Help is at hand for your French studies

They say that the pen is mightier than the sword - and when it comes to learning languages, there's no question where the wisdom in this old adage lies! Yet forget the pens and paper in the classroom, there's a more enjoyable way to master a foreign language and make friends at the same time.

Keeping in contact with international pen pals is a great way to practise any language that you are learning. Sure the internet allows you to stay in touch at all times, but when it comes to writing to a pen pal, it's best the good old fashioned way. Sending hand-written letters via "snail mail" might not be the quickest way to communicate with your language learner pen pal overseas, but it's the best way to ensure that you maintain the link. With our lives busy with homework, study and the pressures of employment, sending off rapid emails is only going to kill the conversation. A letter, written every month or so, allows you to develop some kind of a response and it keeps your communications alive and well!

This is what my mother advised me to do from an early age, and I've only just realised that it's worked well for her! I've been living in France teaching at an English summer camp whilst taking a French course Lyon, and my mother recently came to visit. Much to my surprise, she could speak French as well as I could, if not better! It turns out that when she was a teenager she had studied at a French course France and then a French course Switzerland the following year. There she had met a French-speaking girl who she had stayed in contact with over the years via pen pal correspondence. Even though it had been 30 years since her French course Montreux, and effectively 30 years since last speaking French, it all came flooding back to her - all thanks to her years of writing to her French pen pal!

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