My secret recipe for perfect "crêpes", REGARDER👀, tips to learn French...

Your weekly French newsletter to get better effortless💪

Bonjouuuuur 😁

And Bonjour to ALL the new subscribers (the family is growing sooo fast😊)

This is Carlito. I’m your friend who explains French to you. And I mean real friend. Like, I’d let you step on my back to get to safety first #realones.

Here’s what's on the menu today:

• ✍️French Word of the week

• 📚Lesson of the week

• 💡Tips of the week

• 🎲Quiz of the week

  

✍️French Word of the week

Not a word, but a verb: REGARDER👀

Wanna know how to pronounce it?

Listen to my beautiful voice (I record in the subway, hence my hesitant voice)

Well, it means “to look” in French BUT you can also use it to translate “to watch”…

Here are some examples🖋️

• Il a regardé le paysage par la fenêtre du train (He looked at the scenery from the train window)

• J'ai regardé avec envie sa nouvelle montre (I looked with envy at his new watch)

• Il regarde les nouvelles à la télévision (He is watching the news on the television)

“Hey Carlito, how you conjugate it in the present simple?”

Easy peasy😉

Je regarde
Tu regardes
Il regarde
Nous regardons
Vous regardez
Ils regardent

Et toi, tu regardes souvent mes vidéos ? (You can answer in the comments👇, I am curious to know🤔)

Do you know what it is? (Try to guess how much does it cost and for how many people is it🙂)

📚France and food: an everlasting love affair

France is worldly famous for its gastronomy and natural refinement.

This culture of "bien manger" is not reserved to the elites, and the typical day of an average French is punctuated by french culinary traditions😋

Are you familiar with all of them?

• The “petit-déjeuner” is the first meal of the day.

No bacon and eggs here, it’s all about the French pastry: croissant, pain au chocolat, pain aux raisins, and pain beurre-confiture.

• Have you ever heard of the “goûter”?

This is probably any schoolboy and schoolgirl’s favorite meal: a sweet snack the French enjoy around 4 or 4.30pm — right when french school finishes.

Bread, brioche, biscuits or even cake, the “goûter” is definitely a celebration🥳

• Last but not least, the “apéritif” is all about togetherness.

This light snack of peanuts, saucisson, olives and other tapas is a pretext for a nice drink — pastis, porto, clairette, rosé or beer — to whet one’s appetite🍻

The thing is that Food is everywhere in France, even in the language🤣

There are countless expressions in French that refer to food.

Here are a few you can start adding to your french vocabulary:

• “Avoir un coeur d’artichaut” — literally “to have an artichoke heart” — is used to talk about someone who falls in and out of love very easily.

• To say “put the pedal to the floor,” the French use “appuyer sur le champignon” which translates as “to push on the mushroom.”

• And if someone tells you “tu es chou” — “you are cabbage” — they mean “you are cute!”

💡As renowned chef Julia Child said, “In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.”

💡💡A subscriber asked me for my fav "crêpe” recipe, here it is👨‍🍳

(Send me some pictures of your “crêpes” on Instagram or by email for the old ones😉)

💡Tips of the week

5 Tips to Learn French

I’ve been teaching French online for 5 years now

I am always asked the same question: how to learn French easily?

Here are some tips I’ve gathered over the past few years🙂

CONVERSATION, CONVERSATION, CONVERSATION

If there’s a “secret” or “hack” to learning a foreign language, it’s this: hours and hours of awkward and strenuous conversation with people better than you in that language.

An hour of conversation (with corrections) is as good as five hours in a classroom and 10 hours with a language course by yourself.

CLASSES SUCK AND ARE AN INEFFICIENT USE OF TIME AND MONEY

All things considered, you get a really poor return for your time and effort in group classes.

There are two problems. The first is that the class moves at the pace of its slowest student. The second is that learning a foreign language is a fairly personal process (everyone naturally learns some words or topics easier than others, therefore a class is not going to be able to address each student’s personal needs)

I learned German for 7 years at school, I still can't speak...

KNOW YOUR MOTIVATION FOR LEARNING A NEW LANGUAGE

It’s silly to even have to say this, but knowing why you’re learning a foreign language is key to mastering it.

Many people start learning a language with no idea of what they’ll use it for. And, sure enough, they fail. You can know all the tips and tricks there are to learning a language, but if you don’t know the why behind it all, how it’s going to enrich your life, chances are you’re going to lose motivation.

SET LEARNING GOALS TO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Language-learning goals are best if they are short, simple and easily measurable. Many of us embark on studying a language by saying, “I want to be fluent in French in six months!”

The problem is, what is fluency? Fluent in what way? Casual conversation? Reading and writing? Discussing legal issues for your business?

Instead, it’s better to set clearly defined goals. Start with something like, “By the end of today, I will know how to greet someone and introduce myself. In two days, I will learn how to ask someone what they do for a living and explain to them what I do. By the end of the week, I will know how to procure food and avoid starvation.”

START WITH THE 100 MOST COMMON WORDS

Not all vocabulary is created equal. Some gives you a better return on investment than others😗

Start with the 100 most common words and then make sentences with them over and over again. Learn just enough grammar to be able to do this and do it until you feel pretty comfortable with all of them.

Wanna learn the 100 MOST COMMON WORDS in French ?

Well, I can send it to you if you ask nicely (you can reply to this email)

🎲Quiz of the week

You will receive all the quizzes on Sunday evening (so that you will have ALL quizzes of the week, not just those from Monday to Friday😉)

I promise you😇

If you don't know what I'm talking about (that’s alright🙃), I do French quizzes EVERYDAY on Instagram to help you learn some French (and have fun)

That's a wrap for today. Stay thirsty & see ya Sunday🥰! 

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