple, and I find it has worked very well for me. Use it for a quarter of an hour each day and I guarantee your vocabulary will improve. It structures your learning. Here is the Amazon link
But it's not perfect. It doesn't test your knowledge of the gender of nouns, and that is essential. Nor does it test your vocabulary of expressions, and that is critical - especially in listening to idiomatic French
So I decided to rework the Prepositions programme written for www.sonsenfrancais.org with that in mind
The programme is driven by a simple text file which you can have a look at here
For each line there is an English word or phrase followed by a TAB, followed by a French word or phrase. The programme simply gives you the English, and you enter the French version. This works for words, but is difficult for expressions, where you are unlikely to enter exactly what the programme is expecting. So if any part of the French phrase is in square brackets, the rest of the phrase will be shown as a cue, and you have to rack your brains for the hidden bit.
My deepest thanks to Harpreet Singh who sent me an amended version of my first effort with lots of goodies added. I shall edit them into the latest version. V0.06 allows you to add vocabulary items from the program, edit them, or exclude them from the vocab list
Includes executable, source code and the vocabulary files which can also be downloaded separately below
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exercises 414 exercises 515 exercises 495 exercises 255 exercises |
If you want to know how to enter French accents, look here
A word on the software. Unzip all the files into the same directory. No installation is needed, just doubleclick on the exe. The programme is written in a scripting language called Autoit, which you can download from here if you want to rewrite my terrible code. However, you don't need to download autoit to run the programme.
As well as expanding the software I will be adding (considerably) to the vocabulary lists. .
If you have ideas for improvement please don't hesitate to email me or use the feedback form
Good luck !