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E-mail French pen pal for sensible grown-up wanting to improve


siddalee
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Bonjour tous.

I have been trying to speak better French all my life and feel it is never too late to get really serious about it.  My family and I are going on holiday to the Vendee in June and I would really like to be able to converse with some degree of confidence. 

I wondered if any native or fluent French speaker out there would be willing to converse - just by e-mail - and put up with my mistakes whilst I try hard to get better?  I would love to be able to speak with you on a variety of subjects.

When I say I am sensible, I'm not so sure about that, but I assure you I am genuine.

J'ai 46 ans, je suis mariée et tres heureuse, j'ai une etape-fille et j'aime les promenades, lire et je suis en recherche et etudes pour PhD.

Merci pour votre temps.

[:D]

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  • 2 weeks later...
Yes, it should be belle-fille.  I would offer to help you but honestly I don't think that my written French is good enough.   I would hate to lead you up the wrong track.   I think you need a native French speaker to be sure of being correct in the written language (which even lots of French people have trouble with....)   Good luck!
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[quote user="missyesbut"]C'est quoi une etape-fille?....[/quote]

 

Glad that it got translated to belle-fille as in step-daughter.

Because une etape-fille could have connotations in a French person's mind of a girl ready for [;-)][6] in the next town!...

 

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If you want to converse then that's a lot different than writing-if so perhaps finding someone willing to talk on a daily basis via Skype for example would be an excellent choice-

Unfortunately my spoken French is not up to helping you.

Another good way is to buy the BBC tapes as they together with a book give you written and conversatonal french.

If you don't want to buy then you can go onto the bbc on line where several languages are offered'

I[:D][I]l est  bonne nuit from him et bon nuit from moi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Hi Siddalee,  I just came across this forum that you may be interested in. It is a site for people learning French, in fact there is "La question du jour" where a French teacher will ask a question of the day and people respond in French, looks potentially a lot of help on offer. I would have offered to help myself but I am in the same situation so will also be looking in on the forum.

By the way Ab, I have tried your idea with Skype and it is a very good idea, if you can find a partner it is a great way to converse. I personally have had a problem finding the right person, would love to find someone that is on the same level (poor [:$]) of English as I am with French. I have found a few but were almost fluent in English and ended up just speaking English most of the time [Www]. Hopefully, if and when I can speak better this will certainly be a lot of help

 

http://learnfrenchathome.com/phpBB2/

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Thanks so much everyone for your replies.  You are right really, I do need to converse with someone, rather than just writing it down, so thanks for the tips re Skype and other sites.

I will be giving it my best shot and hopefully won't be implying any more that my gorgeous step-daughter (who is only 10) has plans for any unseemly activities.

I am looking forward to speaking much better French.

Thanks again. [:)]

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[quote user="siddalee"]

Bonjour tous.

I have been trying to speak better French all my life and feel it is never too late to get really serious about it.  My family and I are going on holiday to the Vendee in June and I would really like to be able to converse with some degree of confidence. 

I wondered if any native or fluent French speaker out there would be willing to converse - just by e-mail - and put up with my mistakes whilst I try hard to get better?  I would love to be able to speak with you on a variety of subjects.

When I say I am sensible, I'm not so sure about that, but I assure you I am genuine.

J'ai 46 ans, je suis mariée et tres heureuse, j'ai une etape-fille et j'aime les promenades, lire et je suis en recherche et etudes pour PhD.

Merci pour votre temps.

[:D]

[/quote]

There was a site that i have used in the past called freetranslation.com. You have a selection French,Spanish etc,just type in the English sentence, click  french and then after a few seconds the sentence will be translated in french. Just a thought which may help you.

Regards lesman

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We use a web site called www.worldlingo.com which has a variety of languages, including chinese.....have a look, it's amazing.

Having used it for all sorts of preparation for conversations to various french organisations, we put our lap top on and proudly showed it to our french neighbours, who promptly fell about on the floor laughing. From around half a dozen sentences we translated for them only one made any sense apparently!! 

I think it's still useful though as the people we have talked to seem to gather enough from what we say to make sense of it. In addition, whether we are totally correct or not, the more we try the more confident we are getting and the more prepared we are to make mistakes and laugh them off.

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At risk of offending you  if your french is already of a reasonably high standard, you might also get some good practice and hopefully some more confidence from looking at some of the following websites. I don't recommend translation websites, as in general they seem to produce too many errors, but that could just be my GCSE pupils typing in rubbish in the first place!

For GCSE level you could do a lot worse than look at www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize  this covers all 4 skills (listening, reading, speakng and writing) and you can work at foundation or higher level.  You might also like to try www.atantot.com for vocab practice (don't be put off by the big message about it being for interactive whiteboards, you can still use a keyboard.)

For more advanced exercises try: http://atschool.eduweb.co.uk/rgshiwyc/school/curric/HotPotatoes/frenchindex.htm This has exercise right up to A2 level, and my Year 13 pupils found some of the grammar exercises, particularly on the subjuntive, quite demanding.

Hope this helps.  There are some other good websites out there, but my list is at school and I can't remember them all.  If you want some more let me know and I'll look them up this week at work.

 

Marie

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  • 2 weeks later...

Siddalee,

 

Have a great website that will help you, better than Free Translation, they can provide you with a native french speaker to tutor you - at whatever standard you want. Try www.languagelearners.co.uk. I have a friend who learns with them, and speaks weekly for an hour with a french lady.

 

Hope this helps

 

Bonne Chance

 

Steve

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Thanks Steve

I will certainly try that, it sounds just what I need.  Combined with the BBC and Michel Thomas, I should be speaking like a native in no time.  Now I just have to find the hours in the day!! [:)]

All the best

Sidda

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