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I too live in France, and have done for many years. As far as maintaining
my English, I'm lucky that my wife is also a native English-speaker, so we
speak English at home. I agree with others who have posted that the way to
keep your English "normal" is to continually read, write, and speak in
English. Do you have many English-speaking friends? If not you might want
to go out and get some, either on the web or in person (FUSAC is a good
magazine to check out for English-language conversation groups). My own
methods include (in no particular order):
- actively participating in American-dominated message boards
- reading magazines and newspapers in English
- writing and editing in English, translating to English (my French
friends know I'll always make the effort to translate things for them)
*and having other English-speakers review the work whenever possible*
- making an effort in conversation to monitor my language for franglais
and ruthlessly rejecting it when it pops up--when you hear yourself saying
"that's n'importe quoi, what you're saying!" STOP and repeat "what you're
saying is just ridiculous!"; when you say "take the corréspondance to
ligne quatre and when you're at the terminus, take the sortie at the tête
de train," STOP and repeat "change to line four, get out at the end of the
line and go out the exit nearest the front of the train," etc. etc.
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