There’s quite a difference between learning a living language like French and an unspoken language like Latin. If you’re a Visual Latin student, this difference will be stark.
In Visual Latin, our goal was to learn to read the New Testament in Latin.
With Latin, outside of reading, there simply isn’t much you can do. Other than Vatican city, perhaps, you can’t fly to a Latin-speaking country, and you probably are not going to find many friends to chat with in Latin.
French, however, is a different story. With French, you can travel to a French-speaking country, and you can connect with French speakers. This drastically changes how we learn the language.
In Latin, we focused on grammar and reading.
In French, we will certainly learn grammar. That’s a big part of the course. But, our real goal is to learn to speak French.
We will learn a lot of French words and we will focus on pronunciation from the very beginning.
We’ll read in French right away—and we won’t stop. But, we will also learn to listen to French, to think in French, and as much as possible, to speak in French.
In Visual Latin, I spoke to you in English as we learned Latin. In French, as soon as possible, I’ll begin using French with you. Of course, we will jump back and forth between French and English, but once we’ve learned a word in French, I’ll do my best never to say it again in English.
This is going to feel different than Visual Latin. And, that’s okay. This time we have a different goal.
So, allons-y! Let’s go! Let’s learn French together!
— Dwane Thomas