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I'm working on my French to improve my competitiveness when it comes to resumes and jobs, and it's a bit hard going but not terrible because I took French immersion when I was in elementary school and a bit of that knowledge has remained.
Right now I'm working at memorizing verb conjugations and figuring out what the classifications even mean (plus-de-parfait? Subjunctive? Passe compose? It's not clear from their names what they are at all) and it's a bit hard going. I really regret the fact that I didn't learn more when I was in school, when I was in a curriculum built around learning French with teachers (and fellow students) who spoke French. Oops, quite the opportunity wasted.
Anyway, I've run into a bit of a wall here where I can't make progress without getting some help from other people. I was hoping therefore that someone (or someones) might be available to read through some of the things I write and give corrections. I don't have any money and can't pay anything, but if you know someone or you yourself need similar corrections or help with English I can repay by helping you in kind. Please PM me if you are interested: I promise not to overwhelm you with questions - I can get most answers from books, but actual corrections need an actual human being. I can also start a language exchange thread if people are interested, but since I can only correct English and most people here are already competent in English that may not go anywhere.
Anyway, to round out this blog I'll give a sample bit of my French. Please feel free to correct it here or in the comments: I'd do it this way every day but the mods will ban my blog if I try that as this isn't exactly "high quality content," so I'll have to do it with PMs with an interested/generous party.
PS I don't have the accent keys set up yet, so I'm not using them.
PPS Also interested in any advice or discussion about the most efficient ways to learn French, any good resources you may know about (websites, etc, I'm already on Lang-8, and so on).
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Je travail sur mon francais pour etre plus competative pour les emploi avec le gouvernement du Canada. Le gouvernement veut vraiment des personnes qui peuvent parler en francais et anglais.
Quand j'etais jeune j'etais enrole dans un programme francais, mais je ne l'ai pas finis. Je regrette cette decision beaucoup au present parce-que mon travaille est en resultant beaucoup plus difficile maintenant.
Les choses le plus difficile en apprener le francais est les genres des noms et le conjugation de les verbes. Il y a aussi d'autre difficulte, comme savoir les differences entre de, du et des. A present je fais just des conjectures.
  
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Hello, quick correction:
Je travaille(1) / J'exerce mon français pour être plus compétitif pour les emplois au niveau du / au sein du gouvernement du Canada. Le gouvernement veut vraiment des personnes qui puissent(2) parler en français et en anglais.
Quand j'étais jeune j'étais inscrit à / je participais à un programme de français, mais je ne l'ai pas fini. Je regrette beaucoup cette décision à présent parce que mon travail(1) est par conséquent beaucoup plus difficile maintenant.
Les choses les plus difficiles à apprendre en français sont le genre des noms et la conjugaison des verbes. Il y a aussi d'autres difficultés, comme savoir / connaître les différences entre de, du et des(3). Pour le moment je me contente de faire des suppositions / de deviner.
(1) Le travail = noun, Travailler/je travaille, tu travailles... = verb
(2) I'd use a subjonctif here, because it's hypothetical
(3) Du is the contraction of "de le" and des is the contraction of "de les" (both are mandatory, "de la" however is not contracted)
Feel free to send me PMs when you need help 
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Does lang-8 not work well for getting corrections like this for French? It works perfect for me for Korean.. You can take a look at Google+ (or Fb) for learning communities, there's one full of free learning content and helpful ppl for Korean so maybe there's one for French as well. Also play Baldur's Gate etc. in French to expand your vocabulary and reading comprehension.
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Italki is really good. You can language exchange with people for free, and users will correct your writing if you do some work correcting English learners stuff: http://www.italki.com/
Memrise is pretty bad for French imo, it's only good for Kanji etc, but Duolingo probably has a good french course - I used the German one and it was good. https://www.duolingo.com/
LingQ is a decent resource for audio/text files: http://www.lingq.com/
I downloaded the entire Asterix series as PDF's so I could read them on tablet/laptop - obviously a bit illegal, but pretty difficult and costly to obtain French comics if you aren't in a French speaking country. You can probably get them easily in Canada though. Tbh, I couldn't speak French much, I read 5-10 Asterix books in about 2 weeks, and after that I could so I think it's one of the best ways of getting vocabulary. I think it's far better than taking courses at a college or something, because in my experience most people at university have a much poorer level after years of learning.
Honestly, with French film and TV so easily accessible online it's really easy to immerse yourself right now. Another thing I like to do is get the subtitles for a foreign film in that language, so that once you can read and understand ok between the audio and the subtitles you don't need English at all - which I think is much faster and more efficient.
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Best way to improve your French is ton of elementary french workbooks and reading French books.
Reading French comic-books helped me immensely with understanding French. My favourites were: Asterix & Obelix, Petit Spirou and Boule et Bill. Trust me on this, I had to pick-up French up to a Sixth grade level in one year (to attend French school) otherwise I would be failing every subsequent year.
In any case, constantly surrounding yourself with French media will help you be more loose with the language and understand. When I first started watching French television, they talked so fast; especially the French Canadians. Now, it's pretty normal for me after having done my entire high-school in French.
Good luck with Participle Past tenses.
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Best of luck to you man. Don't want to demotivate you but French is ridiculously hard, most French people can't speak or write it correctly.
Be careful though, France's French is quite different from Quebec's French especially when spoken they use a ton of expressions that we don't even understand/different words and a lot of grammatically incorrect sentences  ("tu veux-tu ?"). The only website that I know of is memrise.com which is nice to learn vocabulary but not much else.
If you want to read comics (Bandes dessinées) Asterix is a good choice, other classics you could read : Lucky Luke, Gaston Lagaffe or more adult ones : XIII, Largo Winch, Thorgal. Don't read the the smurfs (Les schtroumpfs) they speak their weird smurf language
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On October 12 2014 22:47 RouaF wrote:Best of luck to you man. Don't want to demotivate you but French is ridiculously hard, most French people can't speak or write it correctly. Be careful though, France's French is quite different from Quebec's French especially when spoken they use a ton of expressions that we don't even understand/different words and a lot of grammatically incorrect sentences ("tu veux-tu ?"). The only website that I know of is memrise.com which is nice to learn vocabulary but not much else. If you want to read comics (Bandes dessinées) Asterix is a good choice, other classics you could read : Lucky Luke, Gaston Lagaffe or more adult ones : XIII, Largo Winch, Thorgal. Don't read the the smurfs (Les schtroumpfs) they speak their weird smurf language
The french he's learning is traditional, it's understood by both.
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Good luck to you in learning French, it is a really hard language with tons of stupid/seemingly unnecessary rules. It is also a really beautiful language and will probably be very useful to you. I suck at everything that is theory in French so I can't really help you, but it is always nice to see people trying to learn French (:
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On October 12 2014 19:10 Tesarul wrote:Hello, quick correction: Je travaille(1) / J'exerce mon français pour être plus compétitif pour les emplois au niveau du / au sein du gouvernement du Canada. Le gouvernement veut vraiment des personnes qui puissent(2) parler en français et en anglais. Quand j'étais jeune j'étais inscrit à / je participais à un programme de français, mais je ne l'ai pas fini. Je regrette beaucoup cette décision à présent parce que mon travail(1) est par conséquent beaucoup plus difficile maintenant. Les choses les plus difficiles à apprendre en français sont le genre des noms et la conjugaison des verbes. Il y a aussi d'autres difficultés, comme savoir / connaître les différences entre de, du et des(3). Pour le moment je me contente de faire des suppositions / de deviner. (1) Le travail = noun, Travailler/je travaille, tu travailles... = verb (2) I'd use a subjonctif here, because it's hypothetical (3) Du is the contraction of "de le" and des is the contraction of "de les" (both are mandatory, "de la" however is not contracted) Feel free to send me PMs when you need help
These are all excellent tips, except for (2). The subjonctif doesn't apply here, if we change the sentence a bit : "je recherche quelqu'un qui (savoir) chanter", and so you have to choose whether you should use "sait" or "sache", and then it's quite clear that the présent tense is the right one, precisely because it is not hypothetical. In hypothetical cases, like "à moins qu'il le sache", or "j'aimerais que tu le saches", and even "je ne connais personne qui sache chanter".
I really hope I don't come across as a douche, I just wanted to point it out respectfully !
Best of luck to the op !
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1429 Posts
For the keyboard part, it's fairly simple - just add the french keyboard and learn the keys by touch. I learned to type the AZERTY keyboard without seeing the actual layout (i.e. my keyboard is QWERTY). Only a few things switch places and it doesn't take long to register.
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On October 13 2014 05:21 Heat_023 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2014 19:10 Tesarul wrote:Hello, quick correction: Je travaille(1) / J'exerce mon français pour être plus compétitif pour les emplois au niveau du / au sein du gouvernement du Canada. Le gouvernement veut vraiment des personnes qui puissent(2) parler en français et en anglais. Quand j'étais jeune j'étais inscrit à / je participais à un programme de français, mais je ne l'ai pas fini. Je regrette beaucoup cette décision à présent parce que mon travail(1) est par conséquent beaucoup plus difficile maintenant. Les choses les plus difficiles à apprendre en français sont le genre des noms et la conjugaison des verbes. Il y a aussi d'autres difficultés, comme savoir / connaître les différences entre de, du et des(3). Pour le moment je me contente de faire des suppositions / de deviner. (1) Le travail = noun, Travailler/je travaille, tu travailles... = verb (2) I'd use a subjonctif here, because it's hypothetical (3) Du is the contraction of "de le" and des is the contraction of "de les" (both are mandatory, "de la" however is not contracted) Feel free to send me PMs when you need help These are all excellent tips, except for (2). The subjonctif doesn't apply here, if we change the sentence a bit : "je recherche quelqu'un qui (savoir) chanter", and so you have to choose whether you should use "sait" or "sache", and then it's quite clear that the présent tense is the right one, precisely because it is not hypothetical. In hypothetical cases, like "à moins qu'il le sache", or "j'aimerais que tu le saches", and even "je ne connais personne qui sache chanter". I really hope I don't come across as a douche, I just wanted to point it out respectfully ! Best of luck to the op !
No worries, I am open to discussion 
I think both are correct actually (http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=844005&langid=6), I still like the sound of the subjonctif better though ^^. Also "hypothetical" may not be the appropriate word, what I mean is that there is a difference between a sentence like "Les gens qui savent parler français trouvent facilement du travail" (//reality) and "Le gouvernement cherche des gens qui sachent parler français" (//possibility).
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Sorry to intrude, but I'm also learning French at much beginner level than that of the OP, and have a question I couldn't think of place to ask except here. How do you write equivalent of "one of" in French? For example, "Starcraft is one of the popular computer games". I'd really appreciate the help!
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1429 Posts
On October 15 2014 07:16 Hesmyrr wrote:
Sorry to intrude, but I'm also learning French at much beginner level than that of the OP, and have a question I couldn't think of place to ask except here. How do you write equivalent of "one of" in French? For example, "Starcraft is one of the popular computer games". I'd really appreciate the help!
I'm also another learner of French as my 3rd language. I consider myself approx. B1 level at some point, but I haven't been using French as much in the past year so I'm a little rusty. Anyhow, this is what I think it should be:
Starcraft est l'un des jeux vidéos populaires.
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Thank you! Always struggle to translate common small phrases which wordreference does not support.
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EPT
