Coucou la communauté des French learners !
Vous avez terminé le Baby Stage et vous êtes prêts à commencer l’Infant Stage, c’est fantastique !
Je vais maintenant parler en anglais pour vous expliquer l’approche du Français naturellement et la série de vidéos spécialement pour les débutants avancés ou les « enfants » !
I am now going to speak in English to tell you more about the Infant Stage, as well as the langage acquisition process.
This series of videos is carefully crafted for advanced or upper beginners. Those videos are for more advanced beginners who already know some French and who want to continue to acquire the French basics. This series is called Infant Stage.
Why ? Because you are not a total beginner anymore. You are no longer a baby. You have grown in your French journey. You have viewed 31 videos, and you have read and listen to 31 sessions to acquire the French foundation. You have had a lot of comprehensible, rich and abundant input and you are now starting to understand quite a lot of French.
You can now understand people if they stay within certain topics. They still need to talk to you in a way that’s appropriate for you, but you know many words, and you don’t rely exclusively on visual information. You still aren’t completely used to the sounds of the language. You have a good intuition for basic structures, like sentence order.
Because you are starting to get used to what the French language sounds like, you start acquiring words faster, without needing to hear them so many times.
Yet, you still need input. However, with a few words under your belt you are better prepared to make the most of that input. Those words will help you understand the rest of the input.
Remember, you are at the Infant Stage. How much time does a child spend « learning » his/her mother tongue by the age of 6 ? If we focus on ages 1 to 6, so 5 years and if we calculate that a child is exposed to input for about 8 hours a day, then
8 hours x 7 days a week x 52 weeks x 5 years = >14 500 hours
And we know that language acquisition is not complete at age 6. So you still need a LOT of hours of input. You need a LOT of input before being able to speak naturally and effortlessly.
Remember, we are talking about language acquisition here, NOT language learning. The goal is to acquire French so that it stays in your brain forever.
In this series of videos, you are going to keep on building a strong foundation. You are still going to acquire the most frequent French words and structures used in everyday conversations like to need, to have to, to feel like… You are also going to discover MORE about the French culture and idioms.
Remember, your only « job » is to try to understand what I am telling you. NOT to understand everything, but to understand the gist of what I am saying. NO need to memorize. The more you listen and read, the more you will understand, the more you will acquire French.
There will also be NEW videos to vocalize. I will share with you phrases to repeat to give you the confidence to start speaking when YOU are READY. Infants start making sounds, they also start to say words and short sentences. They are getting ready to speak. The same applies to you. You can get ready to speak by repeating after me short and fun phrases. Again, there is NO need to memorize them. It is just a way to boost your confidence and HAVE FUN!
And as always, you will also find a list of other stories suggestions which you can read and listen to. The more you hear French, the more you understand, the more you acquire French.
Sit comfortably, listen, read, try to understand, vocalize, ENJOY.
Happy Infant Stage! Happy French acquisition!
~ FIN ~