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Reading and conversing are really almost like two different skills. A lot of learning how to speak a language is ear-training. With French, I started much more with speaking so now I can make out a lot of what people say. But, the big challenge with French is that, like in English, native speakers "break" the rules or use subtle turns of phrasing that are very culturally specific, usually they're collocations that don't exactly translate (but luckily for English they actually commonly do thanks to the Norman mixing in English). It gets even more complicated when French has different formal and casual registers that are much more distinct than in English. So when you're reading Le Monde, or Flaubert, you're getting the literary, fancy, French. Most people speak in a much more argot mixed way. Now add onto that different regional dialects like Quebecois (really really fast, distinct, french from them), Belgian, Swiss, different parts of France, etc...and it's even more difficult. (Personally I find Parisian French, ou francais standard to be the easiest to understand). The best solution is just immersion. And constant use. Language is used, and use is the best method for improvement. You can't really think of it like a logical code. It's more like behavior for communicating. You have to learn the right rules in the language game for things to "make sense". |