Cette semaine let’s do something à la fois léger et profond, light and deep… Here’s a fun French game that will make you learn and think in French while practicing introspection : answer le questionnaire de Proust (the drawing of Proust above was made by my mom, in case you missed last week’s 2 blog posts dedicated to her art you can click HERE and HERE!)
Marcel Proust borrowed an already existing questionnaire, translated most of the questions from English to French, and answered them alors qu’il n’avait que 19 ans. Vous pouvez voir ses réponses ICI.
Je me souviens avoir dédié un cours avec mes étudiantes de Seattle à ce questionnaire et nous nous étions beaucoup amusées. Donc le voici pour vous aussi, avec mes réponses. Ce qu’il y a de drôle dans ce questionnaire c’est qu’il me semble que mes réponses changent à chaque fois! How about we all try again next year and see what happens?
Le questionnaire de Proust
Ma vertu préférée : le courage
Les qualités que je préfère chez un homme : l’érudition, la virilité, la galanterie
Les qualités que je préfère chez une femme : le courage, l’élégance, la finesse
Le principal trait de mon caractère : l’insatisfaction
Ce que j’apprécie le plus chez mes amis : l’intelligence, l’humour, et la générosité
Mon défaut principal : l’angoisse
Mon activité préférée : apprendre
Mon rêve de bonheur : côtoyer mes héros et héroïnes morts et / ou vivants
Quel serait mon plus grand malheur? : perdre ma liberté
Ce que je voudrais être : un écrivain de génie
Le pays où je désirerais vivre : celui où se trouvent réunis tous mes amis
La couleur que je préfère : le rouge
La fleur que je préfère : la pivoine
L’oiseau que je préfère : n’importe quel oiseau bleu
Mes auteurs favoris en prose : Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Fiodor Dostoïevski, Marcel Proust, Marcel Pagnol, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Romain Gary, Marguerite Duras, Amélie Nothomb
Mes poètes préférés : Homère, Alfred de Musset, Charles Baudelaire
Mes héros dans la fiction : Achille et Ulysse
Mes héroïnes dans la fiction : Antigone et Hermione Granger
Mes compositeurs préférés : Antonio Vivaldi, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Piotr Illitch Tchaïkovski Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Claude Debussy
Mes peintres favoris : Sandro Botticelli, Francisco de Goya, William Turner, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Marc Chagall, Joan Míro, Paul Klee
Mes héros dans la vie réelle : Galileo Galilei, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean Jaurès, Marcel Proust, Albert Camus, Romain Gary, François Busnel
Mes héroïnes dans la vie réelle : Émilie du Châtelet, George Sand, Colette, Soeur Emmanuelle, Simone Veil, Mylène Farmer, Amélie Nothomb
Les personnages de l’histoire que je déteste le plus : Lénine, Staline, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot
Ce que je préfère manger et boire : gâteau au chocolat et chocolat chaud
Mes noms préférés : les noms que j’associe aux personnes que j’admire et les noms de la Grèce Antique par example Andromaque, Étéocle, Aristobule, Aphrodite, Clytemnestre, Prométhée, I could keep going for ever… c’est tellement chic!
Ce que je que déteste par dessus tout : la stupidité, la médiocrité, et perdre mon temps
Le don de la nature que je voudrais avoir : voler (as in fly, not steal!)
Comment j’aimerais mourir : par surprise et sereinement
Mon état d’esprit actuel : stressée de ne pas finir ce blog post à temps
Les fautes qui m’inspirent le plus d’indulgence : “Celles que je comprends” (j’emprunte la réponse de Marcel Proust)
Ma devise favorite : “Que celui d’entre vous qui n’a jamais péché lui jette la première pierre”
Alors maintenant c’est à vous! Amusez-vous à poser et à répondre à toutes ces questions… en français of course! And please feel free to share in the comment section, it would be fun to compare everyone’s ideas!
Une autre version… Vous comprenez?
Bouillon de culture était une émission de télévision diffusée de 1991 à 2001 et animée par Bernard Pivot. Elle visait à promouvoir les arts et les sciences mais principalement la littérature.
Dans la vidéo ci-dessus, en s’inspirant du questionnaire de Proust, l’animateur Bernard Pivot pose 10 questions à ses invités. Est-ce que vous les comprenez? Si oui, pourquoi ne pas y répondre aussi et partager ces réponses avec nous! Si non, dites-le moi et je vous les donnerai par écrit dans le prochain blog post.
L’émission qui la remplace aujourd’hui, et je vous en ai déjà parlé dans le passé, s’appelle La Grande Librairie animée par le superbe François Busnel, cité plus haut. Bernard Pivot, l’inspiration de François Busnel, est maintenant à la place de l’invité.
French Truly Anniversary Special Promotion
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.
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