Combine The Three Powers of The French Blog, Facebook, and Skype To Meet New French Conversational Partners!
Posted on 06. Jul, 2011 by Hichem in Culture, Geography, People, Vocabulary
All of you students who think that your French teacher doesn’t allow you enough time to practice your conversational French in the classroom will just love this idea!
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You can combine the three powers of The French Blog, Facebook, and Skype not only to get in touch with your friends and relatives, but also to meet French-speaking partenaires de conversations (conversational partners) all over the globe!
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For that, you only need to have a Skype account.
If you don’t, il ne faut pas du tout paniquer (you shouldn’t panic at all): Opening a Skype account is easy and gratuit (free.)
Using la webcam, however, is totally up to you!
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* Le concept du “partenaire de conversation” (the concept of the conversational partner):
L’idée est très simple (The idea is very simple): If you are learning French as a second language, and your langue maternelle (mother tongue) is, for example, l’allemand (German), le russe (russian), l’espagnol (Spanish), l’arabe (Arabic), le chinois (Chinese), etc., then all you need to do is to find yourself a native French speaker, or at least someone with a French level that is advanced enough, who would be interested in learning/improving his or her level of the language that you speak as your first language.
That way, both of you can benefit from the conversational experience!
Le French Blog
* Comment ça marche? (How does it work?)
Here’s an example of how it can work:
Imagine that there three native French speakers, say, Julie, Sébastien, and Samir.
- Julie wants to improve her conversational skills in Chinese.
- Sébastien wants to improve his conversational skills in Russian.
- Samir wants to improve his conversational skills in Spanish.
On the other hand, we have three other people:
- Cheng from China
- Alena from Russia
- Anna from Spain
All three of them wish to improve their conversational levels in French.
- Alors, rien n’est plus simple (Nothing is simpler than that)!
Julie will just have to exchange her Skype contact with Cheng, Sébastien with Alena, and Samir with Anna.
They could all agree about un rendez-vous en ligne (an online appointment), for example une fois par semaine (once a week), which of course would have to accommodate the emploi du temps (time schedule) of both.
The Skype rendez-vous could last any time you both wish.
For example, Julie and Cheng can agree to speak the first half-hour of the meeting in French, then in Chinese for the second half.
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* Et on parle de quoi avec nos partenaires de conversation? (And what do we talk about with our conversational partners?)
You definitely don’t have to talk about academic stuff!
The advantage of a partenaire de conversation en ligne (an online conversational partner) is that you’re not confronted with the limitations of a classroom. Your topics can be le sport, la politique, le cinéma, la musique, or whatever you like.
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Now la question cruciale (the crucial question is), “where do I find my potential partenaire de conversation“?
It’s also simple! Just go to our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/learn.french/
(Be sure to click on “Like” to be able to see its content!)
On the comments of this post, write something like this:
“Bonjour, je m’appelle (Igor, for example), je suis de Russie. Je souhaite trouver un ou une partenaire de conversation sur Skype. Envoyez-moi un message sur Facebook. Vous pouvez améliorer le niveau de votre (russe), et moi, mon niveau de français avec vous!”
Meaning:
“Hello, my name is (Igor, for example), I am from Russia. I’d like to find a conversational partner on Skype. Send me a Facebook message. You can improve your (Russian) level with me, and me, my French level with you!”
Bonne chance à tous ! (Good luck to you all!)
“Bonjour, je m’appelle Sandra, je suis de Taiwan. Je souhaite trouver un ou une partenaire de conversation sur Skype. Envoyez-moi un message sur Facebook. Vous pouvez améliorer le niveau de votre chinois, et moi, mon niveau de français avec vous!”