Yet another interesting goal for the medium future

[pseydtonne]

I got a lot of good ideas resulting from the trip to Australia. Some of them are still bubbling into full sentences and one just emerged.

I have been reading French newspapers and magazines for years. I can now follow RFI broadcasts with decent success, but it helps that each is based on news so I can anticipate certain words I might not know otherwise. I can even speak French, but usually I need to be drunk to feel fluent. All the French kids from the hostel in Sydney noticed this too.

I want to get more practice with my spoken French, particularly in a business setting. I don't want to wind up in a classroom full of teachers where I sound fine but still cannot explain geek stuff to a fellow geek in the francophone world. I also don't think Quebec can offer me the business French skill set I seek because they have a completely different bureaucratese than the European world.

I've been researching some programs to attend as a vacation next year (say, in the spring). They have business immersion courses littered through France: Paris of course, Nice, Bordeaux. It would be nice to do something outside Paris so that I can stay immersed and away from tourists when I'm not in the classroom.

Does anyone have any advice? I know moominmolly worked in France for a while so I would like to poke her brain about this concept. Anyone else have advice (say, a program to avoid or accreditations to seek)?

-un question de la communication, Dante

Comments

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Geek speak is really a matter of vocabulary; you already know how to explain things, so what you'll need to explain them in French is the structure (not-geek-specific) and the idioms for things like "directory" or "mount" or "filesystem" or whatever. I think that what you need is a dictionary and some practice, not geek-specific learning. I'd also be wary of business-oriented language courses -- are they geared toward people who don't really care if they know how to speak the language but want to grease the wheels on business trips? Or is it actual, casual, conversational immersion? Ask about their method of language instruction (French people LOVE to talk about language methodologies), and what their graduates tend to do with their language skills. A business-French class might be just what you need, but be sure you get the RIGHT one, since there will be tons.

See if there's anything in Marseille. If you choose Brittany, go to Rennes and avoid Brest at all costs.

Also, why not drop in at Schoenhof's French conversation social thingies?

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the pointers! I hadn't even thought of Shoenhof's let alone known they had a conversational social. I'm planning to take a jaunt to l'Alliance Francaise in the Back Bay this afternoon to get some ideas. I may be able to pull more of this together from Boston than I thought.

I guess it doesn't need to be geek-specific so much as I want to be able to work in the French language. My conclusion had been business-level French immersion but if that's only going to mean "how to order a martini" then stuff it.

Which language methods are suspicious versus resourceful in your experience?

Oh, and I'm assuming you recommend avoiding Brest due to the thick Brittany accent. Should I similarly avoid Strasbourg to make sure the German doesn't ruin me?

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

No, I just don't like Brest. :) Learning French from someone with an accent is not the end of the world.

Suspicious vs. resourceful -- I have a LOT of thoughts on this, and have taken classes on it, too, and experimented on myself, but what it boils down to is some things work for some people and some things work for others. Make your teacher explain the methodology so that you can get a sense for whether you'd like it or not.

[(Anonymous)]

omg i can so see you as a frenchman. :> c'est fantastique!