What is the best relatively inexpensive way to learn French?

rosetta stone

The web is definitely the best place perhaps to start but once you’ve got a foundation you might be able to hook up with a univeristy or college study group to practice conversation.

Sometimes embassies or consular offices will offer free lessons. I’ve taken free Spanish lessons from the Venezuelan embassy in Guyana. Its worth looking into at the very least; especially since French people are particularly proud of their language.

Also, check around for language exchange offerings in the newspaper or the international/foreign student offices at your local university/college. Often you can find people looking to swap English practice for the same in their language.

Find French speaking people and have coffee with them or something you will pick it up in casual conversation better than through formal settings. Bonne Chance

I used this for Spanish http://www.unforgettablelanguages.com/

rosetta stone is probably the best but expensive

to follow gooch’s idea try http://www.meetup.com/

free online courses
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/
http://www.word2word.com/coursead.html
http://distancelearn.about.com/od/onlinecourses/a/freelanguage.htm

Embassy they can give you the adress and
contact number of the ” amicale des français”. That’s the best way to meet French spoken people. They meet once or twice a month around a drink or they do special evening.

Date a French-speaking person who doesn’t speak very good English.

If you live near a college or university, you can check with their student center to see if they have foreign language chats.

Also, you can post a notice advertising that you’re interested in a French-English exchange, where you meet a French speaker over coffee and you spend half the time speaking English, and the other half speaking French. You can also do this with tutoring, so you don’t have to pay for it. Depending on where you live, that will save you $20–30 an hour.

The best way to learn a language is to practice speaking it. That’s more important than learning grammar rules. Focus on acquiring vocabulary and fluency, and proper usage of verb tenses and prepositions, etc, will follow.

Oh, and you can easily find grammar reference books, like “French for English speakers” as well as vocabulary flash cards on your own (or you can make them!). If you’re self-motivated and have a language partner, you really don’t need to shell out the big bucks.

Oh, one more idea: you can look into auditing classes at a local university, or signing up for a course at a community college.

yeah there’s the internet but having a bilingual friend helps! the better the friend, the cheaper the price lol

This is a web site where you can learn many european and asian languages for free.

http://www.livemocha.com

You will find lessons, exercises, and foreign people eager to help you make progress, check you exercises and chat with you.