Some language instruction materials will start you off with reading and writing. For many years, this has been the common practice: students learn a new word by saying and writing it. This is not universally recognized as being an effective way of learning among language instructors, however. Some of them see more value in stories and songs in the French classroom setting. The reason behind this has to do with eliminating some of the common pitfalls that students encounter when trying to learn a new language.Listen to French instead of writing it!

When you write French, as an English speaker, you’ll naturally start reading the words back to yourself with English letter pronunciations. Of course, this isn’t how the words sound when a French-speaker reads them. If you learn French in classroom environments that are more or less traditional, you’ll spend a lot of time writing sentences, words and phrases that you really don’t know how to pronounce. In the end, you may start pronouncing them with the wrong letter pronunciations, which can foster bad habits that are hard to break. Learning by listening ensures that you always hear native speakers saying each word correctly. You’ll also learn to understand it when it’s spoken, which you cannot learn from written words.

Learn French songs

You may also learn French songs in some classrooms. This is a great way to learn pronunciation and it’s very easy to remember what you learn when you sing new words in a song. In some learning materials, songs go along with the dramatic action. This provides a way for the creator of the material to emphasize important points and to make sure that the most common and useful language lessons taught by the materials are retained. Repeating words and phrases in songs is much more enjoyable than doing so as a part of rote exercises.

Listen, then write

If you listen and learn French, you’ll find that writing and reading will come more naturally later. You’ll understand the words you’re writing and, because you’ll have pronunciation down, you’ll be able to read new words more accurately. Speaking and listening are the first things we learn to do in our native tongues as children. This order of learning is still the most effective for adults. It also ensures that you learn more information that you can put to use quickly than you would with writing and reading exercises.