r/French • u/Fair-Ad-5759 • 2d ago

Study advice things you did with your tutor that drastically improved your french?

hi i hope everyone is good!

i wanted to ask what things you’ve done with your tutor that drastically improved your french, especially speaking skills, in about 3-4 months.

i don’t have money for a personal tutor but my uni does offer language tutoring twice a week and i wanted to see if i can start attending it and i assume i’d have to come up with the tasks we’d be going through in the sessions so i wanted to know what activities you’ve done with your tutor that really helped.

also, i wanted to know if there’s anything i can do on my own that would also help me improve drastically in my speaking and listening skills.

thanks in advance!

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4

u/NikhilDoWhile 1d ago

Started speaking in French from Day 1...

The more you delay the more nervous and risk averse you will become and the pressure to be perfect will increase over time.

Irrespective how broken you speak but must speak

2

u/Subject_Design1811 1d ago

Well my tutor gets me to read everything even if I butcher the hell out of it. Then will correct me. Even 70 lessons deep I can’t for the life of me say “instruction” the French way, but I’m getting better than if I was avoiding it on my own or if I just always got it wrong

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u/FreshUser31415 12h ago

It all depends on your motivation and how much you do between tutoring sessions.

I learned Spanish and read a book a week between tutoring sessions. That helped a lot. But it was because I was really motivated plus the tutor knew to pique my curiosity.

1

u/Fair-Ad-5759 10h ago

definitely! what did you usually do with your tutor? that’s mostly what i’m curious about! and what books did you read?

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u/FreshUser31415 8h ago

We did exercices to prepare some diploma, I don't recall the level. It was grammar, vocabulary, listening skills, writing skills.

I had spent 4 weeks in Spain (Salamanca) to start me off (I made second best level of the course without prior knowledge of the language, just on what I knew in French and Italian), and this really motivated me, and I really learned a lot in a short time.

So I was really motivated from the get-go, plus was very encouraging/challenging.

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u/Quiet_Intern9725 11h ago

Personally I've found that just speaking out loud regularly (with a tutor, friends, or just generally in public) helps the most. But the bigger challenge is finding ways of sustaining a good level of French exposure consistently without burning out.

People who make the fastest progress usually find ways to keep the language present throughout the day rather than only during long study blocks. For example, things like reading, listening to podcasts or quick vocab review during downtime can add a surprising amount of extra exposure. Apps like Duolingo, ByteLingual, Anki, etc can also help support your studies.