👉Are you struggling with French grammar ?!
👉Do you feel that studying French grammar has a negative impact on your confidence to speak French?
Today I’d like to share with you my tips to take it easy and have a more relaxed relationship with French grammar !
1- Choose your objectives
2- Focus on communication situations
3- Break the codes
4- Choose the mistakes you are willing to make
5- Say no more to grammar
1- Choose your objectives
Choosing your own goals will allow you to be much more involved in the learning process.
You become the boss, and this allows you to learn things that are meaningful to you.
Working with goals is also often a good way to boost motivation : as soon as you reach a goal you get a little boost of dopamine that feels good and makes you want to keep going!
How do you choose what to start with? How do you know what to learn?
Have a look at the blog post below :
🔗What should you learn to improve your French?
🔗Four tips to reach your goals!
2- Focus on communication situations
If you’ve learned French grammar it’s primarily to help you COMMUNICATE.
So the first thing is to project yourself into the USE of that grammatical element.
It’s very important to understand the interest of each thing you learn.
What kind of conversation will you be able to have with this grammatical element?
In what kind of interaction will you be able to use this element?
What will it bring to my speech?
I’ll give you two examples:
Learning “Imparfait” => you will be able to tell memories of a period of your life in the past (your childhood, your adolescence, the lockdown, your life before living in France / Switzerland…)
Learning “Futur proche” => will allow you to tell about your plans for this weekend, your vacation plans.
3- Break the codes
There are thousands of ways to learn a language!
I would like to invite you to free yourself from the codes and to do “your own thing”, according to your style and your desires.
I give you some ideas here:
✔ When you learn a new conjugation you don’t have to learn all the persons (je, tu, vous…) . You can choose the ones that are most important to you now.
✔You don’t have to learn the irregular verbs and exceptions, you can choose to focus only on the regularities.
✔You can choose to learn whatever you want, even if it doesn’t fit your level.
✔ You don’t have to have a plan of action and specific goals, you can learn as you need to.
✔You can choose that a grammar point is not important to you. Even if all the books tell you it is important. YOU choose what is right for you now.
4- Choose the mistakes you are willing to make
If you are a perfectionist, you may not like what I am about to tell you: you can choose the degree of accuracy you want to have when you speak.
How much room for error do you allow yourself?
I’ll give you a personal example related to my current learning of Italian, there are some mistakes I don’t want to correct.
✌️ I choose to focus on my ability to communicate on topics that interest me.
✌️ I choose not to focus on small details of grammar that will not impact my ability to be understood.
I invite you to ask yourself the question:
What kind of mistake do you not want to make?”
What kind of mistake do you want to make”?
Is your little voice telling you : “I don’t care about making this kind of mistake“?
It’s fine! You have the right to choose which aspect you want to focus on and spend energy and time on.
You’ll find that making these choices will take a load off your mind when you speak in French.
5- Say no to grammar
Finally, I wanted to remind you that grammar should not occupy all your mental space and cognitive resources when you speak and learn French.
The times when you are communicating in French with your friends and colleagues are not necessarily the best times to practice your grammar.
There is a time for everything: a time to study, to concentrate, to repeat the patterns, to absorb them and there is a time to LIVE the language, to let your competence express itself with its little mistakes.
Always keeping in mind that the purpose of a conversation is to exchange, to get information and to share.
Is Grammar unavoidable?
May I also add that it is possible to learn a language without going deep into the grammar.
If you feel that learning grammar is more of a problem than a help, then follow your intuition.
You can learn a language without concentrating on the theoretical aspect of the language. Ex: repeating patterns, being more into imitation, repeating ready-made sentences.
We are all different and we don’t all have the same way of learning.
Taking into account your specificity, your preferences will help you to be more fulfilled in your learning and to learn more efficiently.
I hope that these tips will inspire you and allow you to approach (or not!) grammar with more lightness and serenity.
Who I am ?
I am Ines, an online French coach guided by the desire to make the lives of expat women in France lighter.