Intro

How to use this book

Wait. Speech bubbles? In an exam course?

Who is this book for?

If you can answer "yes" to all of these:

1. Do you read and speak English well? Around CLB 7 or better is fine.
2. Did you grow up with Cantonese or Mandarin (or both)?
3. Do you need French at NCLC 7 for TEF Canada or TCF Canada, or for life and work in Canada?

then this book is for you.

Who should skip it?

1. Someone who already passed B2. You want a grammar reference, not this.
2. Someone who wants to read about French without saying any of it out loud.
3. Someone who thinks a course can't be serious if it has a cartoon speech bubble in it.

We know what you're thinking

And we know what your brain is thinking.

Your brain thinks THIS is important

Your brain is a ruthless filter. Every day it throws away almost everything you see and hear. What it keeps is whatever looks new, emotional or useful for survival.

A verb table with 48 cells looks like none of those things. So unless you give your brain a reason, the table goes in the bin with yesterday's bus ads.

How does your brain know what's important? Picture yourself in a Montréal café. You ask for un café, the barista answers at full speed, and you freeze. Your face goes hot. You will remember that sentence for the rest of your life.

Your brain knew that moment mattered because you felt something, mostly embarrassment.

Metacognition: thinking about thinking

You learned English once already, so you have a track record. Some of it came from school drills. Most of the English you actually use came from films, games, work and talking to people.

School drills are fine for a test next week. For speaking French in eighteen months, notice what worked for your English and do more of that.

The trick is to get your brain to treat French as something that matters, the way it treated that café moment.

Slow way: repetition. Fast way: anything that makes your brain care.

Here's what WE did

• We used pictures and layout. Your brain is tuned for visuals, not walls of text, so the notes sit right next to the words they explain.
• We used sound everywhere. Every mot rouge can be clicked and heard. French spelling lies to you about pronunciation, so you have to hear it.
• We used what you already know. English gives you vocabulary. Cantonese and Mandarin give you some vowels and a sense of rhythm that English speakers have to work for. The green boxes show you where.
• We repeat ourselves on purpose. The same idea shows up as a picture, a rule, a dialogue and an exercise, so it gets more than one path into your memory.
• We made you do things. The exercises are part of the chapter, not homework at the end. If you skip them you're skipping half the book.
• We told stories and used dialogue, because you pay more attention when somebody is talking to you than when you're reading a lecture.
• We pointed at the exam. Every part ends with tasks in the same format as TEF Canada and TCF Canada, so nothing on test day is new.

Here's what YOU can do

1. Slow down. Understanding beats memorising. When the book asks you a question, stop and answer it before you scroll.
2. Try before you peek. Type the answers in the boxes, then check. Getting one wrong and seeing why is worth more than reading ten right ones.
3. Read every box. The "There are no Dumb Questions" boxes often hold the thing you were about to get confused by.
4. Say it out loud. Click, listen, repeat. Speaking is half of NCLC 7, and your mouth needs practice as much as your brain does.
5. Sleep on it. Your brain sorts the day's learning while you sleep. A ten-minute review right before bed sticks better than one before a Netflix episode.
6. Space it out. Twenty minutes every day beats three hours on Sunday. Come back to old chapters and redo their exercises a week later.
7. Talk to yourself in French. Describe what you're doing while you cook: Je coupe les oignons. Nobody has to hear you.
8. Listen to your brain. If you're skimming, or forgetting what you read a minute ago, take a break. Past a certain point, cramming in more just pushes things out.
9. Let it be funny, or annoying. Laugh at the bad jokes. Get properly annoyed at how French counts from 70 to 99. You'll remember the things you had a reaction to.
10. Use it for real, early. Change your phone to French. Watch the news on ICI Radio-Canada with French subtitles. Write your shopping list in French.

Read me

This is a course, not a grammar reference. Each chapter teaches one thing well and leaves the rest for later. A few things to know before you start:

• We teach standard French first. That's what TEF and TCF test. Blue Au Québec boxes show you how people actually talk in Montréal or Québec City, so you'll understand them, even if you don't copy them on the exam.
• We don't cover every exception. We cover the ones you'll meet. A grammar reference can list the rest once you're past NCLC 7.
• The audio is your browser's speech engine. It's good for single words and short sentences, and a little flat for long ones. For listening practice at full speed, Chapter 24 sends you to actual radio.
• The order matters. Each chapter builds on the ones before it. Skipping ahead is fine for a peek, but come back.
• It takes time. French schools usually quote something like 550 to 650 hours of study to go from zero to B2, which is roughly where NCLC 7 sits. An hour a day is about a year and a half. Two hours a day is under a year.