French Is Fun - No, wait , it really is
Dear reader , I feel as if we may have strayed away from the real reason that my family bought this wonderful ZX Spectrum in the first place. After all it wasn't to play games on , was it? Not really, it was to help Julie at school. So between all the joystick waggling, blasting and rocket ship refuelling we bought French Is Fun. No, wait, don't run away, I'll make this interesting, I promise!
To set the scene you have to remember this was in the early 80's. Textbooks tended to be in black and white and mostly, quite frankly boring. I had just started to learn French at school , hence the purchase. We learnt all the exciting nouns for items of furniture, how to buy food, how to introduce ourselves , which was all well and good. But what about the bigger, more beautiful picture? Je voudrais une glace , was all very well, but what if I wanted to talk about the mountains, the clouds or the birds? These topics were sorely lacking in our French lessons and this is where this piece of software comes in.
French is Fun (CDS Microsystems 1983) painted huge colourful pictures and introduced one word at a time. Here were all the important words (at least the important words to me) , suddenly the language came into focus. At school we had verbs drilled into us, to the point where the thrill of learning a new language lost all it's magic. But at home , through French is Fun , I regained some of that magic. Also it meant that during school lessons I was able to throw in phrases like , ma voiture est en panne (my car has broken down) , long before we ever reached them in the text book.
Looking back on this it seems a simple program, it's not the sort of thing you will see reviewed and recommended to be revisited , we now live in the age of Duolingo after all. But this program still has a place in my heart, it ignited my love of learning languages. It taught me that although grammar is very important , there is a joy that comes from just learning new words for objects around us.
I love games on the ZX Spectrum that offer the chance of exploration , to find new worlds , find new creatures. But here was a new type of exploration that didn't have the final boundaries of the games I had previously encountered, there was no escape from the forest, no final door to cross, just the encouragement to explore further. Encouragement to learn more and indeed I did. The love of exploring new languages still remains, French has been joined by bits and pieces of German, Spanish, Welsh and Latin. These days the lessons are on Duolingo , 10 minutes a day on my phone. However, I still think back to this one brightly coloured program that was my first step on this voyage of discovery .
I love games on the ZX Spectrum that offer the chance of exploration , to find new worlds , find new creatures. But here was a new type of exploration that didn't have the final boundaries of the games I had previously encountered, there was no escape from the forest, no final door to cross, just the encouragement to explore further. Encouragement to learn more and indeed I did. The love of exploring new languages still remains, French has been joined by bits and pieces of German, Spanish, Welsh and Latin. These days the lessons are on Duolingo , 10 minutes a day on my phone. However, I still think back to this one brightly coloured program that was my first step on this voyage of discovery .