Earlier in the summer, before I was serious about fixing my fuzzy speaking skills I purchased some books to help me. I bought 1 novel, L'étranger by Albert Camus (which I have read in English), 1 play En attendant Godot by Samuel Beckett (which I've heard a lot about, but never seen or read) and 1 collection of short stories Mondo et autres histoires by J.M.G Le Clézio (found it on a syllabus for a French class at some university). I also bought Tune Up your French and Hide this French Book both of which help with slang and vernacular. As of today I had read 8 pages of Mondo and 14 pages of Tune Up - I purchased these books in May. Well, I am happy to say that the times, they are a changin.
Today I decided to start by listening to actual french people talking about actual things. So I now subscribe to a podcast called RFI - Journal en français facile. Each day they broadcast current events in a 10 minute podcast using simple words. I am happy to report that I understood a lot of the words. Unfortunately, I didn't really understand what was going on. For example, I can tell you that Vladmir Putin did something. And the American economy is doing something. And there was a long segment about America and Switzerland. (Kidding, kind of). There were a lot of words that I knew and could understand, but the big picture was non-existant.
Luckily for me, I have 41 days of podcasts to get me up to speed. Also, I'm going to finish that story about Mondo, a drifter boy who lives in the south of France. I've learned a lot of words to describe the ocean and waves and a good deal of terminology about fishing from that story.
(I'm sure they'll come in handy at some point ...)
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