Speak French more freely: start with a fable

Dear French Story Listeners,

This week I began a new adventure with Vladimir, whom I’m coaching to speak French with more ease and spontaneity. Maybe that sounds familiar? 😊

We started with an exercise that has shaped good speakers for over two thousand years: the Mythos,

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AdultLearners1 ApprendreLeFrançais8 BrainHealth4 ClassicalEducation2 ClassicalRhetoric1 CMHomeschool2 comprehensibleinput297 fables22 fle307 frenchfluency20 frenchlearning7 FrenchListening5 frenchstories15 homeschoolfrench44 homeschooling113 lafontaine17 learnfrench39 LearningAfter501 LeCoqEtLaPerle1 LifelongLearning13 LivingBooks7 narration124 NeverTooLateToLearn7 Progymnasmata1 retelling5 SeniorLearners2 speakfrench214 storytelling40

Could you erase a memory? Plus, an autumn poem for you 🍂

To our circle of French Story Listeners,

Autumn has arrived, and with it the perfect invitation to slow down and listen to a poem.

🍂 Our poem for the season

“Jour pluvieux d’automne” by Michel Beau

👉 Read and listen here: https://www.aliceayel.com/resources/jour-pluvieux-dautomne/

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The 3-minute French habit that works while you rest

Dear French Story Listeners,

Before you read on, take a breath with me. Shoulders down. A cup of coffee or tea nearby, if you have one. ☕

This week I want to remind you that you don’t learn French by pushing.

You learn it by showing up gently,

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The French word that means both “suspicion” and “a pinch of salt”

Dear French Story Listeners,

Let’s begin with one small French word, un soupçon.

It means a suspicion, that little feeling that something isn’t quite what it seems.

It also means a tiny bit, as in un soupçon de sel (a pinch of salt).

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“Put It Away”: Freshened Wits for Your French Journey

Dear French Story Listeners,

Have you ever noticed that around the fifteen-minute mark of anything — a lesson, a podcast, a task you’re not thrilled about — your mind quietly starts to wander?

You’re not doing it wrong. Your brain is just doing what brains do.

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Telling It Back: A Gentle Way Into French

Dear French Story Listeners,

Think about the last time you told someone about a movie you loved.

You didn’t recite it word for word. You told it, in your own way, and in doing so, you understood it a little more deeply. You made it yours.

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Why we start with the body, not the book

Dear French Story Listeners,

It’s la rentrée, that particular feeling in the air when September asks us, gently, what we’d like to begin again.

Maybe it’s French, for you. Maybe it’s been a while, or maybe you’ve never quite started at all.

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