How much French is enough French?

Celtic Colours Festival in Nova Scotia, Canada

With a trip to eastern Canada looming in several months, I feel it is my duty and obligation as a former language instructor (not to mention language lover) to work on my abilities in French.  You may have had the same dilemma with another foreign language that has a future in your life. 

The dilemma is the following: From a practical standpoint, just how much French should I try to learn or relearn in a few short months?  More specifically, which language skills should I concentrate on?  Shall I listen to lots of French conversations online to get some rudimentary listening knowledge?  It would be fun, after all, to eavesdrop on French conversations, on the street, in the hotel lobby or at the boulangerie (bakery) as I am trying to decide which lovely pastry to buy to go with my café au lait  (coffee with hot milk).  

Should I attempt to speak a few key phrases in French so that I can at very least greet, say goodbye, and thank a French-speaking Canadian?   Could I manage to utter Bonjour,  Au revoir , and Merci beaucoup? My neurosis about my strong American accent when speaking French is holding me up on this skill. I don't have a French speaker to practice with.  I'm too timid to enroll in one of the online language learning websites where you actually talk to French speakers with a program like Skype. ( I even get nervous using Skype in English, my native language.)  And what if, heaven forbid, I did manage to utter a French greeting with a reasonable accent, and the person addressed responded with a barrage of indistinguishable French sounds? I would probably turn tail and run.

Now the reading skill is another matter.  Such a wonderful skill for an introverted personality. I can already read French fairly well.  And given time and a bilingual dictionary, I can probably understand most non-technical material.  I imagine myself helping my husband make menu selections from an all-French menu (with a dictionary handy in my new smart phone).  And it would be a sneaky way to steer him to the healthier food choices.  

Now for the writing skill.  Will I be writing in French on our trip?  I doubt it.  And it's a shame, because writing is fairly accessible for practice.  The free online French course that I am slogging through right now (I'm on Lesson three of fifteen) has an exercise in which I listen to a sentence and write what I hear.  Then the program haughtily informs me if I have every word, accent mark, capital letter, and punctuation mark correct.  After a few tries, the program takes pity on me and gives me the correct written sentence.  It's like a little game, but how useful is it to me, I wonder? 

Then there is the matter of what words (vocabulary) to actually commit to memory.  For example, my French program wants me to learn many of the names of subjects taught at university; however, I don't think I will be chatting with many French-speaking university students.  The program also wants me to learn words like auberge de la jeunesse,  (youth hostel).   I may just do that to make sure we don't end up spending the night in one by mistake!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:La_maison_etre.jpg#filelinks

My last dilemma is how much to let myself be seduced by the finer points of French grammar.  As a person who believes that if your goal is to communicate in another language, using the language should take precedence over knowing grammar points, especially in the beginning stages.  But as a former Linguistics instructor with a love of Syntax, I can't help but be fascinated by two different French verbs used to form the passé composé,  each requiring a different form of the past participle.  Hmm.  I doubt if I will have many conversations in Canada about that!  

I think I have made my decision.  I'm going to concentrate on listening and reading (known as the receptive skills), practice a few key phrases to speak if I feel brave enough, and imagine where I may be using certain vocabulary words on the upcoming trip before I commit them to memory.  And I'll keep that thing about the past tense and past participles to myself.  I don't want people avoiding me in the club car on the train to Halifax!