Hi everyone .
Im looking for someone to HELP me to learn french . As im a total beginner . one to one as iv tried on line its just not for me . Im over at my dads as hes now a permanent resident in St Hilaire Notre-Dame-Du-Touchet .Mortain bocage . so i will be over a lot more I Dont mind traveling . i can pay or do any jobs to help me along my way .
many thanks
john
When you say youāve tried online, have you tried Duolingo? Itās repetitive which can be boring but it drums it home. I did A level French but found it worthwhile as a refresher
FWIW we are still trying to learn. We did 3 years with Duolingo and found that while it was very useful for vocabulary, it didnāt help with speaking because we had primarily learned through writing and reading without a need to put our own meaning into the language. We also have one face to face lesson per week, and now weāve stopped Duolingo it actually seems more effective.
We have also explored other options. My wife tried Lingopie (sp?) but found the AI generated subtitles to be incorrect. Iāve had a quick trial of Rosetta stone, and the speech tools in that seemed quite useful, but the teaching process feels very haphazard. Iāve also started watching films, however true spoken French seems to only have a loose relationship to the words one learns officially.
Good luck learning.
This does seem to be a gotcha - certainly the formal French I learned at school (when Louis XIV was on the throne) is helpful for reading comprehension but I am having to unlearn sentence formations like āpouvez-vous māaider?ā and replace with āest ce que vous pouvezā¦ā or "Vous pouvezā¦? with an inflection at the end, which seem to be less formal versions in colloquial French. (@vero will no doubt correct me if I have misunderstood this!)
Also using āOnā¦ā more at the front of sentences!
And letās not go there with Verlan!
Iāve found Duo useful for explaining things Iāve picked up through conversation. I now know why the āsame wordā can seem to end with an er or an Ć©. Iām not sure how good it is for isolated beginners, Iāve tried learning a bit of Spanish but Duo has got me nowhere.
And - at least for some of our friends - which ending you choose has nothing to do with grammar 
Iāve used Babbel and currently have a subscription with Kwizzik. I donāt like DL - too gamey - and Rocket was too American. Busuu was deeply unreliable.
Most of my learning now is YT television (Iām enjoying the Food Story channel at the moment) and Journal en FranƧais facile, which I would recommend.
I found most of my learning came from sitting and listening while others talked and talkedā¦ I was watching their body language and hearing the intonations.
At first I tried to translate every word in my head. But by letting it all flow over me, I found I gradually understood what was being said more and more. Although I couldnāt for the life of me have explained what French words/phrases they were actually using. 
Once a few short phrases (with accent and gestures) did stick, I enjoyed mimicking them when I felt it appropriate.
I also wrote down phonetically what I thought was being saidā¦ and this helped me figure it out later. 
Keeping my phrases/sentences shortā¦ has also helped a great deal. 
Absolutely. Couldnāt agree more.
BTW; If you end up stuck for a word, just conjure up the longest most multi-syllabic English word that is applicable, pronounce it in a French way, and nine times out of ten it will work just fine.
Allo, Allo and Del Boy have a lot to answer for
And accepting that oneās habitually finely turned speech needs to be recast in the language of a slow five-year-old.
Except when Iām with very dear French friendsā¦ so Iām totally relaxedā¦ then I prattle on very swiftly thus no-one has time to notice if Iāve got le or la wrongā¦ theyāre too busy trying to decipher the main content
I totally agree. For me that is the best way to learn French. I can grasp the principles of quantum mechanics as well as any other layman(is that apolitically correct expression? I find it hard to keep up these days!) because everything is logical.
Any logic there is in language is completely destroyed by the many rule exceptions. When I ask why they pronounce Portet (rhymes with forget) and Muret (rhymes with today) I get the answer because ā¦ gallic shrug.
I was recently asked directions to Saint Gaudens by someone who was obviously from the north of France (I would have suggested Paris but in this corner of France that is pejorative). After I asked them to repeat the name of the place they were looking for a couple of times they showed me Saint Gaudens written on paper. āOh, you mean Sangoā I replied ā because that is what everybody round here says (and then pointed in the opposite direction :wicked grin emoji: )
Iāve been told I have a southern accent. I guess it is a bit like a French person living in Newcastle saying things like āway eye manā and calling everybody āpetā but with a French accent.
Please donāt mock my mentors. I still say ātres bijouā if a like something and my neighbours seem to understand the expression when I use it even if they never say it themselves. I knew a man from Finland who always called his laptop a āflaptopā. Totally wrong linguistically but strangely correct.
Finally, you can understand why Rodneyās brother speaks such good French by checking here
Hi yes iv tried Duolingo just seams not to work .(sink in ) iv just joined coffee break French . seams ok .
The one thing all of the reliable (ie those who arenāt fluent-in-three-months snake oil salesmen) educators agree is that different methods work for different people.
And itās important to have some method of measuring progress. Sometimes we believe weāll learn through simple exposure. That may be the case for certain people, if they are in a situation of total immersion; usually, though, weāre kidding ourselves.
Online can be tough when youāre starting out. Since youāre near Mortain-Bocage, maybe check local community centers or even put up a flyer at the grocery store. You might find a student or someone whoās fluent and willing to trade lessons for some help around the house.