My previous language learning has been on writing and spelling, though I’m much more interested in speaking French than writing essays - and instant messaging/texting is more what I’d like to focus on with writing anyway
How can I find ways to practice speaking French, even if I’m unable to find people to chat with ?
I thought about uploading videos to YouTube of me speaking, which would give me a place to keep digital copies of my progress with speech.
That’s a good idea. By posting videos online, you could get native French speakers to correct you in the comments or you can link the video in a LangCorrect post for comment.
I find, however, that speaking to natives or fluent people in real time is more beneficial because they can give me corrections on the spot. Also, I can hear sentence patterns, pronunciation, etc, and work on my ability to react or speak on the fly which is something I can’t really do when writing but is necessary when we want to become fluent.
I may have been very lucky to make friends or to create groups to have conversation practice in Japanese multiple times a week but I do think it’s possible for everyone to do. All three of my Japanese exchange partners were made through a local group I created. Although two of them have returned to Japan, we still speak with each other at least every other week. All of the Japanese conversation meetups I attend are scheduled through the local group, too. I attend these 3x a week. I made a friend on the LangCorrect Discord server who teaches French for a living so I hired him to teach me French a couple of times a week. I’m far from conversational but I hope to be one day.
We have voice channels on the LangCorrect Discord server to practice speaking but hardly anyone uses them. Maybe we can change that.
In the meantime, this link was given to me by someone in the Japanese group. It’s a site to find language exchange partners: https://www.mylanguageexchange.com/
oh, I almost forgot. When one of my sons became fluent in Japanese, he not only met with a local group once a week but he also played a game on his phone to practice Japanese through messaging and/or texting.
Bon chance! I hope this helps.
I’ve started doing that with Spanish and it’s helped a ton. I’m also building a little app to make it easier. I’d love to get your feedback on it!
Thank you for your question. Nowsaday we are trying to focus on job mainly, so speaking is more necessary than writting. You can make “Live” on Youtube and Tikok, so from there you can get asked from many people watching your Live.
This video presents one of the most effective techniques that I’ve found on the Internet to practice your oral skills. But, hey, you don’t need to take it as seriously as that guy haha
Mari’s right, you could upload YT vids and receive comments from natives. The only issues are 1) attracting effective viewers 2) understanding written comments about your pronunciation. It’s far better to correct someone orally, because written indications often are vague, unless the person giving them knows the IPA or something like that.
I’d truly recommend finding a conversation exchange partner. This would be the easiest and most practical way IMO.