ouilafrance

Les Meilleures de Philippe Geluck - Le chat - Best Off 2011

2011-12-27T06:35:00.003-08:00

Bonjour,

Comme nous approchons la fin de l'annee 2011, je voulais en profiter pour partager avec vous les meilleures de Philippe Geluck, Belge Comique Graphique, specialiste de plaisanteries sur le Chat

1 janvier - "meilleure voeux pour toute la vie. Comme ca, c'est fait une fois pour toutes"

4 fevrier - "Mozart, c'est un genie absolu. Sans plus"

17 mars - "Ce qui me rassure quand je rate un bricolage. C'est de me dire que quand Dieu a concu son premier oiseau, rien ne prouve qu'il a vole du premier coup"

10 avril - "Ce n'est pas un vieux Tom et Jerry qui passe a la tele, c'est mon diner qui cuit au micro-onde"

4 mai - "pour faire des economies de telephone, j'essaie d'appeler ma soeur par transmission de pensee, mais elle doit etre en derangement"

25 juin - "En me redant au teletravail, je me suis fait telepincer pour exces de vitesse sur l'autoroute de l'information. Ca m'a coute une sacree teleprune"

26 juillet - "Trop de gens parlent pour ne rien dire. Et je dis ca plutot que de me taire"

20 aout - "Moi, quand je trouve un trefle a 5 feuilles, j'arrache une feuille .. et il parait que cela porte bonheur"

15 septembre - "Je ne lis la presse people que chez mon dentiste. Mais j'aime tellement ca, que je me fais soigner les dents deux fois par semaine"

10 octobre - "Pour echapper aux editions pirates, je ne realise plus mes dessins qu'au tippex"

15 novembre - "Je me suis toujours demande si rever qu'on travaille fatigue plus que rever qu'on dort?"

23 decembre - "L'optimiste se dit qu'un travailleur a droit a 5 semaines de conges par an. Le pessimiste lui, se dit, que des tas de braves gens sont obliges d'interrompre chaque annee leurs vacances pendant 47 semaines pour aller bosser"

Donc je finirai l'annee 2011 par ma preferee!
"meilleure voeux pour toute la vie. Comme ca, c'est fait une fois pour toutes

A bientot sur le blog et n'hesitez pas a me contacter pour vos besoins en francais!

Veronique

French Teaching References ... Ouilafrance rocks!

2010-07-18T16:22:00.000-07:00

Do you want to learn French? Stop here and contact me via email: vpollacs@yahoo.co.uk! Below are a few references:

What do the students say?

09/08/2011 Matt, Solihull

As I am setting up my company providing language tutoring (French, Spanish, ..) on line through videos I called up on Veronique's expertise to support French tutoring videos. Her enthusiasm, tutoring competencies and presentation skills are brilliant! We were able to shoot outstanding clear tutoring video after video around varied learning topics with almost no edit. I am now looking forward to hearing feedback from the students when I formally launch the company!

02/02/2010, Simon, Burnley
As French beginners we were looking for a course that was flexible enough to fit around a busy work schedule and someone who would work with us closely on a one to one basis. We looked at several evening classes at local colleges, but the courses weren't exactly what we were after. Following a search on the internet Veronique's web site came up so we quickly looked her up and made contact. She was quick to respond, in fact I got an e-mail within an hour of contacting her and she was immediately speaking French to me and drawing us into our first French conversation. My wife and I have always wanted to learn a language and had visited friends in the French speaking part of Switzerland several times which has now become a yearly event so we decided why not learn French.
Veronique's method was ideal for us, lessons via Skype (web video), followed up by phone calls in the week just to check up on us and help us through the lesson earlier in the week, fitted in well with us and she gently but firmly led us on, helping us correct our pronunciation very importantly through French grammar. Slowly but surely we've picked up a tremendous amount in a relatively short period. I think we started in May 2009 and by January 2010 I've felt more and more confident in conversation, can understand questions form answers and converse to a level I didn't think I would be at within such a short time. I even bought a copy of La Monde the other day just to test myself and found that with most of the articles I could make out the general gist of the story. Veronique has been fantastic with prompt calls on agreed dates, flexible and understanding so that if we couldn't make a date fitting us in elsewhere and really tailoring the course to suite us. Its been great that we have not only learnt a lot about French culture as well, but we have been able at times to suggest subject matter and Veronique has built a lesson around our interests. We look forward to our Monday evening Skype lesson every week, and we are continuing to build our knowledge of French grammar, vocabulary and sentence structure. As a beginner we have been amazed at our progress and by regularly going back over old ground with Veronique things have moved on at a manageable pace. I would definitely recommend Veronique's teaching method. She's been gentle with us but when we have needed it she's helped us through the things we've struggled with to keep us moving along at a steady and realistic pace. Thanks Veronique

05/06/2009 - Daisy, Stockport - "I am a student at Xaverian College in Manchester and I was desperate to get the best grade possible in French to go to University. Veronique turned my French subject around into a successful learning path! She not only coached me during the year to improve my conversational skills to pass the exam but also advised me an original essay topic "Les Ch'tis" and she empowered me to write a quality paper on it.

02/01/2009 - Eirini, Manchester -"Casually Learning French with structured lessons around a coffee in a pub and phone calls at random times during the week": I found this course very appealing and efficient! I went through a series of customized lessons with Veronique where we met in a quiet place . These lessons gave me more confidence in progressing with the language learning and met with my priorities of the moment.

02/08/2008 - Neil & Dianne, Sale - We are a couple and here we are, we decided to spend some time this year in France. We also took the resolution to learn and/ or improve our French. One of us does not know any and the other has some rusty remembrance from school. Veronique came to our place on a weekly or bi-weekly basis and tailored the lessons to our needs. We are now ready to go and enjoy good food and wine and confident we will say more than "Bonjour" in France!

27/03/2008 – Helene & Ann, South Manchester -We are two friends willing to improve our conversational French and were hoping to find a course suitable for both of us only! We found it with Veronique’s flexibility and enthusiasm to teach! She adapted the course for us two as she is able to provide as much attention to one than the other and she is sending us comprehensive notes from the lessons, phone calls and regular exercises. Veronique selects actual topics that we relate to and can reuse for conversations.. She gives us regular phone calls between the lessons to practice listening and remote language communication skills. Keep it up!

10/02/2008 - Magali, Sale - I am a pensioner and I am keen to take on the challenge to study for and pass my GCSE in French. I talked to Veronique and decided to take regular lessons. Veronique turned my regular reading and study into powerful learning method where I gained time to grasp much quicker the grammar and some lists of vocabulary. She is boosting my confidence in speaking and analysing more difficult texts towards the exam preparation!.

06/12/2007 - Richard, Manchester - I have always liked France and the French language and wanted to refresh my knowledge from University and build on it to develop it to the next level. Namely competent conversational and business French. I am glad I can leverage Veronique’s great teaching skills to assist me! Veronique uses a combination of techniques including face to face teaching, interesting and relevant exercises, video watching and regular telephone calls to enable me to practice and use the recently learned concepts

05/11/2007 - Tony, Partington - "Bonjour, I am Tony. As I wanted to learn French from scratch to use it for my work in France I called for Veronique’s services as French teacher. Veronique is giving me face to face lessons and is completing the lessons by phone calls and exercises on an adhoc basis. She shows flexibility while adapting the pace and content of the lessons to my learning style. This combined method allowed me to make a good amount of progress without even realising it!"

14/09/2007 - Rachel, Fallowfield - I am a student in Manchester University (MMU) I had a punctual need of refreshing and improving fast my French knowledge so that I could be confident with passing the French exam. This exam was crucial in the final global mark and I had to overcome some weaknesses in grammar and had to brush up on various lexicon themes. I asked Veronique to help me. After 4 intensive lessons and phone calls + regular exercise to practice specific points I gained tremendous confidence in using the grammar and vocabulary for the exam. I am now sharing the good news with you and Veronique that I passed my French exams: I had a good mark for both the essay and written exam!

17/08/2007 - Barry, Sale - Bonjour, I was just looking for a native French-speaking teacher in the Manchester area to improve my conversational level. Fortunately I found Véronique with whom I am effectively keeping up to speed. My vocabulary and fluency have increased and I have also consolidated my previous knowledge. This is done in a practical way through a conversational course and, outside of the course, with some arranged practice exercises ."

13/09/2006 - Charlene, Stretford - As a professional looking to move to France I have been calling on Véronique's teaching methods to improve my conversational level and be ready for the move! Veronique boosted my French speaking confidence to prepare my new life in the country of "art de vivre"!

Why speaking French is important - BBC5 on17/06

2010-06-17T13:54:00.000-07:00

I participated yesterday in a debate at the BBC5 broadcast nationally over the following subject: a former foreign minister Chris Bryant stated that we should all learn mandarin and French has become useless.

The debate was moderated by the radio presentator Tony Livesey

Of course I went to the studio full of arguments and I did not need long to think before I came across with the following points.
- French is the language of culture, diplomaty, history, gastronomy and romance, that grew over more than a thousand years
- So is it an economic fashion to learn now mandarin as China is effectively expanding and we do recognise the success .and results .. then will we be learning a decade afterwards the neighbourhing languages? and so on?
- French is a global language, spoken by 200 million people around the world and in > 50 countries and over 5 continents.
- French opens the door to more languages .... once you know the language you can easily get onto the other European languages such as Spanish, Italian or Portuguese ... so learning ONE language ... and you get THREE!
- Also if you are going to start onto a course be assured that the learning curve of French language is relatively fast, faster than most of the other languages

During the debate a few persons called in the station and shared their views. A school teacher observed that it was very challenging to introduce mandarin at school for small children. The main language remained French, Spanish and German.

Do comment with your experience and thoughts!

I look forward to hearing from you

Veronique

Marseille, ville du Sud

2010-05-07T12:41:00.000-07:00

J'étais à Marseille pendant quelques jours fin mars et je voudrais partager dans cet article quelques impressions sur cette ville. Ville surprenante, imbibée de parfums de et du soleil de la Provence, réserve des trésors culturels, gastronomiques et de chaleur humaine. Marseille est la deuxième ville de France, en terme de population. L’architecture est trés semblable à celle de Paris, Haussmanienne, somptueuse. Flâneries dans les larges avenues, les rues et les passages cachés sont à ne pas manquer pour apprécier pleinement son architecture
Voir photo ci-dessus

J’eus la bonne surprise d’arriver à Marseille le samedi 27 mars au soir, jour de gloire pour Marseille ….Massalia (nom antique de la ville) venait de remporter la ligue de la Coupe, le 1er titre de football depuis 17 ans …. Car Marseille est la ville emblématique du foot! Quand je suis arrivée à la Gare St Charles, ayant débarquée de la navette venant de l’aéroport, je fus choquée d’entendre tant de klaxons et de bruits autour de moi …. Je leur pardonnai vite quand j’appris la Victoire de Marseille!!
Le club de foot s’appelle l’Olympique de Marseille et je montre ici une photo des fans venus applaudir l’équipe victorieuse lors du défilé :

French Movie Afternoon - Mardi Gras

2010-02-26T13:20:00.000-08:00

To celebrate Mardi Gras with a French flavour I organised a French movie afternoon and Crepe party on Sunday 21st of February at my place with a dozen French speaking friends and students.

The movie was "La Mome" - literally the kid / l'enfant - This is the story from the legendary French singer Edith Piaf. The movie is featuring the actress Marion Cotillard who was awarded a Cesar at the Oscar ceremony, let's note this is the first French movie ever to be awarded two Oscars

Was it a good choice for a light "crepe party" afternoon as the movie is Grand, Emotional, Sad and Captivating? I lightened the atmosphere with regular pauses, some of them were compulsory as we had a couple of technical issues with the DVD and some to pass around to the guests the tasy savoury and sweet crepes.

A bucket of crepes was perfumed (heavily :) with Rhum Charrette, from the Island of Reunion, a French Department in the Indian Ocean (Departement Outre Mer) next to Madagascar Island.

All in all it turned up a great social cultural event to practise French!

If you would like this type of events organised at your home, why not organise a French crepe party at your place for an evening or an afternoon with some built-in language lesson or French touch (music, movie), just outsource the whole to .... Veronique, contact me for information

Au revoir

Veronique
http://www.ouilafrance.com

Tips and Tricks to lean languages faster

2010-02-04T12:17:00.000-08:00

On Thursday 29th of January 2010 I was presenting at G Manchester Casino at the Business Independence Networking Event organised by Paulette Campbell http://www.wednesdayscoaching.com/%20some some tips and tricks to speed up languages.

The evening was celebrating Art and Culture. I partnered with Paul Brotherton, painter and art teacher who exhibited some of his paintings while I was sharing with the audience some Best Practices.

Get your drivers right!
You can set a specific medium to long term goal to learn or fresh up your language skills.
eg: move to the country within 2 years, visiting relatives in the country, interest in the culture, partner from the other country, expand your work opportunities
On the contrary the “next year January resolution” could quickly vanish

Build the learning into your daily routine
You can take every opportunity to use the idle time while in motion:
e.g. listen to a language tape course when drive, to language MP3s when you jog or perform routine mandatory tasks:
eg set your phone language settings to the foreign language, sign post various items and pieces of furniture using post-its, listen to the foreign country radio on the web

Use it!
Your skills will become rusty or you will get frustrated if you do not make the most of your new skill! There are multiple opportunities to leverage languages in a social, professional or fun environment.
Practically in Manchester and in many other cities in the UK (London, Birmingham, Newcastle, etc) there are informal language meetups (http://www.meetup.com) where you can practice the language in a social environment at your pace and when you are free.
In a work environment sell your skills on your resume and with your employer. This competency is an asset for a growing number of companies.
It is more fun and efficient to learn a language with a friend, partner, relative, this is a great way to increase practice opportunity and enjoy your learning.

You find the curriculum difficult?
We all have various abilities with languages. Assess your strengths (vocabulary? oral skill? grammar?) and development areas (grammar?, or?). Assess to the second level the strengths and development needs. Grammar difficulties are too generic, what type of grammar issues do you face: tense, sentences syntax, etc). Each of the difficulty has a root cause and approach to mitigate
Gain confidence with your strengths and build a plan for each of the level 1 and level 2 development need. The rest will come with perseverance!

Do you have any specific questions for your case or somebody else you know of? Just contact me and we can investigate the roadblocks and solutions for your language curriculum.

http://www.ouilafrance.com

Joyeuses Paques 2009!

2009-04-12T04:53:00.001-07:00

Bonjour a tous, Hello to all

I wish you a Happy Easter 2009 ... what is Easter Vocabulary in French ???

Paques marque la resurrection du Christ. Easter symbolises the Christ resurrection

La détermination de la date de Pâques combine le cycle de la semaine (ce doit être un dimanche), le cycle solaire (ce doit être dans le mois qui suit l'équinoxe de printemps, fixé au 21 mars) et le cycle lunaire (ce doit être après la première pleine lune de printemps).
Fixing Easter Date combines the week lifecycle (it must be a Sunday), the solar cycle (that must be the month following Spring equinox, fixed on 21st of March) and the moon cycle (it must be after the first moon of spring)

Joyeuses Paques = Happy Easter (a with ^ accent but the blog format does not enable accents!)

Les oeufs de Paques = Easter eggs

to look for eggs = chercher les oeufs

A bientot,

Veronique

MAY 2008 Course for Travellers and BBC Radio Programme

2008-05-29T16:36:00.000-07:00

Hello all, Bonjour!

THE SURVIVAL KIT IN FRANCE FOR THE 2008 SUMMER!!!

Going soon to France?? Then it is now the perfect opportunity to get ready and masterize the basics of greetings, directions, etc!

I am offering a 4 week course over conference call (local phone number in the United Kingdom) and webchat starting June, 8th over 4 weeks - 2 hours from 7-9PM BST time (British Summer Time)

These interactive classes will equip you with the basics to be able to communicate on your holiday in France this summer.
They will cover practical topics such as greetings and getting to know people; travel; shopping; asking for directions; and dealing with "problems" in Paris or elsewhere in France .
The focus of these classes is on communication and you will therefore not cover topics in great detail. These classes will give you a taste of French, which you may wish to deepen by signing up to a more in-depth language evening class with us in the autumn term.

For price and enrollment send me an email on vpollacs@yahoo.co.uk

LISTEN TO VERONIQUE ON BBC MANCHESTER - FRIDAY 23RD OF MAY

Veronique appeared with one of her French students on BBC Radio Manchester on Friday 23rd of May on the popular radio programme of Becky, "Becky Wants" to talk about French teaching, French learning (experience from the student) and say on the air a couple of funny French sentences from "Fools and Horses" ... Mange Tout! Mange Tout!

For those who would like to listen to the programme (after 7 minutes), link is:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/networks/manchester/aod.shtml?manchester/becky_want_fri#

APRIL 2008 Free French Teaching Conference Calls

2008-03-28T17:56:00.000-07:00

Bonjour a tous!

I am introducing this April a unique concept: Free French learning/practice conference calls!

How does it work?

I am scheduling two one-hour Free French teaching session – Basic and Advanced

1) BASIC LEVEL–using BBC French teaching material

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/french/

We will go through the introduction and the first lesson “short break in Paris”

To register to this conference call follow the steps

- I will send you an email that you need to send to 10 friends that you know may be be interested in learning French and put me in cc.

- I will send you the link to the conference call + phone number, pin and website that includes a meeting chat window

- Before the conference call go through the BBC lesson “short break in Paris”

- Date and time of the conference call:

Friday 11^th of April from 6PM to 7PM GMT time

Conference call dial in (USA): +1 218 936 6581 and input the pin: 0423

To use the web interface as well – chat go to this link when the conference start (you need to register to facebook)

http://apps.facebook.com/freeconference/conf/show/28300

2) advanced level

Sunday 13^th of April from 1pm to 2pm GMT time

We will go through the introduction and discussion around this article about French gastronomy!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/french/news/lifestyle/products_n_ireland.shtml

Conference call dial in (USA): +1 218 936 6581 and input the pin: 0322

To use the web interface as well – chat go to this link when the conference start (you need to register to facebook)

http://apps.facebook.com/freeconference/freeconference/conf/show/28302

TO REGISTER, SEND ME AN EMAIL OR POST A COMMENT WITH YOUR FIRST, LAST NAME AND EMAIL ADDRESS.

A bientôt!

Véronique
vpollacs@yahoo.co.uk

MARCH 2008 Tips to improve your French

2008-03-12T15:31:00.000-07:00

See below useful resource for you to increase your knowledge

If you are in Manchester:

- the French Alliance (on Oxford Street) organises every other week on Friday French cine-club with some wine and cheese! Check the site www.afmanchester.org

- the French Meetup group animated by Benedicte and Bruno meet-up twice a month in a quiet bar during the week or at another location during the week-end: http://french.meetup.com

If you do not live in France I recommend a couple of websitesRequirement is a computer with sound and Internet IE6 or above. http://www.france2.fr . This site provides you in almost real time the news in video from the French public TV channel!

http://www.tv5.org excellent video news as well a video section to learn about words!
On the radioTwo radios were recently recommended to mehttp://www.freedom.fr/. This is an unusual French radio, as local radio from French Polynesia, Ile de la Reunion!
Worth giving a try!

Happy Easter 2008! Joyeuses Pacques 2008!

Editorial

2008-02-13T15:20:00.000-08:00

Bonjour à tous

Bienvenu sur le blog ouilafrance! Welcome to ouilafrance blog!
This blog completes the website http://www.ouilafrance.com where you can find information on how to get French Lessons and as well set-up some pre arranged unique "Crepes Party"!

This blog aims at providing all tips about learning French and the most interesting and spicy information about French culture.

All your comments and additions are welcome!

Beware spammers, attention les spammers! No presence on this blog :)

Bon apprentissage, Enjoy the learning

Au revoir et a bientot. Bye and talk to you soon

Veronique