Learn French Verbs

Whenever we're asked what preparation a student with only basic or rusty French knowledge should concentrate on before they go on a CESA course, one of our first comments is always - learn your verbs! Of course it helps if you refresh your vocab generally (and your grammar and your pronuciation etc etc) - but to get you going, to give yourself a real kick start, the verb is king! The work you do beforehand will really pay off once you're abroad, ensuring you get the most out of your time on a French language course in France with CESA.

We all know the key to speaking French well is developing the confidence to use it - but to gain that confidence, you need knowledge. To build that knowledge you need a solid foundation and that's why knowing plenty of useful everyday verbs is so important.

That's why I'm so keen on this French Verbs website - if you're trying to learn French this is a must for you. Here you'll find a great list of verbs (in a compact format) that gives you a word for most situations (and if you think something has been missed, the author would love to know so he can add it to his list).

So get memorising and there'll be no stopping you!

PS If we find something along the same lines for other languages I'll let you know (if you know of something out there already - please share it with CESA)!

A new look for Italy!

We've had a brilliant time in the office working on the new Italian Gap Year pages for the website. It's been something of a learning curve; keywords, links and SEO generally not being my forte, but I was determined to learn!

However we wanted to show case the Gap Year in Italy and didn't feel we were doing so as well as we might - then Stef (one of our CESA Gappers who has recently returned from Italy) kindly said we could use some of her photos to show other potential Gappers what a course abroad is all about. The photos were fantastic and we were enthused!

So much so we've added new details on the Italian language courses for the Over 50s as well!

Then of course the whole thing snowballed. We're really pleased with the results.
We'll see what the students think over the next few months!