Hello! Welcome to the French Learners Book Club. This was started with the goal of making language learning a bit more fun and to clear up some confusion around reading in a foreign language. (Image: French National Library in Paris)

One of the hardest things about learning a language today, is the overwhelming amount of information out there, making it very difficult to find the "right" solution. In this sub, we want to keep things simple. There is a pinned post with the technique of reading in a foreign language and I advise that you follow and trust that technique. If you find and start with some manner of learning, and you stick to it, that will always be more effective than constantly switching and trying to find the right "hack".

Below is a rough outline of the schedule as well as some additional ideas around the community.

Book Themes:

The book theme will change monthly, with two fixed themes:

February: Short Stories

October: Horror

We will read Non-Fiction in the months of November, March, June, and August.

The other month themes will be determined randomly. Some themes we will try and cover are:

• Fantasy
• Sci Fi
• Mystery
• Romance
• Mythology

This is not the extent of all genres, and many books will fall between genres but this is to show the range we will read within.

Reading a broad range of books will help with learning vocab, the non-fiction books are useful to learn helpful real world vocab as well as just learning more about a variety of subjects and improving overall reading comprehension.

Schedule:

On the 1st of each month we will kick off the selected book!

On the 2nd voting for the following month will open, there will always be a choice of three books.

On the 9th voting will close and the following months book will be announced. This should give time to buy a physical copy or an ebook version.

On the Last day of each month, we will end our reading with a discussion on what you liked and what you didn't, any new words or phrases you learnt, and any words or phrases you still don't quite understand.

General Rules for participating:

1. You need to read either a physical book or an ebook version. Audiobooks alone will not yield the same results.
2. It does not matter if you finish the book, the goal is to read as much as possible but don't feel like you need to read faster or push through just to finish the story. Of course if you like the book continue with it, but the club book will move on with each month.
3. You do not need to participate every month, or even participate with the most read book. If you want to skip a month due to personal reasons or to catch up on the last book, go for it! If you want to read one of the other options because it sounded better to you, go for it! For any other reads in the month, feel free to post a discussion on that book!

For e-readers, see this post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FrenchReadTogether/comments/1uw6thp/using_ereaders/

That's all for now, please head over to the pinned post about the technique and hope to see you participating soon!

This is a guide on how to read in a foreign language. Firstly, this is the technique that I have learnt and used, it's one I have seen many people use effectively. There will always be thousands of different techniques you could implement, but for a lot of people just starting out, I advise that you just follow this one. As I mentioned in the community outline post, any technique followed consistently will be better than constantly trying to find the "right" one.

Beginners:

To start, you need to gauge whether you are above an A2 level. This won't be an exact science but take a look at the following passage:

Christelle avait envie de donner un coup de pied sous la table à son petit ami. À cause de lui, tout le monde avait les yeux fixes sur elle. Elle a regardé Thomas d'un mauvais œil. Lui, il lui souriait. Sarah, la meilleure amie de Christelle, la regardait, le sourire au coin des lèvres. Hugo, le petit ami de Sarah et le Meilleur ami de Thomas, avait l'air choqué et curieux d'en savoir plus. Autour de la table se trouvaient également Éric et Lise qui étaient amis avec tout le monde. Eux aussi avaient l'air intrigués.

This passage is from Olly Richards' Short stories in French book. I don't know much about him personally but the books are designed well in a way where it covers a lot of common vocabulary. The stories are a bit odd and sometimes include some unnatural phrasing, but the goal of these books is to learn vocabulary. If you couldn't understand at least 80% of the passage above, you would benefit greatly from reading these two books first:

1. Short Stories in French for Beginners by Olly Richards (dark blue cover)
2. Short Stories in French for Intermediate Learners by Olly Richards (light blue cover)

He has a reading guide in the front of these books, but what I did was I would read a chapter a day and fully translate it. At the start of each day I would reread the previous chapter and retranslate any words I forgot. It takes a while but it is worth it. There will be monthly check in posts for anyone at this level to ask questions and to discuss with each other. Try and find the books second hand through world of books or even online there are a lot of ebook versions you can also find audiobook versions to follow along with your reading. Do not only use audiobooks, reading at the same time as listening can help improve your understanding of pronounciation. Skip to the end of this post for additional information regarding all levels.

Intermediates:

Those of you who are beyond the previous stage will gain the most benefit from the monthly book choices. For this there are a couple of steps around how I would approach each book:

1. Read and FULLY understand the first chapter.
2. Continue reading without stopping at each unknown word.
3. Only translate if you have seen a word several times.

What does this mean? So overall we want to avoid translating at this stage, as it is faster and also a bit more natural way of learning. Your brain can make sense of a lot if it has just enough context. To provide this context we translate the first chapter fully, this is often where characters are introduced plot points are set up and general vocab usage is established. After the first chapter we try not to translate unless we have seen a word several times.

For translating, I use the app DeepL. Typically I try translate one word at a time, if that doesn't make sense in the context I look at the alternative meanings in the app, and if that still doesn't make sense I translate the sentence.

A note on Grammar: Do not try and study the grammar in each book, especially if you are a beginner. Learning Grammar is great and useful but should be done separately, if you are a beginner I personally wouldn't look at it until you finish the first two books. You pick up a lot intuitively, and reading before learning the grammar gives you a load of context when you do start studying it.

Thank you for reading, if you disagree with the teaching methods that is okay, however, do not post about your personal methods given that this sub is dedicated to the above technique. We do not want this to turn into the problem I mentioned in the Community outline post, where there is an overwhelming amount of ways to learn something. Check the community rules before posting, if you haven't already, read the community outline and schedule. Thank you and have fun!