There are many simple-minded ways to bone up on your French without private tutoring or fancy classes before you depart. 1.Rent or borrow French films. Play them over and over so you can practically act out the dialogue if need be. You'll absorb a lot. 2.Set your rented English-speaking films to dubbed in French with Eng subtitles. Or as Jill suggest, set the titles to French, the better to hear/see the expressions-her way to to soak up French effortlessly. 3.There are loads of online French radio stations you can listen to. I like On Va Deguster/France Inter, because they talk about food (what else is worth talking about after all?). Very casual and conversational - you'll experience the way real people speak. A once-a-week podcast you can listen to on your iPod - I'm listening right now. 4.This little book called out to me yesterday in Rizzoli's
Ridiculously simple-minded and yet I was surprised how helpful French Slanguage is. Who knew? 5. Read French kid's books. You can not go wrong with Babar - a French classic of the first order. What I wouldn't give to be able to write this French cursive...drool...drool.
6. Become a fan of French 'BDs' - une Bande dessinée/comic books. Many are sophisticated, witty and for adults. I also like the learning-to-read series for kids. You can subscribe to J'AIME LIRE. Sometimes you'll find them in the foreign section of better magazine shops in the US. You'll always find kid's BDs at the Relay in Paris. Best go into a relay in a train station like Gare Montparnasse. For some unknown reason you're allowed to read to your hearts content without buying a thing. At non-train station kiosks/newstands you're lucky if they let you pick it up to purchase. C'est la vie.
8.In your hotel room or appart I suggest avoiding the TV - too consuming a distraction IMHO.
9. Listen to the radio non-stop is perfect from the moment you wake up till shut-eye. It will do you a world of good- immersion in French of the best kind. I'm partial to France Bleu and NRJ - my guilty pleasure is trashy French pop. Still you pick up a lot having it drone in the background. And your accent, which let's face it, is EVERYTHING in France will improve. Grammaire (and spelling) you can wreck as long as you sound good in France. 10.Hang out in Kid's bookstores - another kind of immersion. La Sardine A Lire 4,rue Colette 75017 Books are superbly designed and simply written for 3-5 year olds. L'Enfant Lyre 17,rue Saint Sebastien 75011
Just my level of French advancement.
11.Hang around parks, pretend to read, keeping your ears open to what the kiddies are yelling.
You'll pick up, "J'arrive"(I'm coming) and other useful short sentences.
I'll never forget hearing a mom say to her kiddie on rue Dauphine,
"Qu'est que tu fait comme ca, toi?"
(What do you think you're doing, you?)
Meaning basically STOP THAT!
Expressions overheard have a way of sticking in your head more than lessons learned off a page.
12. For more advanced and au courant lecons turn to illustrator Soledad Bravi's books. Here she writes about frustrations of the Paris sales/soldes. Soledad is hilarious on the struggles to get thin, avoid French pastries, squeeze into her bathing suit - struggles we all relate to. Well there you pretty much have what you need to pick up enough French to more than get by. In fact you'll sound au courant yourself if you can manage these little techniques.
Every trip to Paris I stop into Anne Maisonneuve for another macaron T-shirt on 112 boulevard Raspail 75006. They're quite the conversation-stopper. Even Chef Marthe asked me where I'd gotten mine and she lives just 2 Metro stops away. I got the scarf(14 euros), necklace(19 euros) and T-shirt(30 euros) there. I only buy black. I'm a New Yorker. 13.This outfit broke down a lot Parisian language barriers. How bad can you be when you're wearing Paris macarons? If I only understood what Parisians were saying to me... 
