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Bonjour les Francophiles sans loi !
Two years ago, I gave up my 15-year position teaching virtual French with a dotcom in order to continue teaching virtual French on my own site. Extremely daunted at the thought of the 6,000+ pages I’d created (and edited countless times), I briefly entertained the idea of doing something completely different, but found that I couldn’t. The fact is that I feel compelled to write about French – I love it and I’m good at it, so what else could I possibly do?
The task is just as daunting as I’d feared, not only the actual re-creation of all my lessons for Lawless French, but also the uphill battle to knock the old versions from their long-time perches at the top of search engines. I’ve had some success and I hope that in a few more years, the higher quality lessons (not to mention far less ad-ridden format) will help Lawless French win out. (You can help by linking to and sharing the new versions of lessons rather than the old ones. If a lesson you’re interested in isn’t here yet, please let me know and I’ll move it to the top of my redo list.)
A year ago, I posted a breakdown of the 1,100 pages I’d written or recreated since launching Lawless French. In the last year, I’ve add another 400 or so, including
- 11 subjunctivisor responses
- 13 pronunciation guides
- 24 vocabulary lessons
- 33 reading comprehension texts
- 42 listening comprehension exercises
- 61 expression explanations
- 71 grammar lessons
- 152 verb conjugation tables
As you can see, I’ve slowed down a lot (though the average is still well over a page a day). Part of the reason is simply that my previous pace was unsustainable: I was working like mad to get essential content up as soon as possible, but there are only so many 10-hour days I can put in before getting burned out, no matter how passionately I feel about the content.
But more importantly, virtual French teaching is no longer my full-time job, because, to be perfectly honest, it just doesn’t pay a living wage. I was extremely fortunate to be able to make a good living from my previous site for so many years, but that ended when I went out on my own. Happily, I’m now working with a brilliant startup (whence my co-branded site Progress with Lawless French) as Language and Marketing Coordinator, a sort of catch-all title that includes strategizing, blogging, translating, proofreading, and newslettering. It’s interesting and exciting and truly the best job I could ever have hoped for.
Anyway, enough about me – I want to hear about you! Thank you so much for your support – I couldn’t do this without you. Bon anniversaire à nous et bonne continuation !
– LKL
P.S. Please subscribe to my twice-weekly newsletter and follow me on social media to find out about new lessons and features.
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The Subjunctivisor is an interactive tool that will advise you on whether to use the subjunctive or indicative with more than 275 French verbs, expressions, and conjunctions.
Knowing whether to use the passé composé or imparfait is particularly difficult when translating certain verbs into French. Very broadly speaking, the imperfect is equivalent to was/were + ___ing, but some English verbs are not often used in this form. So when translating was, had, and liked into French, you have to think about the meaning in order to decide which tense to use.
The letter combination il has various pronunciations depending on what precedes it.
Le festival de Cannes is one of the most famous film festivals in the world, and it takes place every May in the beautiful south of France. This issue of Lawless French à fond is all about movies and movie festivals.