A lot of French words are similar in spelling and meaning to English (they are called cognates). By knowing these cognates, you can easily transfer and simply add a French pronunciation to them. Et voilà! You’ve got loads of French words that you never thought you knew and which you can put to immediate use.
It helps to create your own French vocabulary notebook. You can organise new words you learn under related Themes (e.g. Food) and further categorise then into People (boulanger, pâtissier), Nouns (baguette, croissant), Adjectives (délicieux, bon), Adverbs (bien, fraîchement) and Verbs (manger, boire).
For an easier retrieval of information, you can number all the pages in the notebook, and create an index containing a detailed list of the Themes with page numbers next to them.
Learning for fun is exciting, but many give up along the way, especially when they hit a wall. To keep track of your progress and measure yourself at an objective international level, it is good to take a French proficiency test such as TEF, TCF, DELF or DALF. Taking these proficiency tests at various stages of learning will give you more confidence to keep learning and improving.
Born in Mauritius (Ile Maurice) and growing up internationally, Nageeb Gounjaria has native bilingual proficiency in French and English. He has a Masters degree in Philosophy (specialising in Language and Culture) from the National University of Singapore, and he is also a Global Mobility Specialist, advising expatriates from Fortune 500 companies on the best learning methods. He regularly conducts teacher training in Europe, Asia and Africa. Nageeb is currently the Director of French Faster, an online French language school that specialises in Accelerated Learning and helps hundreds of students everyday to learn French faster, smarter and cheaper through blended e-learning.