I got a grade C GCSE French 12 years ago and hadn’t uttered a single word since then. Now I am living and working in the country (having survived an interview process in a foreign language which I am still not sure how this happened). The tough thing about learning a new language is the frustration you feel. I just want to open my mouth and have beautiful poetic prose flow out impressing everyone I am with. Instead I splutter and mime my way through conversations. I have become the queen of hand gestures to convey what I want to say. I would be hard to beat in a game of charades now. Since living here for the past few months and being thrown in the deep end my level of understanding has vastly improved even though the speaking part is still lagging behind. I feel like I want to have perfect grammatical sentences before I utter a word which is ridiculous as the only way to learn is by making mistakes.
How I want to appear when people are talking French to me…..
How I actually appear……
I still have a long way to go before I am anywhere near bilingual but these tips below have helped improve my French and may be useful to you!:
Submerge – I am soaking up new words and expressions every day from just walking down the street, to hearing the radio or reading street signs. I am learning faster than I would have if I was back in England because French is all around me. I know we can’t all up and go live in the country whose lingo we want to speak but if you can go on holiday to that place and try to just speak in their native tongue. When I was in Thailand I even managed a few phrases in Thai because my brain was open to it.
Own it – Don’t over think what you want to say. I seem to have a 10 second pause from when someone asks me a question in French to me working out what they mean and what my reply should be before I utter a single word. This pause is horrible as it’s so unnatural, I end up pulling attractive ‘don’t rush me I’m thinking’ faces, then I get hot, feel the pressure to reply faster that I end up saying something really basic or just repeat the same phrase over and over again ‘Je suis tres bien merci’.
Embrace the inner geek – You can’t learn without learning. (*That made sense in my head). You need to put in the work to train your brain to understand what starts off as gibberish before vowels, verbs and phrases are formed. This means reading, listening, writing and practice speaking as often as you can. I listen to podcasts as I walk to work, I worked through the BBC Learn French online exercises when I was having lunch, I watch French TV with subtitles and I have sat for hours translating every word in French children’s books.
Patience – You won’t just wake up one day and be able to speak fluent Italian or Spanish after just one lesson. Although apparently there is such as thing called ‘Foreign Accent Syndrome’ where people have woken up from a coma and started chattering away fluently in a foreign language. This is a slightly extreme way to go to improve your accent though. Have patience my friend. Practice, embrace your mistakes and celebrate the highs. When I understand a conversation I do a mini high-five to myself in my head and end up pulling a really goofy smile at whoever am talking to. Although the worry is with all these facial expressions and mime impressions people may just stop speaking to me full stop.
Can you speak any other languages? What helped you learn the lingo?
