Coffee Break French - All You Need To Know

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Bonjour, moi c'est Marc et je suis Max. Welcome to a special episode of Coffee Break French. So, Max, how are you today? Very well. Very happy to be with you for a very special episode. A special episode. Yeah, this is something a little bit different today, what we're doing.

is going through the whole history of Coffee Break French, looking way, way back to the first episodes of the very first series of Coffee Break French, and then talking about everything that we've done in Coffee Break French all the way up to the present day. Oh, that's very exciting. So obviously started way before I came. So there's some products I'm really interested to hear more about. Okay, so yeah, we started all the way back in 2007, but when did you join?

2021. 2021. Okay, so that's four years. I mean, four years. T'as fait beaucoup quand même. Oui, je connais la plupart. So we're going to go back through and talk about all of the series and the different products, I guess, that we've got. And this will also give you an idea as to where to start, because one of the questions that we get so often is...

where do I start? What level do I start at? If I am B1, where do I start? If I am just beginning, what's the best course for me? And so on. So hopefully in this episode, we'll answer that question and our listeners and our viewers. This is both a video podcast and an audio podcast. So hopefully our listeners and our viewers will be able to identify the best place to start. Sounds amazing. Okay.

And we will put links in the description to all of the things that we talk about. So you can just click on those links to access all of the resources that we mentioned. Super.

Tell me, Mark, why did you start Coffee Break French? Pourquoi ai-je commencé Coffee Break French? Well, we actually started with Spanish. You probably know that. Sorry to disappoint you, Max. We started with Spanish in 2006. And this was in a time when people didn't really know what podcasts were. It was very, very early days.

But I had been doing an education project, working with different schools and podcasting came on the scene. And I thought this is perfect for an opportunity to use audio content, which was hard. in those days because of, you know, dial-up internet connections and all that, you know. So we thought...

using audio content, teaching a language through a podcast that sounded perfect. So with Coffee Break Spanish in 2006, that went really well. And we thought, yeah, we need to do this in French. So it was 2007, the 26th of September, 2007, when we launched. Coffee Break French. And the idea with Coffee Break French was the same as we wanted to do with Coffee Break Spanish. We wanted to help people acquire the necessary language to use in a practical situation.

So in level one, it was with Anna, who was my co-host back in the day. And Anna was an authentic French learner. She wanted to learn French. She was going on holiday to France. She wanted to learn. And so the lessons were put together with me teaching Anna how to use French in very practical ways. So it's practical French to go on holiday.

how to order something at a restaurant or book a hotel. Exactly. With level one, it's really focusing on practical transactional situations. Also, learning to introduce yourself, make friends, talk to people, greetings. all those kind of things. But also, it's about learning the type of French that's going to help you survive in a French-speaking place if you're traveling.

The key thing, and this is something we wanted to start from the very beginning, was avoiding just the idea of repeat this phrase, repeat this phrase, repeat this phrase. because we wanted from the very early days to start thinking about how the language works. and the patterns in the language so that you're not just learning where is the bus station or whatever, you're learning how that phrase is made up. You're learning then to be able to reuse those words in your own sentences.

of things that you want to say. So that's always been very important for Coffee Break that we want to include the, yes, the transactional language, yes, the practical language, but also a little bit about how the language works. Parce que c'est important, comme tu le sais. Très important. Super, très, très bien. Et donc ça, c'est Level 1. Level 1, oui. Et après...

Le cours suivant, the next course. Yes, so the next course was level two. Level two? That makes a whole lot of sense. It does. So with level two, that's where we wanted to take things a little bit further. If you imagine, if you're used to thinking about the European framework of reference for language learning, so that's the CEFR. And the CEFR has six different levels, starting at A1 for beginners, A2 upper beginners.

B1, lower intermediate, B2, upper intermediate, and then C1 for advanced, basically, and C2, which is like a dream level. It's a very advanced, almost a native. level. In terms of that, level one for us is an A1, A2 course, but level two is... Firmly in E2 moving into B1. So that's where our learners perhaps have been doing some French already, but they want a firmer, more solid grounding in perhaps the grammar side of things or increasing vocabulary.

So it's a very important level to really lay the foundations for what comes next. And that's what we wanted to do with level two. And Anna stayed with us for the whole of level two. In fact, at the end of level one, it was really nice because... We actually went out to Loire Atlantique to do some recording because at the end of the level one course, the idea is that Anna's going to put into practice what she's been learning over the whole time.

course and so she was doing the ordering in cafes and we were recording the conversations and so on and there was a birthday party we visited friends and so on so it was it was great fun great fun That's probably the most rewarding stage of learning when you have your first conversations in real life. Tout à fait, tout à fait.

That's when we start to, well, within level two, we look at verbs, for example, and learn some present tense verbs, irregular verbs. We learn how to use verbs in the perfect tense. imperfect tense so these are past tenses and of course for learners it can be quite challenging to

Initially, to work out the difference between the perfect and the imperfect, we don't really have, well, we have slightly similar things in English, but we've got different ways of dealing with verbs in English. So with that, we're definitely getting into the grammar.

in a deeper way. But of course, all the time building vocabulary, building your experience with the language, listening to the conversations and building out there. I think French in particular, grammar is quite important if you want to. increase your level. Verbs can be slightly tricky, so it's good to tackle it one step at a time early on. We also look at adjectives and adjective endings in English, of course.

As a native speaker of English, I don't need to worry about whether the cup that I'm describing is blanche or blanc. But in French, I need to know that it's une tasse blanche, but perhaps un couteau blanc. I don't know why you would have a white knife, but... Why not? It was tricky for me learning English. Of course. Because I...

I made a mistake a couple times saying, oh, these mugs are expensive. Ah, okay. Which sounds silly now. It's very natural to add an S in French for adjectives. Absolutely, absolutely. I should say that these mugs are not expensive. You can get one.

If you're watching on YouTube, there will be a link under this video to get your own Coffee Break French mug. A white cup. A white cup. Not cheap. Not cheap. And with a little red and a little blue. A little blue too. A little blue. Yes, exactly. Okay. So level two, yeah, that was our kind of A2B1 course. So if you're at that level, then level two would definitely be a good place to start.

The other nice thing about level two is at the end of it, again, the last 10 lessons is a sort of tradition that the last 10 lessons, we do something a bit different. And in the last 10 lessons, do you know what there is in the last 10? Can you remember that? So how was before my time? Before your time, yeah. I've looked at it for sure. Can you refresh my memory?

a little soap opera so we had a a soap opera a radio play where um we're following a little story and stories are very important as we'll see in all of the courses that we've put together and there's a story element and the story at the end of level two helps you consolidate what you're learning and really see the language in different examples because that's really what it's all about.

I love learning with stories, especially when you're at the stage of imperfect, perfect tense. Stories are ideal. Yeah, absolutely. So that is level one and level two. I think...

what we have noticed over the years of creating content. At the beginning of learning a language, you know what it's like, you go forward, you make... progress every day and you feel yeah I'm moving forward but then there comes a point that moving forward becomes a little more difficult because you have to take on board more things I always think of it as

Imagine you're walking through a forest on a path through the forest and on either side you've got these dark trees and it's slightly scary because you don't really want to venture off the path. But then you come to the end of the path through the forest and you've got this beautiful meadow in front of you that's all wide and there's a little river over here and sheep walking over the hills and all this kind of thing. And I think by the time you get to that stage, that's when you've...

In a sense, you should be going down all the little paths to investigate the little brook or going up this path to see the cows with the cowbells in the mountains and stuff. You're speaking to someone from your part of France. This should definitely make sense. And then maybe stop.

I can't focus on anything else unless you bring me some Tartiflette. Is that a surprise? Okay, maybe that's a surprise for later. But at that point, that's where you're... going along all these different little adventures and picking up more language and seeing more expressions and really seeing what you've been learning in practice.

And I think that's such an important stage. And for me, it's the wonderful stage because everything that you do will help you move forward ever so slightly, but you have a lot of fun doing it because you don't... have to keep going at this level all the time. And that's why over the years we've built all these additional materials that will help intermediate learners take those next steps in whatever way they like. Interesting.

Somehow I'm thinking about volleyball right now. I love volleyball. It's kind of the same idea. First, before playing, you need to learn all the rules. And then... it's not all that fun like it's kind of fun because you're discovering something new but it's quite restricted in a way but then once you know and you practice a lot and you get better then you have many options to choose from and you can explore things more in depth. Yeah. And I think it's quite similar.

Yeah, that whole process of learning something and then getting better at it because you have more options, you can have more fun, in a sense. Yeah. So I suppose similar in when you were learning English, for example. Learning English, yeah. More freedom and more accuracy as well. In my first few years, I would say to buy as my only option. But now you could say to purchase, to acquire, to get. It's a lot more options to explore and freedom to be.

It's hard when you first learn a language to express your ideas or your feelings fully. There's a bit of a ceiling, but then once you break this... You have everything, like you have the sheep. You have the sheep and the cows and the rivers and so on. Absolutely. So in order to help people find their sheep, we...

We have produced a whole range of materials at this level. Maybe the first one to mention is our travel diaries, and these have been really popular. Many learners have loved learning with the travel diaries. These came at a time... when travel was completely impossible. We released these in late 2020, so I'm sure you know what I mean. But the Travel Diaries...

were vicarious travel. We were traveling through the diaries of people taking particular journeys to the south of France and so on. So I really like the travel diaries because I think it's a great opportunity. to do a little bit of reading. You're following the story of different people doing different journeys in each season. And there are lesson notes that accompany, in fact, with all our courses, there are lesson notes and video versions.

and so on. With the travel diaries, we have lesson notes, we've got vocabulary lists and exercises to help you get more out of those courses. So where are these travels? happening so in the first season of the travel the travel diaries is i think lara and her friend noah who are traveling by train through the south of france and they go all the way along the south coast and then i think up into chambéry

nice part of the world. And again, we're following the journey each episode. There's a little diary of what they got up to in the course of the day. And sometimes things go wrong. Sometimes things work out. And then season... 2, that was the north, wasn't it? Saison 2, c'est Charlotte. Charlotte, of course. Charlotte, which is in the north, northwest of France, with like Rouen, Paris, Tours.

So quite historical sites there. Normandy. Normandy, yeah. So these are travel diaries. And again, a great way to travel. If travel's not an option just now, or if travel as an option is the perfect inspiration for your next trip. And stories are a bit like passive learning, almost like you're invested in the story and you learn without realizing. It's the perfect way to learn. We also have another course, a completely different course, called our Reading Club.

And this is a similar level. So A2 into B1. And the idea of the Reading Club, again, it's about reading. It's about building your awareness. But this one is more focused on culture. So we've got 52 cultural texts and they're delivered once a week. So the idea is that you get one text a week.

There is the actual text of it. There is an audio version, some exercises and vocabulary and so on. So that's the Coffee Break French Reading Club, if you're interested in doing something like that. Yeah, it's quite interesting because... learning about the culture is also important like the famous singers or whenever i hear about some

British celebrity that I know. I'm like, yeah, I know who you're talking about. It's also a very rewarding feeling. Absolutely. And I think it makes you feel less left out of a conversation if you know what people are talking about. And yeah, I think that's definitely... It's something that is... difficult to acquire unless you're actually

living in the country, for example. So by using these cultural texts with the Reading Club or also our magazine, which we'll talk about in a moment, because the magazine is slightly higher level, but that's also a cultural context. and use that to improve our language, but within that different mode, within that different format. pretty much impossible to know everyone, of course, or everything, but it's nice to have little bits involved. Yeah, filling in the holes. Exactly.

So next up then, we would probably move to our Level 3 course, I think, would probably be the next thing level-wise. So Level 3 is a little bit different to expliquer l'histoire. is another story so l'histoire de niveau 3 then we fully embrace the story and it's we follow the three characters in the whole season the whole level

And they are Katie, Veronica, and Alf. So Katie is an American student. Oui, une étudiante américaine. Veronica is an Australian businesswoman. Oui, une femme d'affaires australienne. And Alf is a retired English teacher. Un prof à la retraite. Pas un prof d'anglais, un prof anglais. Anglais, exactement. And they're all doing a course together in French in the south of France, in Nice. Oui, à Nice. La belle Nice.

And so we're following their stories over the course of their time in their language school and all the things that go on, particularly when you're living abroad, those kind of things. three characters are non-native French speakers, but they're diary entries, they're stories. We're telling these stories in French. But I think from a learner's point of view, they can very much identify with one of the three characters. Maybe we inspired a few people to go retire in Nice.

I know that we've had many learners write to us and say, you know, which school did they go to? Because I'm doing a course in a language school in Nice. So level three is... a little bit different. It has, again, text and videos and listen notes and all of that. But we also start to look at something in the end section of... of Level 3 that I think is so, so important. And it is the skill of dictation. Les dictées. Oh, les dictées. Does that give you...

I was in the minority. I loved Dicte the most at school. Good to know. I know that many native phrase speakers remember Dicte and think, oh, no. Yeah, we had one a week. One a week. Everybody was dreading it. You were loving it. I loved it, always. I think it's a brilliant skill. Basically, when someone reads out... a sentence or a paragraph in French and you have to write down exactly what they're saying. And of course, one of the most difficult aspects of French is the fact that

one sound can be written in, I don't know, 40 different ways. The sound O. How do you spell O? It's O-A-U-A-U-X-E-A-U. Yeah, and not to mention A, because that could have a E's and S's. I think the worst is A. Nine or ten different combinations of letters. Excluding silent letters, of course. But then it becomes endless.

So there you go. That's something that we really focus on in level three. And it's a great opportunity to build your understanding, your knowledge of how French works, the whole idea of Dicte. I love dictates because it's not just understanding what the people mean, but break it down in your... in your mind to understand exactly like if we have la or la whether it's an a direct object pronoun l apostrophe or just la meaning the that forces you to think of the structure at the same time

Alors, le niveau 3, c'est pour les étudiants de niveau B1, plus ou moins. Ouais, un bon B1. Un bon B1, exactement. Et donc...

Après ça, on a aussi d'autres cours. Oui. Par exemple, on a notre Coffee Break French magazine. Oui, le magazine. On a aussi Sins from the Coffee Break Café. Sins. C'est le dernier venu. Le bébé. Le bébé. Let's talk about magazine first, because I think magazine is, we've already talked about the importance of this sort of cultural understanding. And with the magazine, that's exactly what we wanted to focus on, where each episode focuses on a topic.

cultural topic. It might be a place, it might be a tradition, it might be an author or a musician or something like that. But something typically francophone. Wait, and we're focusing on one aspect per episode. And it could be, as you said, a bit of everything could be focusing on les frites, which are very important culturally, or life in Quebec. It's quite a...

Quite a range. Quite a range. There's something for you in there. Yeah. And francophone is very important there because we're definitely not just talking about France. We're talking about the francophone world and the different topics are picked from all over the francophone world.

And again, with each episode, we've got additional materials. So there's the text, there's the lesson notes, there's the additional materials to help you get more out of that and really build your knowledge and have that cultural awareness that you develop by knowing these things. So if someone's talking about, I don't know, le Lac Léman, which is not what you would think it would be called.

No, it was surprising to me in English. Nobody knew about Lake Lehmann. Like Lehmann is Lake Geneva in English randomly. So someone talks about that or makes some kind of reference to, I don't know, languages. There's an episode about le Breton. So all of this, it's that cultural understanding, that cultural wallpaper, if you like. And I think crucially, what it helps you do is...

is feel less like an outsider. You feel as if you belong because you understand things that native speakers just take for granted. So that's the magazine, a great tool for helping you understand more about francophone culture. Okay, only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line. But first... There, the last one. Enjoy a Coca-Cola for a pause that refreshes.

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Excellent. And then we have scenes. Scenes from the Coffee Break French Café. So I know all about scenes because I was there from the first minute. Yeah. That's great. We basically follow the daily life of a café. And we see it from the point of view of the owner. And we follow the life of the regulars. So the people working there, the people who come every morning for their croissant, etc. The love life, the work life.

divided into 10 episodes per season, and we just follow their story, their life. Little snippets of life, a little slice of life in each episode. And again, just as you said earlier, you're hooked on the story. You want to know what happens next. You want to know what happens when two people seem to get together and all that kind of thing. And following that story through the whole series is great.

With scenes, there's a whole range of additional materials within the course where you get access to the lesson notes as usual, the vocabulary and exercises and so on. But we also have the spotlight videos. The spotlight videos. Can you explain a little bit? For each episode of Scenes, we focus on an extra video on one little grammar point or idiom, interesting vocabulary, and we expand it a little bit with more examples. Okay.

And that way you're taking what you're learning and kind of rethinking about it and being able to use it in real life, in your actual speaking, in your daily use of the language. So that's Scenes from the Coffee Break Cafe. It's our most recent... course in fact we're still um at this stage as this as this video launches we're still working on uh season two we finished recording but it's been published at the moment so a weekly publication of of that

And yeah, I think our learners are loving these little slices of life from a typical French café bar type place. Also works in French, les tranches de vie. Une tranche de vie. Ah, c'est sympa. Pas une tranche de vie. Okay, so that's Scenes. And so the magazine, I would say those are both similar in level to... Level three. So that's that B1, B2 level, pushing into B2 in certain aspects. We also have another course that is, I would say, firmly in B2, and that is Enroute avec Coffee Break French.

That was before your time, Max, I think. So, en route was, well, going way back. Je vais parler en français. En 91, j'ai passé une année à habiter à Menton. dans le sud-est de la France. Et j'ai adoré, mais pendant un bon moment, pendant peut-être 20 ans, je n'y suis pas retourné. Donc, ça faisait 20 ans que je n'avais pas été un menton. Et donc je suis allé à Menton et j'ai amené la caméra, le microphone et donc on a fait toute une série d'entretiens et de reportages du sud-est de la France.

um in that little corner of the south of france yeah so i was revisiting my all the haunts, the old haunts from my time there, in Menton, in Nice, in Braille, in Tarnes, and over the border into Italy as well. But we did lots of interviews of locals, of people visiting there. And in this course, Each episode has a different theme and you are listening to lots of authentic conversations with native speakers and there's also videos and there's lesson notes, all the usual things.

to help you get lots out of that course. Super. Sometimes you don't go to a place for five years, you come back and you're... You're amazed how much it's changed. 20 years. 20 years. La ville a changé, mais elle avait toujours son cœur. Ah, c'est l'essentiel. Toujours la même atmosphère. Oui, tout à fait. J'adore. et j'adore toujours super peut-être que dans 20 ans je ferai un en route à Glasgow peut-être peut-être ok so we have

Quite a big selection, a big range of products for B1 to B2 level. Yeah, that whole intermediate level. Lots of different options. And indeed, you can work through them all. You can do the different courses.

And every time you do a lesson, you'll move forward a little more. But we haven't mentioned yet another platform that has a lot of resources for this. level. Absolutely. I think you're possibly referring to Coffee Break TV. Coffee Break TV. En effet, c'est exactement ça. So Coffee Break TV is our app and web platform where it's basically a huge collection of language lessons. language lessons and you can basically pick a new lesson every day and

work your way through that lesson and move one little step forward in that day. And there's lots of different types of lessons, aren't there? There are different series, in a sense, on Coffee Break TV. There's many different formats, yes. Do you have any favourites? I like postcards. I really like postcards because you travel vicariously like we did.

So basically you have someone writing a postcard, a member of the team to another member of the team. And we have to figure out where it was written from being given clues in the language. Absolutely. Yeah. So that's the postcards. There's also step by step. Step by step, yes. If you go on little walks, you can listen to and have little challenges. Two minutes, three minutes, five minutes.

And there's sort of interactive challenges. So you're being encouraged to think as you look around you when you're walking and all that kind of thing, or indeed doing the dishes or driving or whatever it happens to be. It's always the kind of thing that you can do anywhere. so there's another one i really like it's the translation challenge a favorite of many i think yeah it's so useful so it's so useful because you know some words you know some structures and you get to put them together and

If you don't manage, absolutely fine. You have the answer and the explanation. Yeah. And I think the good thing for me about translation challenges is, and this is something that we do in lots of our courses, Sometimes it's difficult to practice speaking if you don't have the opportunity to speak. But what you can do is teach yourself and improve your ability to think on your feet.

And when I say think on your feet, I mean know which words to say when you would need to say them. And that's exactly what translation challenges are all about, making you think on your feet. If you say you've got 10 seconds to translate this phrase from English into French and you're like, okay, how would I do this? Which verb do I need?

Which tense do I need? Do I need to think about adjectives? How do I pronounce that? And putting it all together and trying to come up with it. Of course, you can pause the video. That's the wonderful thing. But it really does help you train yourself to do that. Makes sense, because that's what... You're actually doing the first few times you're abroad in the country. It's a constant translation challenge. Because you think in your native language at first. I have to mention one more. Oh, yeah.

Sip. Sip video. Pure grammar. But I like the grammar videos because you first study. So we explain as tutors how it works. Then we investigate. We have examples. And then we explain the structure again. And then the B is for practice. You get to figure out if you understood. Absolutely. So that's study, investigate, practice. And it's what you do with your coffee. You sip your coffee. Exactly.

So Coffee Break TV is a subscription. So it's slightly different from our courses. There is a monthly subscription or an annual subscription. And with that subscription, you get access to all of the videos. So you can binge them as you wish, or you can take one a day and so on. In fact, if you can't decide... which video to watch in any one day, we send out a suggestion by email. So in your inbox, you get an email saying, you know, here's your suggested video for the day.

You tap on it and within seconds you're learning and you can learn on the go, you can learn at home, you can learn whatever you like. You mentioned all the videos. Is there more than 20, more than 50? Oh, there are hundreds of videos. Hundreds of videos, yeah. And we're adding to that all the time. We come up with new ideas and new series and we're adding these all the time. And of course, there's other things like...

Walk, Talk and Learn, and we haven't even mentioned Walk, Talk and Learn. Another fan's favourite. Another fan's favourite, yeah. So Walk, Talk and Learn is where we walk around the streets, we talk about the language we see around us, and we hopefully all learn something. And then we come back to the studio to get more examples of whatever.

message we've seen on a shop window or a menu or an advert or something like that. So it's really a really practical way and something that we would encourage learners to do if they possibly can. that's what i do usually when i'm in a country where i speak the language just a bit and i see that means something surely there's a pun here or a word i don't understand then later i just check yeah yeah

So that's Coffee Break TV, available at coffeebreaktv.com. Again, we'll put all the links for all of these courses in the description. And within Coffee Break TV, we have content for...

A2, B1, B2. But what about if you're a solid B2 learner wanting to move on from there? Then we can go back to our courses, the levels. So we mentioned level one. two, three. We have level four as well. Level four. So level four is another story-based course. We're following a story of love on the RER platform. Falling in love in Paris. Ah, how romantic. So we've got Sylvie and Mathieu who get to know each other because they're on the same commuter train in Paris.

And Sylvie's mother, Monique, basically exchanges emails with her about the whole story. And then we have Gabrielle, who's Mathieu's best friend. And so she gives him advice and so on. And there's lots more to the story than that. Et cette fois, tous les personnages sont français ? Oui, tout à fait. Donc, tous les personnages sont français. Et donc, ils se parlent, ils s'écrivent. Et puis, nous apprenons en lisant leur courriel.

Ouais, super. C'est exactement ça. Et donc, dans chaque épisode, nous regardons le texte et ensuite, nous parlons du texte. So we discuss the text that we've read together and then we go into all the details of the language and at this stage we're talking about a much higher level of language, looking at idiomatic expressions, looking at really interesting grammar points and really getting into it in a...

in a deep way. Which is usually what happens when two native speakers speak to each other. You can skip a few things. If you speak with your brother, you don't speak the same way as if you're teaching someone. And that's presented by... Pierre Benoit and myself. And we, again, we offer a whole range of additional materials there, materials which will help you get more out of the course. So that's level four for B2.

pushing him to see one at this stage. Excellent. There's still some more to talk about, isn't there? We've got two more courses, I think, to talk about. We've got Il était une fois. And then we've got La vérité que l'a toujours. « Il était une fois », raconte-nous ce que c'est. Déjà, c'est mon préféré, c'est sûr. J'ai adoré « Il était une fois ». C'était un peu une expérience, c'était notre...

Premier podcast monolingue. Oui, exactement. Ça veut dire qu'il n'y a pas un mot d'anglais. Tout en français, c'était avec Pierre Benoît. Oui. Et c'était un petit peu un jeu d'écriture, un challenge, un défi d'écriture où on avait... donc Pierre-Benoît ou moi, selon l'épisode, sélectionner dix mots que l'autre personne ne connaissait pas et l'autre personne devait écrire une histoire en quelques minutes. Oui, exactement.

So it was a challenge where one of you had to write a story in a few minutes, but you had to use certain words. Yes, they were given to you like a minute before. Not even a minute before. As you were doing it, yeah. the time you had to write was the time it took the person who picked the words to explain the words and all the meanings because there's of course a teaching element of course of course and it's great fun really some of the stories are wow

Really, really interesting because when you don't have time to think and you have to fit the words, you just take shortcuts that make very little sense. But it was all in French. Of course, like everything that we... Provide there are lesson notes that go along with this, so you've got all of the access to that. And the full transcript as well, which is very useful. Absolutely. And so Irritation Foix, another of the courses, is available.

within the Coffee Break Academy, which is where we host all of our courses, including... La vérité éclate toujours. La vérité éclate toujours. This is our... it's our flagship advanced course. So this is C1, very solid C1, where it's basically like reading a novel, but with all of the support that you could use to make sure you... understand everything in that novel.

So if you pick a novel off the shelf and read it, then you're not going to get the same level of support. No. You get every single word explained. You get all of the development of the content. as well. There's so much more that goes into that. Yeah, I used to read English books with my little pocket dictionary on the other hand and check it every minute or every page.

But we have better than this, it's l'atelier linguistique. Yes. La vérité éclate toujours, qui est très, très, très utile et qui explique en détail les... les temps ou les structures les plus compliquées. Et qui offre aussi d'autres possibilités de les utiliser, donc d'autres idées, d'autres exemples de ces mots, de ces phrases. pour que vous puissiez utiliser ces phrases dans d'autres situations. Oui, c'était très intéressant. C'est le plus avancé.

And we should say it's a great story as well. It's a novel. It's a crime novel, basically. Not crime as so much as maybe just adventure or something like that. A little bit of intro. intrigue and a journey across different places. Actually, when I joined the team, it had already been written. Okay. One of my first tasks was to proof it. Ah, okay. And I surprised myself sometimes reading two or three pages.

Oh, I forgot to prove I was just reading the story, following the plot. So that's how good it was. That's good to know. That's good to know. So that's La Véritée Clate Toujours. There's also an actual book of La Véritée Clate Toujours that you can find in... buy it online and read the book as you work your way through the course, if that's what you'd like to do.

Talking of books, I've just remembered, this caught my eye just as I was looking there. We also have our Coffee Breaks book. So this is our 50 French Coffee Breaks. This is a fantastic book. which will help you move forward a little bit more with your French in five minutes, 10 minutes, or 15 minutes. So there's a whole range of activities in here. Avoir le coup de foudre. Au café ici, les arbres qui grandissent le plus lentement. C'est sympa. Ce sont ceux qui portent les meilleures fleurs.

That's nice. We could take this as well in language learning. Yeah, and there's a hint of philosophy always. Absolutely, yeah. So the trees which grow most slowly are the ones which carry the best fruits. And I guess that's what we could say is that it's more fruitful to go, to take things slowly and to take things at your own pace, maybe like a coffee break. Or flowers, yeah. Did I say fruit?

You said fleur, then fruit. It's actually fruit. Ah, okay. I think you said fleur when you read in French. Okay, les meilleurs fruits. Well, flowers and fruit. I mean, ultimately, both work, aren't they? They completely work. So, yeah, this is available. all good booksellers, and of course online, 50 French Coffee Breaks, another great way to make every coffee break a language learning opportunity.

So I started with a level one French 17 years ago, 18 years ago? 18 years ago now, yeah. Now you're publishing books? We've got books, we've got courses, we've got mugs. I mentioned the mugs, you know. All of this, to find out about all of this, you can simply go to coffeebreakfrench.com or head to the Coffee Break Academy for our courses or coffeebreaktv.com for our Coffee Break TV platform.

And if you're interested, down here in the description, there is a secret link that will perhaps get you a little bit of a discount on some of these courses. So definitely check that out. I will. You don't need to. Max, merci beaucoup. Merci à toi. C'était très intéressant de retracer l'histoire de Coffee Break French. Beaucoup de chemins, parcours. Oui, exact.

We hope that you have found this useful. We hope that it's been a good way to find out a little more about what we do, about all of the range of content that we have. But for now, merci beaucoup. Merci, Max. Merci, Marc. Merci beaucoup. Et happy coffee breaking. Happy Coffee Breaking! You have been listening to a Coffee Break Languages production for the Radiolingua Network. Copyright 2025, Radiolingua Limited. Recording copyright 2025, Radiolingua Limited. All rights reserved.

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