External Links

There is an enormous amount of useful material on the Web for anyone trying to understand a text in French. However, some sites are much better than others.  Let's begin with the fun stuff, then go on to more serious matters.
 

Fun sites to explore

To send a French greetings card:http://cybercartes.com/
To read your horoscope in French: http://fr.lifestyle.yahoo.com/astro/
To meet your soulmate: http://www.amoureux.com/
More to come, suggestions welcome

Altavista Translation

The Altavista translation service, purports to provide translations into English from several major languages, including French (or from English into those languages). A link to this is provided on the side menu. The service is improving, and is sometimes useful for technical terms, but is still unreliable. 
 
Try the Altavista translation service now. Mark the following French sentences one by one with your cursor, and then choose Copy from the Edit menu. Then go to the Altavista site by clicking Translation on the side menu and paste the sentence you have copied into the white box on that site (Edit > Paste). See how good the translations are compared to the ones suggested here by a real person:. Internet bouge sans cesse.  (The Internet is always on the move/always moving.) 

Ses enfants sont une lourde charge. (Her/His children are a heavy burden.) 

Le principe est simple, mais il fallait y penser. Sur un écran à cristaux liquides de la taille d'un porte-clés, un oeuf de « tamagotchi » éclot. (The principle is simple, but what a great idea! On a liquid crystal screen the size of a key-ring, a "tamagotchi" egg hatches.) 

Qu'il s'agisse d'accéder au plus grand serveur de logiciels sharewares ou freewares, de préparer un exposé sur la Bretagne, ou de vous documenter sur l'histoire de la France, soyez sûr de trouver ici la bonne adresse Internet. 

(Whether it's a question of getting access to the largest shareware or freeware server, preparing a paper on Brittany, or finding documentation about the history of France, you can be sure to find the right Internet address here.) 

(For more on this use of Qu'il s'agisse, check out this page from later in the course.) 

Now reflect on the problems the translation service has. What is it useful for? Were there any really serious mistakes? Were the translations understandable? Was it sensitive to the his/her possibility for son? Would this be a useful resource for you? 

The Universal French Dictionary
Again, a link is provided on the side menu. This is the best dictionary I have found on the Web for French. It is good for both French French and Quebec French, as well as much African and Caribbean French. 
    Click Dictionary on the Side Menu. Try looking up poutine, or tergiverser. 
As you know from the page about reading strategies, it's not a good idea to look up every word you don't understand in a text. In some cases, however, a dictionary is invaluable, and this one is quick and reliable.
Using a Search Engine to find a Word
If you are having trouble with a word or phrase, perhaps an idiom which is difficult to find in your dictionary, an excellent way to find out what it means is to enter it as a search term in a search engine. Google is one of the best for this because it allows you to choose the language to search in. The search engine will then bring up a list of pages where the term is used, and by looking at two or three and comparing them, you can often work out the meaning. 
    Try looking up something now. Go to Google, choose Advanced Search, choose French as the language, and type in a phrase such as "faire des folies", or "ce n'est pas la mer à boire", using the speech marks (inverted commas) to make sure you find only cases where the words are used together. 
French Lessons and Grammar
There are a large number of courses on the web, like this one, which can be useful in improving your French. There are also sites with verb conjugators, grammars, and all sorts of other help. The very large majority of them are designed to teach you how to produce French, not how to understand written French, but they can still be useful. 

Be very careful when using these sites, however. Many of them are put together by well-meaning "amateurs", and they may contain errors or misleading information. As with all web sites, check to see who produced the page, and seek out reliable institutions and publishers. 

Here are some sites and meta-sites I have found well designed and helpful, and relatively error-free.
 

About.com: French Reading Comprehension
Repsit: Dictionaries

Repsit: Langue

Verb Conjugator

Another Verb Conjugator
 

Top of Page