Speak French Effortlessly!

 There are many simple-minded ways to bone up on your French without private tutoring or fancy classes before you travel.
1.Rent/borrow French films.
Play them over & over so you can practically act out the dialogue. You'll absorb a lot.
2.Set your rented English-speaking films to dubbed-in-French with Eng subtitles. Or as Jill of Mad About Macarons says set the titles to French, the better to hear/see the expressions. Jill’s way to to soak up French effortlessly.

 3.There are loads of online French radio stations you can listen to. I like On Va Deguster/France Inter, because they talk about food (what else is worth talking about?). Very casual & conversational - experience the way real people speak. A once-a-week podcast you can listen to on your iPod - I'm listening now.

 4.This little book called out to me yesterday in Rizzoli's

 Ridiculously simple-minded and yet I was surprised how helpful French Slanguage is. Who knew?

 5. Read French kid's books. You can not go wrong with Babar - a French classic

 What I wouldn't give to write French écriture...drool...drool

 6. Become a fan of French 'BDs' - une Bande dessinée/comic books. Many are sophisticated, witty & for adults. I also like the learning-to-read series for kids. You can subscribe to J'AIME LIRE. Sometimes you'll find them in the foreign section of better magazine shops in the US

 You'll always find kid's BDs at the Relay in Paris. Go into a relay in a train station like Gare Montparnasse. For some unknown reason you're allowed to read to your hearts content without buying a thing. At non-train station kiosks/newstands you're lucky if they let you pick it up to purchase. C'est la vie

 8.In your hotel room or appart I suggest avoiding the TV - too consuming a distraction though not bad for background noise = immersion 

 9. Listening to the radio news non-stop is perfect from the moment you wake up till shut-eye. It will do a world of good- French immersion of the best kind. I'm partial to France Bleu and NRJ - my guilty pleasure is trashy French pop. You can pick up a lot having it in the background. Your accent, which let's face it, is EVERYTHING in France, will improve. Grammaire (and spelling) you can wreck as long as you sound good in France 🇫🇷 👍

 10.Hang out in Kid's bookstores - another kind of immersion. La Sardine A Lire 4, rue Colette 75017

 Books are superbly designed and simply written for 3-5 year olds. L'Enfant Lyre 17,rue Saint Sebastien 75011

 Just my level of French advancement.

11.Hang around parks, pretend to read, keep your ears open to what kiddies are yelling.

You'll pick up, "J'arrive"(I'm coming) + other useful short sentences.

I cannot forget hearing a mom say to her kiddie on rue Dauphine,

"Qu'est que tu fait comme ca, toi?"(What do you think you're doing, you?) Meaning basically STOP THAT! Expressions overheard have a way of sticking in your head more than lessons learned off a page.

 12. For more advanced and au courant lecons turn to illustrator Soledad Bravi's cartoon books. She writes about frustrations of the Paris sales/soldes. Soledad is hilarious on the struggles to get thin, avoid French pastries, squeeze into bathing suits - struggles we can all relate to.

 Well there you have what you need to pick up enough French to get by. In fact you'll sound quite au courant if you can manage these little techniques.

 Every trip I stop into Anne Maisonneuve for another macaron T-shirt on 112 boulevard Raspail 75006. They're quite the conversation-stopper. Even Chef Marthe asked me where I'd gotten mine and she lives 2 Metros stops away

I got the scarf (14 €), necklace(19 €), T-shirt(30 €) there. I only buy black. I'm a New Yorker. 

13.This outfit breaks down language barriers. Now if I only understood what Parisians are saying back to me?!