I feel so blessed that I get to write this year after year… Joyeux anniversaire French Truly! Aujourd’hui tu as 7 ans woohoo!
Il y a exactement sept ans jour pour jour, le 1er juin 2013, je retrouvais mon tout premier petit groupe d’étudiants du samedi matin dans un restaurant français à Seattle. Ce restaurant existe toujours aujourd’hui, il s’appelle Luc et se trouve dans la quartier de Madison Valley à Seattle. Le propriétaire Thierry Rautureau AKA The Chef in the Hat, had so kindly welcomed me into the French community of Madison Valley which at the time counted many French businesses, and helped me tremendously by letting me use his super cool restaurant when closed pour mes petits groupes d’étudiants. Forever grateful. I even found a couple of old photos from these days of me and Bruno in front of Luc… I’ve added them at the bottom of this blog post if you’re feeling très curieux! God it’s making me feel so emotional to see these old pictures and think back at this brand new life I was beginning then… wow.
Special Promotion to celebrate French Truly’s anniversary
It’s become a bit fo a ritual now to célébrer les anniversaires de French Truly avec une promotion spéciale on all three online courses (600 Words, Perfect Pronunciation, French Dictées) at a special discounted price for a week. They normally cost $149 each but this week we’re changing the price to $99.
Click HERE to buy the course(s) of your choice for $99 instead of $149 – Promotion from June 1st to June 8th 2020.
Covid19 & French Truly
As you know, Covid19 has hit many businesses really hard, and mine is one of them with pretty much every single of my French Immersion Courses in Seattle, in Pélussin, or in Paris, being touched by it. So today and with a somewhat heavy heart, I am promising to you right now that I’m going to do my very best to make sure I get to send you a very similar email next year, on June 1st 2021, and tell you “Hey guess what French Truly is 8 today!” Some of you asked for it, and that is so sweet of you, so here I am adding a donation link if you wish to contribute in any way you can. Merci beaucoup.
In this course, you will find 15 videos (+ 10 bonus ones) to help & accompany you every step of the way through the course + for each word, each sentence, each expression, each conjugated verb, I have created an audio file of my voice, slow and slightly faster speed. Your French language learning experience has never been so easy, fun, and fruitful. You can learn French online and benefit from the flexibility working at your own pace offers, while having me with you the whole time.
Did you know…
You can converse (speak + understand) in French with only 600 WORDS?
The average French person only uses between 300 & 3,000 WORDS?
This means that if you can master a relatively short list of words, you’ll be able to express yourself like the average French person! Plus you’re much more likely to understand the French when they talk back to you!
This course will teach you…
1- How to speak French
2- How to pronounce French
3- How to make French sentences
4- How to conjugate all the most common French verbs
5- How to polish your results
6- How to self evaluate your French
More info HERE
It should take you about 30 hours to complete this course, which is made up of 10 lessons
This course is designed for a beginner / intermediate level. If you are intermediate but feel like you could really reinforce your foundations, you will love it.
You can join whenever, either by buying the course or by becoming a monthly member giving you access to my French online courses from $10 / month. See more details about the membership at the bottom of this page
In this course you will find 11 videos + 150 audio files + 92 pages PDF format to help & accompany you every step of the way throughout the course. In some parts of the videos, my face will appear close up and profile so you can easily see how I make these sounds with my mouth. The 150 audio files are composed of the 100 most popular French words and the 50 most common French phrases. They are recordings of my voice, speaking slowly enough so you can easily grasp every syllable. Your French language learning experience has never been so easy, fun, and fruitful. You can learn French online and benefit from the flexibility working at your own pace offers, while having me with you the whole time.
NB: if you are the proud owner of my previous French online course 600 WORDS, don’t worry, this is not a repeat as we are now exploring 1 letter words and up, whereas in 600 WORDS we began at 4 letter words and up.
Combine knowledge with confidence…
For you to be able to have a pleasant and efficient conversation with a French person, one thing is key… can you guess what it is? Confidence! How well do you think you will communicate in French if you don’t feel confident about your accent? If you are scared that people won’t understand you? Or even worse if you think someone might make fun of you? Without a minimum of confidence there is no room for communication. Yet if you feel confident, you can afford to make a few mistakes here and there because people will still understand you. What prevents a conversation from happening isn’t just a lack of knowledge, it’s also a lack of confidence. You need to have both to make it work, not to mention, to make it fun!
This course will teach you…
1- How to pronounce every letter of the alphabet
2- How to pronounce every digraph & trigraph
3- How to make every French sentence flow
4- How to pronounce the 100 most popular French words
5- How to pronounce the 50 most popular French phrases
6- How to avoid the pronunciation mistakes everyone makes
More info HERE
It should take you about 20 to 2 hours to complete this course, which is made up of 11 lessons
This course is designed for a beginner level. If you are intermediate but lack confidence when it comes to talking and feel like you could really benefit from focusing on pronunciation, you will love it.
You can join whenever, either by buying the course or by becoming a monthly member giving you access to my French online courses from $10 / month. See more details about the membership below
In the FRENCH DICTÉES online course you will find 20 videos + 10 audio files to help & accompany you every step of the way throughout the course. Why 20 videos? Because there are 10 dictées in total, each focusing on one particular topic, and for each dictée I have prepared 2 videos. Let’s say the video focuses on both French past tenses called imparfait & passé composé. The first video will go though the grammar, the conjugation, and all the tips on these two past tenses to help you understand and remember how and when to use them. The second video will be the actual dictée, a short story written by me, describing everyday life situations conveniently packed with imparfait and passé composé verbs! Boom! Efficient! The dictée will also be read by me, slowly first and then a little faster, with a close up on my face so you can more easily recognize the words and copy the shapes I make to improve your own pronunciation.
Become a French language expert
How do you become an expert at anything? By focusing on one thing at a time.
I’ve made sure to categorize and isolate either a verb tense, a verb group, a grammar or vocabulary topic per dictée, so you can effectively focus and interiorize concepts separately, which makes it a lot easier to remember them.
Here’s what you’re going to learn
What grammar & conjugation points will each dictée focus on?
Dictée # 1: Present tense
Dictée # 2: Past tenses – imparfait & passé composé
Dictée # 3: Future tenses – futur proche & futur simple
Dictée # 4: Conditional, imparfait, asking questions
Dictée # 5: Imperative form
Dictée # 6: First group verbs all tenses
Dictée # 7: Second group verbs all tenses
Dictée # 8: Third group verbs all tenses
Dictée # 9: Numbers
Dictée # 10: Prepositions
Each dictée is a short story written by me about practical everyday life situations. This means that not only do you get to work on conjugation & grammar drills, but you also improve your conversational skills at the same time: a magic combination for your next trip to France!
Grow your confidence talking about practical everyday topics
The dictées will refer to common topics that you are very likely to hear or very likely to use to express yourself such as:
-Traveling to France
-Socializing
-Childhood memories
-Family dynamics
-Everyday life routines
-How to express your ideas, opinions, and dreams
Two videos per dictée
First video: key grammar and conjugation reminders explained very clearly so you feel prepared and confident entering each dictée.
Second video: the actual dictée. I’ve made sure to categorize and isolate either a verb tense, a verb group, a grammar or vocabulary topic, so you can effectively focus and interiorize concepts separately, which makes it a lot easier to remember them.
And for you challenge lovers over-achievers?
Yes I have prepared something just for you! I have also made 10 audio files, 1 per dictée, so that if you wish to, if you want it extra difficult, if you want to test yourself more deeply, you can solely rely on sound. Indeed there are many occasions in life where we hear a language but we don’t see it: speaking to someone on the phone or listening to the radio for instance.
20 videos? 10 audio files? What else?
This new FRENCH DICTÉES online course also comes with written files with both the French text along with the English translation, so that you can evaluate yourself when you’re done taking notes.
To summarize, you’ll be able to use video, audio, and written material.
Dictées worked for me, they’ll work for you!
Let me tell you, I LOVE dictées because THEY WORK. And clearly you realize this too and that is smart of you. So now let’s see how something as simple as a dictée can truly help you become a little bit French! Your French language learning experience has never been so easy, fun, and fruitful. You can learn French online and benefit from the flexibility working at your own pace offers, while having me with you the whole time.
Back to 2013…
Merci encore Thierry de m’avoir si gentiment accueillie dans le quartier, dans la communauté, dans ton restaurant LUC!
Je ne pensais pas que ça me ferait une impression si forte de revoir ces vieilles photos (of course I’m seeing all the others too as I’m searching for these particular ones) mais il me semble que mon coeur va exploser en revoyant et repensant à tout ça… so exciting and so scary at the same time. Every single day was a brand new creation, new people, new situations, new meetings, new events, new opportunities, new projects, new comfort zones to grow past. It was hard. It was brave. It was wonderful. J’habitais à Seattle depuis trois ans, not quite divorced yet mais presque, déménagé dans un nouveau quartier à côté du magnifique Lake Washington, launching French Truly, going to every single relevant networking event, contacting every single relevant business, reaching out to the radio, TV, working with retirement homes, everything and anything I could do I did it, never stopped, always worked. So much fun. L’énergie magique de Seattle et des Seattleites. Merci.
Comments