Mastering French: Simple Ways to Retain Your Skills

To maintain French skills without active practice, the best strategies involve passive exposure and engagement that do not require speaking or writing regularly. This can include:

• Regularly listening to French audio such as music, podcasts, or radio to keep auditory familiarity.
• Watching French movies, TV shows, or videos with or without subtitles to retain comprehension skills.
• Reading French books, articles, or news to maintain vocabulary and grammar recognition.
• Using language apps for vocabulary review or flashcards to refresh memory passively.
• Thinking in French or mentally reviewing common words and phrases.
• Engaging with French content related to personal interests to keep motivation.

These passive forms help prevent skill loss since full inactivity could lead to language attrition. Even without active speaking or writing, exposure maintains receptive skills like listening and reading, which can support quicker skill recovery when active use resumes.

References

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• THEORY WITHOUT PRACTICE IS EMPTY; PRACTICE WITHOUT THEORY IS BLIND: THE INHERENT INSEPARABILITY OF DOCTRINE AND SKILLS

• Intensity of previous teaching but not diagnostic skills influences stigmatization of patients with substance use disorder by general practice residents. A vignette study among French final-year residents in general practice

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• Deep Learning Models for Fast Retrieval and Extraction of French Speech Vocabulary Applications