How to Read in French

Or any other language

There are four major components of language learning. I know because I took the French AP exam in high school. We were tested on all four of these components: reading, writing, listening and speaking. So I am here today to tell you how to read in French. Or any other language you so choose.

Why should you listen to me on this? Well! I have a Bachelor’s Degree in French,¹ I have a MFA, and I read at least one book in French every month to maintain my fluency. So I have expertise in the French language, books, and reading French books.

I am assuming that at this point, you have some desire to read in a foreign language, which means you have some familiarity with it. I’m not necessarily offering advice in terms of how to learn a language, but more how to maintain it via reading.

I am most familiar with Romance Languages, so I imagine that some of these tips may not work exactly with other languages. I am speaking from my own experience, and am only one person on the internet. Take what works for you, and leave the rest.

1. Define your goals

   This all depends on what you want to do. Do you want to read comics in a foreign language? The news? Newsletters? Novels? All of these require different vocabulary sets, and it will help you identify what exactly you’re working towards. Maybe you want to be a casual reader. Maybe you want to read Les rois maudits in its entirety.² (The Accursed Kings in English, by Maurice Druon) While being able to ready anything in [insert language here] might be a great end goal, that takes years and can be discouraging. Settle on what you really want to read first, and start making strides towards that.

2. Start Slow

   I mean this in two ways - don’t just dive into your language’s equivalent of Dostoevsky, and don’t try to read 100 pages a day. This will not work. For example, in French, I’d recommend starting with Le Petit Prince/The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was written as a children’s book, which means the grammar and vocabulary is straightforward. Children’s books are a great place to start, as they’re not only simpler in vocabulary, but also shorter, which means they won’t be as overwhelming. If you’re looking for more French options, they include Le Petit Nicolas (which includes illustrations by Jean-Jacques Sempé), Les Aventures de TinTin (created by a Belgian cartoonist Hergé, but still in French!) and Asterix. (Sometimes written as Asterix le Gaulois, or Asterix et Obelix.)

   

   Story time: I switched from Spanish to French in the 7th grade. In that first French class of mine, we watched Muffy (Millennials of yore will have immediate flashbacks to these commercials.) We also watched Barbar and one of the guys in my class became incredibly discouraged that there were kindergartners in France who spoke better French than we did. He switched back to Spanish the next year, but I hate to break it to you Brendon, that still would be the case in whatever language you took. Learning a new language means that there will inevitably be someone who speaks/reads/writes better than you, but the point is to try. It takes an incredible amount of courage to try to communicate in your non native language, so don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t go smoothly. After all, we were all children once, learning how to talk.

3. Cultivate your space
   I’ve found that I need to be in a certain mindset to read in French, and it borders on my academic tendencies. I like working at tables, and I like having all my dictionaries (more on this in a second) around me. Lying on a couch is just not going to do it for me - I’m asking more effort of my brain, so I need to honor that effort. Also because some of my reading tools court Internet usage, I find if I’m in a more ‘academic’ mindset, I’m less likely to get distracted.

   

   Space cultivation while I was trying to finish Les Années.

4. Find the tools you need
   For me, this is a number of dictionaries. One benefit of the Internet I will say is that all of my French language dictionaries have moved online, which means I no longer have to cart around giant dictionaries.³ Truly amazing. I prefer WordReference and Reverso: WordReference is generally good for day to day vocabulary and some cultural references. Reverso is good for slang and clichés. They obviously have other languages than French, but if you have other suggestions, I want to hear them! I’m always on the lookout. Both have desktop versions and mobile apps. Fair warning: Reverso does use AI, and that can be a pain in the butt. No, robot, I know what I’m typing, stop trying to use autocorrect.

   I don’t do this anymore, but I used to underline words I didn’t know. You can also highlight, or flag. It is indeed because of the French that I don’t write in books any more (yet another French related trauma) but that’s a story for another time. The point is to find a system and tool set that works for you

5. Practice
   Rome wasn’t built in a day. The more often you read in your preferred language, the better you will get and the easier it will be to recognize words.

6. Have a plan for when you get frustrated
   Because you will get frustrated. It’s just the nature of learning. Not even language learning specifically; learning any new skill comes with its moments of hardship. How will you deal with that when it comes to you? Will you get up and take a walk? Listen to music? Put the book down and come back another time? Chuck things at the wall? Sometimes our brains aren’t in the mood for hard reading, and you need something mindless. That’s ok! You just need to have some coping strategies in place so that you don’t give up. Remember, you’re doing something hard, you’re allowed to think it’s hard.

7. Practice Again
   Consistent practice means you won’t get rusty, and therefore you won’t get intimidated by how long it will take you to read a book in your language. I’m not speaking from experience or anything, though. No, no. Not me.

8. Have reasonable expectations
   For the first few years of my formal French education, I didn’t read books. There were textbooks, of course, but we read were poems, or short stories. Pieces that were easier to complete, and required much less vocabulary to discuss. There were also movies involved, too. In fact, I checked my collection of French books, and can confirm I didn’t start reading full on books (specifically plays) until I was a senior in high school. By that point I had been studying French for 6 years. I’m not saying it’ll take you that long, but don’t expect to jump into 300 page novels right from the get go. The act of completing any reading (even a poem!) will add to your growing confidence.

   

   See? Look how pretty they are! This is not all of them, obviously. High school and early college books are in the upper left hand corner.

   Note: The reason I know it was my senior year in high school is because 1) I’ve kept every French book I have ever bought/used for class and 2) they are all arranged chronologically in my house. This was partly inspired by the dining room in my host family’s home; they had all of their books on the shelves there, and because most French books are white, they looked real cool. So I followed suit, naturally.

9. Practice Some More
   If at first you don’t succeed…

10. Diversify Your Reading

    Once you’ve reached cruising altitude, broaden your reading horizons. For me, this looks like reading more contemporary French novels and newsletters. For me this is important because I learn new slang and vocabulary that is slow to trickle into the mainstream. This is also where you can start incorporating TV shows or other media in your chosen language.

    Diversifying your reading can also mean reading from different parts of your language world. For me, that means I try to read novels from across the French speaking diaspora: the Caribbean, Africa, South East Asia, Madagascar, etc. It can also mean reading fewer contemporary novels and more historical ones. Lemme tell you, the vocab in those old French novels gives me a workout. The point is to not just pigeonhole yourself with one type of book or genre, the same as in English. I’m not saying you need to like everything, but like a forlorn vegetable, you should at least try it once.

    

    La Francophonie. Aka: where I look for French authors. From Cornell’s libraries.

    Also, this will give you an excuse to buy more books. Just saying.

11. Do I need to say it?

Reading and understanding a second language is an asset. It’s why I got my first job out of college, and it makes it that much easier to communicate with people worldwide. Also, there are cognitive benefits. Some studies have shown that learning a second language will delay the onset of dementia.⁴

The goal is not perfection. For me, the goal is to maintain my language fluency, and yes, that does take work. I wish it didn’t, but until someone finds a way to beam the French language directly into my skull, with all of its complexities and rule exceptions, I will have to keep practicing. Learning can (and should!) be fun, and just know I will be right there with you in the dictionary trenches.

Do you have other tips and tricks that you use? Please let me know in the comments! Again unless you have a super special language that will beam complete mastery of French into my head automatically. Then I want in on it.

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No New Books™️ Challenge

I should really figure out what else I should highlight here, as I go through my period of buying special editions. Why am I buying special editions? you ask. Can’t you just…not? you ask. All valid questions. I am the variety of bookish raccoon/gremlin that needs to have the same edition of all the books in a series. So if I have the first in xyz format (special edition, hardcover, paperback, etc.) then the rest need to be in the same format. Because then 👏🏻THEY👏🏻MATCH👏🏻. That’s what I’m doing now - getting the sequels, 2nd books, and follow ups in series so that they all match and are 👏🏻aesthetically👏🏻pleasing👏🏻. Really this is all smoke and mirrors to distract you from the fact that I’m still failing.

• Longest streak: 38 days (January 1st - February 6th)

• Last streak: 14 days (May 7th -20th)

• Current streak: A big old goose egg (0)

Mug Moment of the Week
Technically not a mug, but I will allow it since I am the one who makes the rules. Remember how last week I said I got a mug when I went to refill tea at the local store? Yeah well I got a teapot, too.

Look at those aesthetically pleasing cherry blossoms.

I wasn’t really a tea party child. Not to my recollection, at least. This isn’t a ‘I’m not like other girls’ bashing, I was plenty girly in other ways. I just don’t remember doing tea parties. Maybe I am trying to recreate some childhood whimsy. Or maybe, when I went to high tea in October, I was given a tea bag to go and was told it makes a pot of tea and needed a tea pot to accomplish said venture. Or maybe it’s childhood nostalgia. Truly, who is to say.

This teapot is lovely. I did indeed make that pot of tea, and I felt very fancy doing it. No teacups came with this pot, so I used the mug I bought with it. They look like cousins, don’t you think?

Until next time, which will be another list.

1. And Political Science but that’s not relevant here.

2. A giant tome of a book that inspired George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. Yes, I own it, no I have not read it yet. I am scared.

3. Do I still own them and are they still on my bookshelves? Yes and yes.

4. I cite my sources, yo.