I had to learn french a couple of years ago. And I had three months to do it. It was perfectly doable, but my method did cost a bit of money.
I did all the things described in the article, more or less.
This was my approach:
1. I had a 1h lesson with a private tutor over Skype (via italki.com) every single day. This was the part which cost me most money. But private tutors from italki is fairly cheap.
2. Listened to the news every day in easy french (RFI has a great short podcast).
3. I watched LOTR (the only one I had available where I could change language and subtitles to be the same) first with English audio and french subtitles, and then french audio and french subtitles and lastly only french audio no subtitles.
4. Listened to french kids books as audiobooks.
5. I read kids book in french.
6. I finished the 3 months with a week of immersive french course in France and then spent another week travelling France alone, committed to only speak french.
7. During this whole time I added 10 words per day into my Anki deck. I also added any other words that I learned along the way. This was quiet a lot of work.
8. During the three months I also went through the Duolingo French course.
After three months of hard work I passed the fluency test for french.
It took quiet a lot of time and quiet a lot of money. But it got the result I was after.
Ps.
My tutor also wrote a nice review for me on LinkedIn which I’m very proud of and look at every now and again:
“Xxx has learned French with my company. He became fluent in 3 months in has now reached a level close to B2 on the European Framework of Reference, starting from scratch. He has been an extremely hard-working and committed student, with classes every day at 6.30am.”
I did all the things described in the article, more or less. This was my approach:
1. I had a 1h lesson with a private tutor over Skype (via italki.com) every single day. This was the part which cost me most money. But private tutors from italki is fairly cheap.
2. Listened to the news every day in easy french (RFI has a great short podcast).
3. I watched LOTR (the only one I had available where I could change language and subtitles to be the same) first with English audio and french subtitles, and then french audio and french subtitles and lastly only french audio no subtitles.
4. Listened to french kids books as audiobooks.
5. I read kids book in french.
6. I finished the 3 months with a week of immersive french course in France and then spent another week travelling France alone, committed to only speak french.
7. During this whole time I added 10 words per day into my Anki deck. I also added any other words that I learned along the way. This was quiet a lot of work.
8. During the three months I also went through the Duolingo French course.
After three months of hard work I passed the fluency test for french.
It took quiet a lot of time and quiet a lot of money. But it got the result I was after.
Ps. My tutor also wrote a nice review for me on LinkedIn which I’m very proud of and look at every now and again: “Xxx has learned French with my company. He became fluent in 3 months in has now reached a level close to B2 on the European Framework of Reference, starting from scratch. He has been an extremely hard-working and committed student, with classes every day at 6.30am.”