subject: The French Language and your Right and Left Brain [print this page] Imagine trying to learn how to sculpt with one eye closed. Though you'd be able to tackle it and might turn out to be quite good, you'd still have to make up for not having your depth perception when you were viewing any sculptures that you admired. The same is true with trying to learn the French language by using only repeated words and phrases with no context. This type of learning involves your left brain and, while this part of your brain is responsible for vocabulary, it is not the part of your brain that handles the expressive parts of language.
Your right brain which, in the broadest terms, is more associated with creativity, the arts in general and with our nonjudgmental, non-critical selves can also be used to learn. While your left brain may grasp the word, how it is pronounced and what it means in the literal sense, your right brain grasps the actual meaning of the word and the intonation of the word that tells you its actual intent in a sentence. You can stimulate this part of your brain by using anything creative, such as music, as a way to learn words.
When your entire brain is engaged, the language becomes a holistic experience. Instead of just memorizing words, you're creating images brought about by the music or story, understanding what those words mean and coming to understand how many different meanings a word can have emotionally, even if it always means the same thing literally. The French language is famously complex and does not lend itself well to memorization and rote learning. With a bit of creativity, however, you may find that the lessons are easier to recall and that your skills build more quickly.
You can take online French classes to learn in this way or buy products to use at home or on the road. If you're a particularly artistic person, you may find that learning from songs or stories helps you stay more engaged. You can learn French without the tedium of standard lessons, but you have to replace those studies with some other way of learning the language. Replacing bland repetitions of words with interesting alternatives, such as songs, poems, lyrics and even audio plays, can provide a valid reason for the repetition, which makes it fun instead of a necessary but tiring task.
