The french learning process (part I)
By: Paula Dias
Tags: Language Learners, French Language, French Language Learning, Language Learning, New Language

The learning process of a new language is not the easiest one. It brings frustration and disappointment. It leads us to stop, to re-start and even to give up. In my opinion, is a reasonable decision if you are not happy if you are not seeing any returns. Sometimes we just need a pause to decide which path we want to follow.

I started learning french in late 2019. I was preparing my exchange program in France and I felt the need to be more comfortable with the language. Although at that time I could not afford private classes thus, I decided to learn french on my one.

My french knowledge was basic, rudimentary. I studied french 10 years ago, for 3 years in school but I could not remember almost anything. When I say almost anything, is the basis of the basic. I barely could do my personal presentation, the basic conversation that you know when you start learning a new language. So, what was my first move?

The first move from every beginner should be: take some time to reflect on your reasons and motivation to learn a new language.

Any reason is not more acceptable than another. The importance of this step is to make sure that you have a meaning on your mind when the process starts getting difficult.

The basic approach of self-learning is a mobile application that could help to learn the basics of the basics. I choose Duolingo.

As a user, Duoling is a great app. It has available plenty of languages and you can decide which language do you want to use to learn a new one. It is an amazing feature when you want to improve your capabilities. Although I used this option in the wrong way. I decided to learn french with English and not with my mother language, Portuguese. I chose English instead of Portuguese because I wanted to use my time to also improve my English skills but in the end, I saw that was a poor choice.

So, if you decided to start learning a language on your own have 2 things in mind:

You should use a language that you are comfortable with;

You should utilise a language that is the closest one to the new language.

For example, if you want to learn a new Latin-rooted language, use the one that you already know. The structures are the same, the grammar difficulty alike and the vocabulary is similar. Your learning process will be so much easier.

Once my mother language is also Latin-rooted I was convinced that my process would be easy. I put a lot of time on Duolingo, I used all their features and I took a lot of notes. Everything seemed to go smoothly and, one day I needed to do a french language assessment. I was convinced that would be easy and my roots would work in my favour. Non, pas de tout. On the majority of the categories, I had A1 and in 2 of them, I was not capable to reach the A1.

I was disappointed. The beginning is always the hardest one, especially when you are doing all the work on your own. After that result, the tendency to give up was there but I decided to persist. I was about to go to France and I needed to learn some french.

In late January I arrived in France. One week later I had another language assessment on the university and I put all my energy on it. I went to that room with the right spirit. I really wanted to learn french thus I put all my efforts on the assessment. In the end, I walked from that room with an A2.

After all, self-learning can produce some results. I have to admit that was not a confident A2, but the teacher saw that I was committed with the goal and that A1 would too easy and a bit boring for me.

During two months, I had group classes with 5 more students. Even inside the same level, all of them presented different capabilities and once I was a bit behind them I started feeling my energy running away. After these two months, I am not the biggest fan of group classes for the following reasons:

The biggest struggle while you are learning a new language is your capability to speak. If you feel comfortable enough to speak with another person and if you do it frequently, you will develop faster. In a group class, I felt a bit shy and I did not have enough time to speak.

I was learning French in English and my brain was putting a lot of effort to “translate” from French to English and then to Portuguese. It was a lot and I was feeling exhausted in the end on the day.

With covid-19, my French classes were canceled. After two months of group classes, I felt that I did not evolve at all. I felt that my French was almost the same that was 2 months ago even with 6 hours/week. With my return to Portugal, I gave up on French…

But I gave up for a while… On the second part, I am going to present the best part of my path and I am going to share with you all the tools that I started using. And spoiler alert: one year later I am almost an independent speaker!