Olly Richards - French Foundations: Master the Basics in Two Weeks

tonnant - another book about learning French!

In a world with no shortage of books about how to learn French, why should you pay any attention to this one?

Well, please allow me to explain.

You see, over 15 years ago, I bought a one-way ticket to Paris. I had no money. I had no place to stay. I knew virtually no French.

You may be able to guess how this story ends: Within six months I could speak French fluently! (Well, not quite but pretty close!)

There is nothing particularly miraculeux about that story, however, as there are many foreigners in France who have taught themselves to speak French well.

What happened after I left France is more important.

After learning French, I had caught the language bug. I was surprised that I had been able to teach myself a new language, as we are not known for our language aptitude in the U.K., and I wanted more.

Over the following years, I went on to learn other languages: Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Cantonese, Arabic, Thai, Spanish, and more, many of which I now speak fluently.

Learning these languages took a long time. It also was not easy. I made every language-learning mistake under the sun, and a few more besides. (In fact, I feel like I have invented mistakes to make that were never before possible.)

Despite my mistakes, struggles, and occasional misadventures, I did eventually become fairly good at language learning! These days, I am a language consultant and I work with universities, publishers, government organisations, and regular people, to do one thing in particular

To show you how to learn foreign languages quickly, whatever your age, previous experience, or talent naturel .

In a nutshell, I have spent my life making language-learning mistakes, so you do not have to! This is especially important for beginners, because it is at the beginner stage of learning a new language that most people get stuck and often give up.

All of which brings us to this book: French Foundations.

Learning French can be intimidating for beginners: pronunciation can be hard to get right, conjugating verbs can be confusing and remembering the gender of nouns can seem like Mission impossible .

So, I thought:

Wouldnt it be great to take all the language-learning expertise I have amassed over the years and teach people step-by-step how to whizz through the beginner stages of learning French, master the basics and avoid all the mistakes I made, so they can learn French as fast as possible and do what they really want to do - start speaking!

It sounded like a good idea and so I wrote the book.

To be sure the book did what it was supposed to, I gave an early copy to a few dozen beginner French learners. Some parts were well-received, while other parts I was told could be improved.

I listened to the helpful feedback from this group of French learners and got back to work.

Among the many improvements I made to the book, I decided to double the number of useful French words and phrases included, and create complete audio recordings of these words and phrases (which come free with this book), in order to provide a more complete learning experience.

The result, which you hold in your hands today, is a powerful crash-course in beginners French. This book takes all the most important lessons you would learn in an entire year of French classes, strips away everything that is not strictly necessary for a beginner to learn, and gathers it all together into a short, punchy guide that you can digest in less than two weeks.

If you are just getting started learning French, or even if you have been learning French for some time and feel frustrated with your progress, French Foundations represents the best way I know to gain a genuine understanding of the basics of French, break through the beginner level and begin your journey towards fluency.

I have poured my heart and soul into creating this book, and I hope you like it.

Are you ready? Allons-y