Practice pads
Practice pads
Practice makes perfect, particularly when learning a language. As old-fashioned as it may sound, for some people there is no better way to learn than by writing something over and over until it sticks.
Whether you want to master your verbs, get to grips with all the little words, or work towards free-flowing conversation, these practice pads are the ticket. Take all three if you want to make sure you’re firing on all cylinders.
VERBS
With 25 pages amounting to 1500 chances to work on your conjugations, you’ll see the improvement with every page you turn. The innovative design means you can work on one verb per page or mix it up with up to 10 on one page.
Speaking of mixing it up, we recommend learning your verbs ‘out of order’ so you don’t have to run through the whole table to find the right words when you need them.
LITTLE WORDS
It’s often the little words that trip us up. Brainstorm a list of 20 English nouns, translate them to French. Work your way across the sheet and livre (book) becomes the book, a book, my book, my books, this book, which book and so on.
CONVERSATION
Prove to yourself that you’re making progress by keeping note of your conversations. Pair up with another French-speaking friend and commit to chatting for 15 minutes in French. Note down any words or phrases you find you’re missing, then look them up when you stop. Note them down, repeat the exercise and marvel at the difference.
À vos stylos* and let’s get to work!
Pick up your pencils*
French is a verb-driven language, so it makes sense to gain mastery over key verbs early.
The Lingua Franca verb pad has dedicated fields for the verb, mood and tense, so you can write the same verb out in the same tense and mood ten times per page, or more advanced learners, can simply tackle one verb and switch between moods and tenses each time.
Once you’re feeling confident with a given verb, we highly recommend learning it out of order. That is, instead of learning it in usual order (je, tu, il/elle/on etc), mix it up each time you write it out. Next time you’re searching for the correct conjugation for ‘we spoke’, for example, there’ll be no need to run through ‘j’ai parlé’, ‘tu as parlé’ and ‘il/elle/on a parlé’ in order to get there! The easiest way to do this? Give each subject a number and simple write the numbers 1-6 out of order on the left hand side of each conjugation field.
je
tu
il/elle/on
nous
vous
ils/elles
Faites-nous confiance*, you’ll soon see the difference. Bon courage*!
*Trust us | *Good luck!