Mastering French Pronunciation: Video Course

Check out our website here
pronouncingfrench.com
Follow us on Facebook / pronouncing-french
And check out our youtube channel for free minivideo lessons on French pronunciation!
Merci!
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Bonjour; My name is Geri Metz and I am here to introduce you to myself and my project, Mastering French Pronunciation-- a video course that makes it easy to speak better French.
I have been in love with France and the French language all my life. I taught French on both the high school and university levels and my specialty was phonetics, the study of the sounds of a language. I also had my own little travel company for over 30 years, taking people on educational and cultural tours of the beautiful country of France, which is by the way, the most visited country in the world.
But now, at the tender age of 80, I am re-inventing myself and starting a new career.
Mastering French Pronunciation is a 8-chapter course taught by me on video and including exercises for practice, and the text of the teaching as a printed book. The course is non-technical and easy to understand. You can read more details about it below.
Now most people are familiar with the great results one can get from studying pronunciation with a good teacher because most of us know the story of My Fair Lady. Professor Higgins, a teacher of phonetics, took the flower girl, Eliza, and turned her substandard English into such a perfect accent that he was able to pass her off as a duchess. She went from “the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain (with Cockney accent followed by correct accent.)
I looked at what is being offered on the internet in this area, and felt that other programs were disappointing and not very helpful to the student. In fact, I felt that I didn’t really have much competition, so I am trusting that my course will really fill a need.
The unique aspect of my work is that I ask the question, “Are you speaking French with an American mouth?” The answer is yes, most English speakers of French are sending French words through a mouth posture, a mouth position designed to speak English. Let me give you an imitation of someone who speaks French fairly well, but with an American mouth-that is to say, with the speech habits of our native language.
Je suis Américaine et j’ai étudié le français à l’école. J’ai voyagé en France, mais je sais que j’ai un accent. Je voudrais parler français plus correctement.
And now with the information and exercises in my course, this person can learn to sound more like this:
Je suis Américaine et j’ai étudié le français à l’école. J’ai voyagé en France, mais je sais que j’ai un accent. Je voudrais parler français plus correctement.
I hope you can hear a difference, and that difference is the goal of my teaching. I feel that my approach is important in that it helps students become aware first of the ways we speak our native language and then how to make the correction to sound more French. To develop the skills, there are exercises recorded by a native speaker of French so there is an authentic model to imitate.
Since I am American, I have had to learn these same principles and go through this same process so I know it can be done.
To start building my audience, for the past 4 months I have been posting a free mini video lesson each week to my mailing list and on You Tube. It’s called Word of the Week and each lesson takes up an aspect of French pronunciation. I ask that you click on the links below to see my teaching style and get an idea of what the classes will look like.

[@alternateVSNS]

such a lovely lady. thank you very much :)

[@LearnFrenchWithMe]

Merci beaucoup

[@davidwelch8288]

Hello. I just came across your channel and it's awesome!
There is a question I've always wanted to ask someone who speaks both English and French but I have not been able to have the question answered. I think you'll be able to answer it.
Why do French people dislike any mispronunciation of French by an English speaker when French speakers speak English with a very strong French accent (i.e. they don't pronounce English (either American or British) properly at all and they make no attempt to speak English without their French "accent."

[@gerimetz2137]

David, thanks for contacting me, and it is a good question! I'm not sure I have a perfect answer, but here are some thoughts. The French have traditionally had a great respect for their language and emphasize its mastery a lot more in schools than we are exposed to in our schools. Perhaps for this reason French people are not too eager to adapt to another languages' sounds. Because French has such a melodic sound, people always say, "French is so beautiful". And so when we hear a French person speaking English with their French accent, we find it charming. Now, personally, I have never found it charming to hear an English speaker speaking French with their English accent! Although several of my students and others have said that their contacts in France do tell them they love their English accent. My teaching centers on the ways that we hold our mouths to produce our sounds in both languages: English very relaxed, more open spaces, and French very tense and more closed and everything said more in the front of the mouth. When we speak another language by saying the words as we would place them in English, we have an accent in the other language. I now offer private lessons to help students make these corrections.

[@melindakay4202]

I love you

[@conmore437]

Anyone who studies phonetics is already my friend : )

[@gerimetz2137]

Thanks; there aren't too many of us anymore, I think!

[@conmore437]

Ah, yes, my linguistics professor said that his field is very small. It is surprising. The efficiency of understanding a language through linguistics seems so high alongside other methods, if not essential. Yet, no language course I have taken has ever integrated it. Anyway, I will be buying your program in a week and cannot wait to do so : ) @@gerimetz2137

[@loridelia8806]

You are a beautiful lady.

[@gerimetz2137]

Thank you, Lori. Hope you enjoy my You Tube teaching videos.