Review of The Novel "Flirting with French"

It has been a while since I last posted a review of a language-related book, which made me want to read a book for pleasure even more. The novel “Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me & Nearly Broke My Heart”, written by William Alexander, had been sitting on my shelf at home for quite some time, because I had never gotten a chance to read it in college. Despite being a slow reader, I read a lot of it in just a few days, as I was instantly hooked.

If you are looking for a good read that makes you laugh, smile, and even ponder about your own life, this is just the book for you. The entire book is about William’s experiences wanting to become more than just a Francophile. His biggest change is having to learn the French language in order to truly become French.  As the inside flap of the novel says “Alexander eats, breathes, and sleeps French (even conjugating in his dreams). He travels to France, where mistranslations send him bicycling off in all sorts of wrong directions, and he nearly drowns in an immersion class in Provence… While playing hooky from grammar lessons and memory techniques, Alexander reports on the riotous workings of the Académie française, the four-hundred-year-old institution charged with keeping the language pure; explores the science of human communication, learning why it’s harder for fifty-year-olds to learn a second language that it is for five-year-olds; and, frustrated with his progress, explores an IBM research lab, where he trades barbs with a futuristic hand-held translator.”

If that description still has not gotten you excited about this novel, I do not know what else will. Before delving deep into the storyline, I did not have many expectations of what this book could offer, because I had wrongly assumed that I was very knowledgeable about the subject, but even I was wrong. This novel combines scientific evidence and facts, real life experiences, history, culture, linguistics, and modern language into a mere 260 pages. You not only learn about the history of the French language and how it has evolved over time, but also about the culture that is associated with it, which ultimately determines how language is used. He also did a significant amount of research about how he would go about self-teaching French at “such an old age” by consulting with many polyglots and language experts. You even learn a thing or two about how linguistics, therefore getting a small taste of what that field entails.

No matter how old you are, what prior knowledge of French or other languages you have, or lack thereof, I recommend this book to any reader, especially one who is interested in languages as much as I am. I will warn you that it may be hard to understand some of the nuances, words, phrases, or jokes that Alexander mentions throughout the book, as they are written in French, but do not fear if you have never had contact with the French language. He italicizes everything that is written in French, making it easy for you to look up what he is saying if you so desire. If you have studied French before, or, better yet, speak it well, you will find this book to be very enjoyable and entertaining. It may even help you brush up on your French.

I hope that you enjoyed reading this post and that you give this book a try. I promise that if you have accidentally or purposely come across this post, or even this blog, you will not be disappointed. Happy language-learning!

How to Improve Your Reading Comprehension Skills in a Language

There is no doubt that one of the most important skills to have in order to become an intermediate, or an advanced learner of a language is knowing how to read efficiently and well. Without going into too much detail about which classes I am currently taking this semester, I want to mention that I have had to read three novels in three different languages these past few weeks (in Spanish, Italian, and French). This has been one of the most challenging, yet most rewarding tasks that I have ever been assigned to do, but will admit that I was terrified when I first came to a realization that I would have to do so for more than five weeks straight.

Before this semester, I had never been asked to read more than sixty or so pages in any of my French or Italian classrooms, and had not read a novel in Spanish for over eight years. Could I truly understand the plots, the characters, and the action of three novels? Would I get them confused? Would I have enough time to look up all of the unknown words with which I had never come across? These were only some of the obstacles that I knew that I would face. In this post, I will give you three tips that will hopefully help you improve your efficiency and productivity when reading a simple paragraph, or challenging material in your target language.


1. Look up unknown words

A tip of which I cannot stress enough its importance is being willing to look up any unknown words, or phrases that you come across when reading. This; however, does not mean that you should look up every single unknown word, because that could ultimately lead to frustration, or to a lack of productivity. Instead, you should look up words that you have never seen before, or that you constantly see come up in your readings, but that you cannot remember their meanings. Once you constantly do this, you will start to see some of these words frequently pop up, allowing you to read faster and without having to pause after every other word.

When you look up new words, or phrases, I would highly recommend writing them down on a sheet of paper, or writing down their translations in your books (if you happen to read a book instead of reading something online, or that you cannot print out, or write on). If you own books, then you will have the freedom to write on them as much as you would like, so do not be afraid to take advantage of that. Many scientists have proven that the more times that you write something down, the better you will retain the information that you are trying to learn. I have found that writing, and rewriting words has helped me remember more words, and, in many cases, instantly. (Feel free to read my post titled “Using Google Translate for Language Learning” if you want to get tips on how to use Google Translate to help facilitate reading in other languages).


2. Read Out Loud

As the video above says, one of the easiest ways to improve your pronunciation in a language, and your reading comprehension skills is by reading a text out loud. Despite the fact that you cannot do this at at every hour of the day (especially if you are a college student like me and have a roommate), there is bound to be at least an hour throughout the day in which you are in your bedroom, or in another room alone and are undisturbed by others. When this is a case, you can practice this skill by making sure that you are enunciating and pronouncing vowels and syllables well, and by stopping yourself and rereading sentences when you are confused. This process oftentimes gives you more immediate feedback on how you are doing than simply reading in your head, because you are forcing yourself to stop, pause, and try to comprehend about what you are reading.


3. Start off easily and work your way up

The last tip that I have for you is to start off by reading easy, or beginner material, and to then slowly start transitioning to harder reading material as you feel more comfortable with a language. I would recommend to start off by reading baby or children’s books. I have found this to be extremely helpful, because that is the process through which I went when I first started learning English. As I got older, I started to read lengthier children’s books, then shorter chapter books, then more complex chapter books, and, finally, novels. It is most natural to start off with basic reading material, even if you feel that it is too easy, because it can more easily give you a confidence booster that you are capable of understanding little kids. Once you feel confident understanding basic topics, such as family, food, and colors, you can start finding more difficult material to read.

You should not forget to read material that is enjoyable and that you would find interesting in your native language when you have the choice to read for pleasure. I know that it can be hard to read something that is supposedly “easy” instead of trying to read about Einstein’s life in German, but, realistically, most of us are not capable of diving into difficult material without going through the motions, and slowly, but surely starting to read lengthier and more complex material.

As you can tell, there are many ways to improve your reading comprehension skills that are not very time-consuming and that are efficient. If you take anything from this post, try to remind yourself to read as frequently and as much as possible about a wide array of topics as early as you can. The earlier you start to consistently read, the more comfortable you will feel when you are asked to read novels like “Don Quixote” in Spanish.