To blog or not to blog – that is the question!

We don’t blog!  Those of ye following us a while know our form.  We prefer Snapchat and Instagram to engage and teach ye.  That’s just us.  There are some great blogs out there but personally, I find educational blogs can be very similar to study – reading and reading reams of content.  And we want to make French more than that!  We want to make it – dare I say it – feckin great gas altogether!

That’s why we don’t blog!  With 26 years of teaching behind us in EF, we feel that a very effective way to study is passive learning.  It is less stressful, less painful and of course, along with the filters that social media offers us – a lot more fun! Remember it’s called “SOCIAL media” for a reason – we want to be SOCIAL!  We want ye to look forward to our stories, our posts, our comps and giveaways – all while learning French!  How many of ye know the “je me lève” song off by heart by listening to us sing it with our infamous bunny filter?! I have been told by students that they have actually sang this song in the French oral when the examiner asked them to describe their typical day.  In one instance, a student told me that when she started to sing it, the examiner actually smiled and joined in!!! BTW, we ab love the fact that we engage with so many teachers, examiners, correctors, inspectors who are following our accounts. If you are a French teacher reading this – please message us and let us know what we can do on social media to help YOUR students in French class.

On a more serious note – cough cough – the content we share with you is AMAZEBALLS!  Remembering we get the highest grades NATIONALLY in French for the Leaving Cert every year for the past 19 years.  There is no other grinds college, secondary school, or language learning website that can make this claim to fame.  So simply put – we take apart the LC and JC syllabus and share with you what you need to know – and ignore the CRAP that finds its way into school text books.  Remember though – that your poor teachers have no choice!  They don’t have the luxury of ignoring rubbish parts of the course.  They need to follow the guidelines and curriculum as laid out by the Dept of Education – poor things! I chat regularly with so many of your teachers on social media and they HATE the curriculum but they have no choice!  So before ye go bashing yer teachers – they have no choice in what they teach you so be gentle on them.

We, on the other hand, are not employed by the Dept of Education – so weeeee can say and do whatever we want to get you to learn French! Bum, arse, drink, girls!  On that note,how do you use our social media accounts to learn French in our “no bullshit” type of way?

(On a sidenote – I need to let ye know that we do not share the content of our French programmes / workshops on social media.  As we have a fab team of 15 staff, lads, we need to ensure that the content our EF students are given remains exclusive to those who attend and pay for our programmes)

Instagram:

We started our Insta account a few years ago so now we have over 1000 posts there to share with ye.  Why not go back to the start of them and go through a few a day – let’s say 3 of them – and note all of the relevant content in each one, in your French copybook. Follow our Insta story daily.  We suggest you screenshot everything useful from our story – and at the end of the week you can write them into your copybook and delete the screenshots and start again. We also hold regular Insta offers on additional material – a great way to get even more FREE content!  On top of that – our insta lives are gas crack!  We never save them – as we prefer to share our nuggets of wisdom only with those who have tuned in to keep it more exclusive.  We have also saved a huge amount of info on our HIGHLIGHTS section. Jaysus.. we spoil ye rotten!  So our advice – turn our post notifications ON for our Insta account to ensure you don’t miss valuable content.  Our insta account is @EssentialFrenchCork. Here is the link : https://www.instagram.com/essentialfrenchcork/

Snapchat:

Do you know that we were one of the first businesses in Ireland to use Snapchat?  YEP!  As with Instagram, we upload useful content in a fun yet relevant way to help you learn your French.  We suggest you screenshot everything useful – and at the end of the week you can write them into your copybook and delete the screenshots and start again.  Our Snapchat account is @essentialfrench.  Here is the link :  https://www.snapchat.com/add/essentialfrench

Facebook:

Although we have a strong following – almost 17k we tend not to use FB at all as we know ye spend most of yer time on SC and Insta. That said – we were (yet again lol!!!) one of the first Irish businesses to trial FB live streamings back in May 2016.  Admittedly twas a brief affair with this feature but we saved the few FB lives we filmed on our FB account – SOME SERIOUSLY SOLID STUFF – almost 400k views on them so far.  Go to the “Video” section of our FB account, have a poke, take out the popcorn, sit back and enjoy!  Some serious nuggets of wisdom shared with ye there! We are Essential French on FB.  Here is the link : https://www.facebook.com/EssentialFrenchCork

Twitter: 

AWWWW – God bless Mr. Tweet Tweet!  Gone are the days where our tweets were retweeted hundreds of times.  Sure – how many of ye have twitter accounts that ye use daily???  Enough said!  I only have 24 hours in my day – so I prefer to spend it on SC and Insta as opposed to tweeting away to myself all by myself lol!  That said we do have almost 5k followers here.  Long lost friends me thinks! with almost 40k tweets available for ye – HEAPS OF CONTENT – why not check them out? You don’t need an account to do this. Just click the link and start writing everything down! We are @PetitTweetCork on Twitter. Here is the link : https://twitter.com/PetitTweetCork

So – mes amis – hope ye found this helpful!  See ye on SC and Insta after I make myself and the kids some spag bol.

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