On French, phones, and fluency. (Part two in a series.)

By Megan Harlan

Do you enjoy learning languages? I have ever since childhood, when I was lucky to study Arabic and Spanish during my expat years in the Middle East and South America. But I am no linguistic phenom. Despite an innate love of languages, I share the challenges most adults face in gaining fluency, ones involving time, choice, and focus: there are just so many language apps and courses out there, language-learning in the Digital Age has itself become a Tower of Babel.

I am not here to add to the chatter. What follows is what has worked for me as a longtime French learner with a thousand other things to do, yet who somehow always has time to look at her phone. Because the short answer to this piece’s driving question, Can we really learn languages on a screen? is: We’d better, or it’s probably not going to happen.

To incorporate French or any non-native language into your life, I strongly believe switching already-in-place habits is the smartest move. Including—even especially—our bad habits. And our worst habit, collectively, may be how often we look at our phones.

So in this spirit of realism, here are three (truly) simple phone-based habits that have actually improved my French:

In these interesting times, my favorite newspaper.

1) Read the News (or at least News Headlines) in French

You know your phone’s News Feed, the one that may be giving you, here in the 2020s, so much anxiety, heartbreak, and dread? Or your subscription to The New York Times or other online newspaper edition, where you’ve become an adept skimmer-of-headlines, feeling proud when you’ve also read the first three paragraphs? You can do all of this in French.

This is my best tip: subscribe digitally to Le Monde and put that app on your phone. Then do your news-headline-skimming there.

What’s most astonishing to me about Le Monde is simply how good the writing is, how broad and nuanced its news coverage. It reminds me of The New York Times in the pre-digital years. So even if you just want to read Le Monde in English (an all-too-easy switch of a tab), you may also find that it offers a refreshingly rich, functioning-adult view of the world.

I open up the app, read the terrors of American and international news in French, as reported by (as it turns out) intelligent and professional French journalists—and it’s all so much easier to digest. Plus, I’m effortlessly absorbing the subjunctive and future conditional tenses in context while reviewing very in-use vocabulary words (today’s list: l’otage, un fardeau, and s’eloigner). And I get the treat of reading illuminating pieces on French culture, attitudes, and lifestyle.

My favorite part: this is all of French coming at me at once. Not simplified, “at my level” French. It’s French as it comes at us in, say, France. I read articles all the way through before looking up any words, just as every good French teacher advises. (This is because—happily for Perpetual Intermediate French learners like myself—we really do understand more than we think. When I’ve digitally translated a paragraph to make sure I caught the gist, I’ve been surprised that I did—so much so that now I usually skip translating anything beyond a few no-clue-what-this-is words.)

This daily plunge into the deep end of French is absorbing and skill-strengthening. And Le Monde offers beautifully narrated audio versions of the articles, too.

2) Subscribe to free, French-language newsletters

This tip takes advantage of the email inbox—cause for yet more daily phone check-ins. I subscribe to French newsletters on subjects that inspire me to pause for a few seconds—subjects that may not be improving at all. They’re just for fun, in the name of French. I delete so much stuff from my inboxes, but always linger over these little missives.

If houses are your thing, for example, try subscribing to property listing updates (as French real estate websites go, Belles Demeures is an especially pretty, dream-inducing one). Pick a region you’re drawn to, a type of property (anything from flats to castles, equestrian properties to townhouses), and let the emails take you away. I may not be fluent in French, but I am now fluent in French real estate terminology. French fashion, food, art, sports—free French-language newsletters abound on all of these subjects if you do a little searching.

And some of France’s best publications covering all of these subjects are regional—including Ouest-France for Brittany and the Atlantic Coast, or Sud-Ouest for Occitanie, or even bougie lifestyle magazine Maisons Côté Sud for Provence and the Côte D’Azur. I subscribe to Ouest-France’s newsletter focusing on Dinan and northern Brittany so I can keep up with local happenings near my home. This week I learned the charming news that the castle “down the road”—Dinan’s circa-1300s château—hosted a one-night disco party, complete with photos of disco balls and revelers of all ages dancing in the tower. If you’re interested in moving someday to a particular French region, subscribe to its local online newspaper to get a real feel for the place.

Popular publisher focusing on the culture and news of Brittany and France’s Atlantic Coast—since 1944.

3) Pick One—and Only One—Grammar App

Duolingo would have us believe that grammar is not something to be studied, but rather played. I continue to feel that this app is not for me, as I wrote about here, despite its big update where grammar explanations now accompany your chosen answer (whether right or wrong). Great that they’ve added this helpful, even necessary feature—but for some reason, Duolingo still washes over me without much French sticking.

I’m still committed to KwizIQ (again, covered in this piece), which is tougher and makes me feel at home, because French is not supposed to be easy. Your French class is supposed to scare you a little bit—an admittedly old-school attitude that works for me. I like the methodical nature of all of those quizzes, the clearly designated march through increasingly difficult levels. Then again, I was a person who—truth be told—often enjoyed taking tests in school (I know, I know), so take my recommendation for what it’s worth.

Meanwhile, my husband—who never studied French in school—has reached the French score of 100 in Duolingo! He’s now chatting it up with Lily, the AI conversation character. For him, Duolingo continues to be a great success.

The point here is to find one grammar app and stick with it, on the daily if possible. (I should note that KwizIQ does not have a separate app, the way Duolingo does. But I don’t find this a big deal, as I just keep a browser tab logged into it on my phone.)

In any event, good luck with your adventures in languages. And look out for the next piece in this series—about how I’ve been working on my conversational skills with an online French tutor.

Bonne chance avec vos aventures dans les langues.  A bientôt !