French Pronunciation
How to improve your French pronunciation in a few days !!!
Extremely effective method for improving pronunnciation in French
We have developed an extremely effective pronunciation-improvement method. A great number of university professors and international businesspeople come to DialoguE to improve their French pronunciation in record time. Several professors from Harvard University who gave presentations at the Sorbonne in Paris directly after DialoguE training were complimented by the French themselves on their unusually fine pronunciation skills.
The DialoguE approach, whatever your level, ‘prepares your mouth’ by improving your listening comprehension and teaching you the correct articulation points.
Exercises focused on your specific difficulties will help you to learn the new articulation points and make them feel more natural to you.
Thank to this method, you will rapidly improve your rhythm and your intonation in French.
You will learn the correct pronunciation of sounds that are close and interchangeable in your mother tongue, but whose differentiation is vital in the French language.
You will learn to correctly pronounce words with silent letters, etc.
Despite all the efforts you have made and despite all the French lessons you have had elsewhere, you are getting a little desperate, feeling you will never be able to make yourself understood easily in French. DialoguE will help you to improve your pronunciation to a comfortable and perfectly acceptable level in this language.
American student Elliot Essman comments: (other testimonials about DialoguE pronunciation techniques)
I had been studying French for years before I spent my first week at Dialogue, and my pronunciation was not bad. Over a period of four years I had taken private lessons once a week with a French woman in my neighborhood in New York City. Once, when she was trying to correct my pronunciation, I imitated a difficult French nasal vowel sound precisely. She was astonished. "You can say it!" she said. I answered, "Of course. The problem is that I almost never can hear it. The fact is, as determined as I was to learn "real" French, my English trained ears could simply not distinguish an entire range of French vowel sounds that are critical if you want to speak French. My mouth, lips and tongue were willing to move in very un-English directions, but my ears lagged far behind.
Jean-Luc Godard's method works rapidly to cure that fundamental problem for English-speaking students of French. We took words apart, played games with their pieces, and trained my ear (actually both my ears) with minute precision to hear and distinguish the vowel sounds and combinations. Then we applied the knowledge by means of another type of intensive training: using videos of people speaking rapid French to train my ear to distinguish entire words that English speakers often fail to hear because they are three-quarters vowel, elided together, or spoken rapidly.
When I returned to my local French conversation group back in the US, one of the French women in the group noticed that my pronunciation had improved dramatically -- all in the space of a week. The beauty of the ear training is that it lifts you out of a fog; you start to view the French language as a series of natural French sounds instead of a series of strange "foreign" sounds. This kind of progress is permanent.
TESTIMONIALS ABOUT THE DIALOGUE PRONUNCIATION TECHNIQUES
Ann Bensinger
Ombudsman
The French pronunciation is a challenge for most Americans. The sounds are not within our repertoire of sound.
I may never make it to Parisian French, but now my efforts in French are met with the question, "Swiss or Canadian?" and no one responds to me in English!
I am certain that I still would not without Dialogue. Jean Luc and Claudine Godard are geniuses in teaching language at all levels.
Jorge Kizer
University Pennsylvania Health sys., Department of Medecine, Philadelphia
I would like to thank Jean-Luc and Claudine for making my two-week stay at Dialogue thoroughly fulfilling.
The tailored individual sessions on auditory discrimination and phonetics enabled me to make great advances in my pronunciation of French.
John and Yvonne Moossy
Shephersdstown, WV
The intense and disciplined one-on-one method of instruction was very effective in improving our conversation and pronunciation.
Mark Roe
Professor, Columbia Law School, New York
The week we spent was a fine, intensive way to learn French pronunciation and conversation.
You are guests in the Godard's house, eating your meals with them and, at lunch, with the instructors.
In between meals, you intensively drill pronunciation and conversational phrases in a way I haven't seen done in the U.S.
John E. Bissel
Telemedia GmbH, Germany
I found several aspects of the course highly unique and commendable.
Your method of practicing French pronunciation is essential for the American like me unskilled in French phonetics.
You were correct in placing emphasis on this area; my subsequent negotiations in Paris showed that my partners were pleased more by proper pronunciation than perfect grammar.
Incidentally, my French friends, initially sceptical about me taking a course in Belgium, were also impressed.
Monica Winefryde Furlong
Larchmont, NY
I've been studying French for years in the United States, with private lessons, classes, books, audio tapes, video tapes and what have you.
While I have to consider myself an advanced student, I can also honestly say that I learned more French during the seven days I spent at DialoguE than I did with all my other efforts combined.
The DialoguE method is different -- innovative -- especially when it comes to pronunciation. French pronunciation is profoundly different from English. With expert one-on-one guidance I was able to reach into the center of the French language and come out with a better ear for sounds that had previously eluded me.