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Tips for maintaining language skills during a year ou

So I've recently received my A level results and I'm going to be studying French and History at Nottingham in Sept 2015, before taking a year out. I'm not traveling during my year out. I'm using it simply to work and gain financial security before uni. However since part of my uni course is French, I'm worried about forgetting a lot of what I know about the language since I won't be consistently studying it anymore. Does anyone have any tips for maintaining my standard of French? Anything would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Hey, I was in a similar situation to you in the last academic year, as I finished French in y12 but am off to study it (alongside maths) at uni this September.
To keep up, I did a lot of reading (mainly kids/teen books, to be honest, as I didn't want to be stressing myself out with anything difficult) and watched a lot of French movies (usually with French subs). Another fun thing is to read a book/newspaper or listen to a song and try to translate it, then you can look up words you don't know and it keeps you from forgetting common words. I actually found that just doing those activities at least one day a week kept me at my usual level in French.
Now that I'm a month away from starting the course, I've started doing a bit more intense revision (testing myself on verb wheels, practising old French papers etc.) It really does come flooding back really fast if you have a little gap (as I did during my exams) so don't worry too much.


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Reply 2
Original post by DanSmeaton
So I've recently received my A level results and I'm going to be studying French and History at Nottingham in Sept 2015, before taking a year out. I'm not traveling during my year out. I'm using it simply to work and gain financial security before uni. However since part of my uni course is French, I'm worried about forgetting a lot of what I know about the language since I won't be consistently studying it anymore. Does anyone have any tips for maintaining my standard of French? Anything would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Watch French news:
http://www.bfmtv.com/mediaplayer/live-video/
http://www.itele.fr/direct

Read French newspapers:
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/ (right)
http://www.lemonde.fr/international/ (center)
http://www.liberation.fr/monde,10 (left)
It's maybe better to start with the international section, as you already know the situation from British media.

You can also take a look at the Sports newspaper: http://www.lequipe.fr/

Watch French football on French channels (search for them on streaming websites).
Reply 3
Thanks the for the advice! I'm sure this'll come in very handy, I appreciate it!
Reply 4
Brilliant, thank you!

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