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French Top Picks: Audio, Books, Movies. Easy reading for beginning French students. The 10 Best French Movies for. Useful Tips for Beginners Watching Movies in French. 2011); if you enjoy them 1/ your French is very good, 2/ you really understand this country! More about French humour. Facts and figures about French movies. Il y a longtemps que je t\'aime. This is just 1 of 10 easy-to-understand French movies recommended to help improve your French. Click through for the article. Learn French With Movies: The Quick Guide. Can you really learn French through movies? Or is it just a convenient excuse for not doing your French homework? When I was studying French in high school, our teacher showed lots of movies. At the time, I thought the teacher was being a bit overefficient. Stick on a movie, keep half an eye on the class, and you can grade papers for 4. In hindsight, though, I was doing my teacher a disservice. Learning French through offers a lot of advantages: Watching French films helped me develop a feel for the rhythm and pace of spoken French, something that’s hard to get in a classroom when the only other people you’re talking to are similarly- baffled Anglophones. Additionally, watching French movies is a great way to put what you’ve learned into practice in a relaxed environment. If there’s something you don’t understand, you can always rewind and try to listen to it again, which is more than you can do speaking to an actual person. Trying to learn French through movies is also a good way to learn the kind of language that doesn’t show up in French textbooks. Easy-to-understand Spanish Movies / Music Culture. English Online Articles in Easy Understandable English for Learners. Home; Search; A-Z Topic Index. Spelling Changes to French Language. That doesn’t just mean slang and profanity – although you’ll pick up a thing or two if you watch enough crime dramas – but includes poetic language, subcultural jargon, and even everyday bad grammar. Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Using a film to improve your French means watching it activelyrather than just sitting back and enjoying. To begin with, start by trying to watch the film without subtitles. If you hear an unfamiliar word, note it down. If you’re not sure what it is, use the French- language subtitles to get the spelling and article correct. Make sure you look up the words in a good dictionary and then review them on a regular basis. This is an effective approach, but like many real things in life, it is going to take time and energy. If you’d like to be even more efficient with this, and are open to watching other kinds of videos, you might want to check out Fluent. U, our site for learning French through videos. Fluent. U was designed to address exactly this problem. Fluent. U brings together great videos for learning French in one convenient place. It also provides interactive transcripts and a video player designed for learning French. It tops this off with a review system which takes full advantage of the massive video library. And Fluent. U remembers your progress in learning vocab and uses it to recommend content from the rest of the Fluent. U library, which includes real- world videos like movie trailers, commercials, news, and inspiring talks. OK, enough shameless self- promotion. What Movies to Watch to Learn French. If you’re a beginner, you’ll probably want to select films with nice, uncomplicated French. If you’re a beginner, you might want to start with children’s films and simple fare like action movies. Fortunately, it’s been a good couple of decades for French children’s films and action movies. Some of these have had English- language releases which you may have seen, but others are less well- known. Back in the days of high school French, there weren’t a lot of options available to us. My French teacher used to arrange outings for the class to a little club that showed French films in a room at the community center. I definitely recall watching “Romauld et Juliette” and “Le Grand Blond avec une chaussure noire”. That kind of classic, light- hearted French comedy is a good way to keep the interest of students. As an added bonus, the plots are pretty easy to figure out from context. I had a good local video store – this was the 1. Still, when you’re a high school student you don’t exactly want to brush up your French using “Jules et Jim” or “The 4. Blows.” As a result, I took what I could get. When I moved to the UK, I gained a little more exposure to French animation, which is . Today, of course, the story is completely different. If you want a French- language film, even if you can’t find one on a streaming service or catch one on television, the internet has made ordering the movie you want on DVD basically effortless. Most major French releases will be available without too much difficulty. And if you have a multi- region player, the world’s your oyster. Obviously, you need to choose movies you’re going to enjoy (I mean, as much as anyone can predict that). I’m not sure the farces and romantic comedies that I watched as a student would be to my taste today, but on the other hand I’ll sit down and watch a weird steampunk fantasy like “La Cit. Fortunately, there’s a lot of variety out there. Great Movies for French Learners 1. La Marche de l’empereur. I know everyone who’s ever recommended a French movie recommends “La Marche de l’empereur,” but that is because it’s really good. Released in English as “March of the Penguins” with a voice- over by Morgan Freeman, it’s very different in its original version. In the original, the penguins themselves narrate, with voice- over actors supplying voices for the mother, father and infant birds. It has everything the beginning French student needs: a relatively simple story, clear narration, and one voice at a time. You can spend some time with each narrator, letting your ear get used to it. Les intouchables. Whether you’re ready to fall off the couch laughing, cry a little on the inside, or all- out water your neighbors sweater sleeve with your tears, the French film “Les intouchables” will probably do the job. It’s an incredibly heartfelt and hilarious story about a young man whose anger at “the system” doesn’t stop him from applying for a position just to get a little unemployment insurance. He certainly didn’t expect to be offered the position of a personal caretaker for a quadriplegic aristocrat. Yet somehow, these two people of vastly differing backgrounds forge a powerful bond and both seem to give new purpose to the other’s existence. But it isn’t only the story that is so compelling, the language too is full of the delightful contrast that results from characters of two quite disparate socio- economic circles. The protagonist’s almost crass and up- front way of talking really gives a sense of what French sounds like in the streets, among friends, and in heated conversations. But his friend’s impressive vocabulary, clear and proper articulation, and formal expressions demonstrate another side of the rich French language. You’ll also gain a sense of appreciation for what happens when these two ways of speaking the language collide. What is appropriate to say in a job- interview setting? What does a brother say when he’s angry and worried about his younger sibling? How do you yell at an annoying sibling, or punish your daughter? How do people speak to each other in the work place? You will be amazed at how much you’ll learn and how much you’ll love “Les untouchables“! Banlieue 1. 3There’s been a boom in French action movies over the last few years, partly driven by media enthusiasm for parkour, the hyperkinetic French sport- slash- artform and by the success of director/producer Luc Besson. Banlieue 1. 3,” a dystopian action thriller with a surprisingly idealistic ending. Les visiteurs. Sometimes it may be hard to work up the courage to throw in a movie in a foreign language, but nothing is more motivating that knowing you’re going to blow up from laughing (“. A great film for doing just that is “Les visiteurs,” a cult classic for many French people. Jean Reno and Christian Clavier are a knight and his squire from the medieval times who have been transported into the future (not quite to the present day, since the movie came out in 1. They must find a way to return, running into their great great great great. Listen also to the distinct way the two medieval characters talk compared to the other French characters. You’ll no doubt come across some wonderfully outrageous medieval expressions and struggle, right along with the characters, to figure out what they are talking about! The next time you’re in France, you won’t have much trouble finding someone who will recognize quotes from a movie like this! La grande vadrouille. Perhaps one of the most quoted films in France is the World War II classic: “La grande vadrouille.” This story of international camaraderie in wartime, is one that many, who knew France at the time, connect with. It characterizes the particular way in which some French people think about Americans and the English. The French characters in the film will stop at nothing (despite sometimes lacking in motivation and conviction) to help the American and English soldiers that have parachuted into Paris and must get south and out of the German- occupied part of the country. The movie plays on stereotype after stereotype and clich. You’ll learn a lot from the characterizations of the different nationalities and the interactions between them, though perhaps considerably less about how to be inconspicuous in an occupied war- zone! If you ever find yourself in a French caf! It’s a gold mine of culture that kids of the younger generations still recognize and adore: “But alors, you are French?!”6. They tend to have simple, straightforward plots that are easy to work out from context, and the dialogue is usually clear, with limited vocabulary. Simple doesn’t have to mean boring, though: check out “Kirikou et la Sorci. Successful enough to spawn two sequels, Kirikou has simple enough dialogue for beginners but draws on a setting and mythology that are rich and new enough to hold the viewer’s interest. Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. Musicals are another way of getting a grip on the language. This seems to be variable; some viewers find it harder to follow a song than to pay attention to dialogue, while for others the music actually makes the words easier to understand. If you want to find out which applies to you, you should start with 1. Les Parapluies de Cherbourg,” a romantic drama starring Catherine Deneuve in which every line is sung rather than spoken.
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