Learning French, like any language, is a long-term thing.
(see: Fluent in French in a year?)
As you set off, you know it’s gonna be a long ride.
A ride that can change your life.
I’m not saying it’s like having a child, but it’s getting close 🙂
Inevitably, there will be times when you’ll be:
- Frustrated
- Disappointed
- Feeling guilty (see: It’s not your fault)
- Feeling discouraged
- And angry even.
Now you see why it’s similar to having a child… 🙂
On the other hand, as you progress, inevitably, you’ll be:
- Proud
- Confident
- Feeling ‘Eureka’ moments
- Feeling like having accomplished something big
The one thing that’s different from having a child is that you aren’t responsible if it fails 🙂
(see: it’s not your fault)
The method you’ve been following could simply be the wrong one, or not suited to you. Maybe you haven’t defined your why before deciding to undertake that long-term journey.
(see: the 3 pillars of French success)
Being able to accomplish something big means you have taken baby steps along the way.
Successful students – now fluent French speakers – have something in common:
They have all taken baby steps, without even knowing most of the time.
By baby steps, I mean things like:
- Not overwhelming yourself with information
- Sorting out the irrelevant/outdated/unhelpful information
- Defining your why before anything else (or face quick demotivation)
(see: 3 pillars) - Taking the time to reward yourself at the end of a French lesson that you found difficult (congrats for trying!)
- Reward yourself after an easy French lesson too, just for making time for it in your schedule 🙂
- Being open-minded when it comes to things that you might find strange in French
- Not feeling like you need to rush through your French learning programme – you might get somewhere this way – but in the long run, you will have forgotten a lot of it.
Baby steps is all about taking it slowly and defining your method.
It’s also about ignoring unhelpful advice (and there is a lot of it around the internet, believe me!).
Baby steps means you’re going to need external help.
Baby can learn to walk alone without any parent around – but it’s just going to take a lot more time than necessary. Much more time than it would have taken with a little help from a professional (mom and dad!).
Baby steps means you’ll need to come to terms with the idea that repetition means a lot.
After all, a baby doesn’t learn a word just because you said it once. You had to say it a lot.
A lot of input (listening to words and sentences) was necessary before the baby could use output (uttering words and sentences, then properly ‘speaking’).
Popular belief has it that you need more.
You need more words, you need more ready-made sentences to use in order to talk to French speakers.
However this approach (quantity over quality), though very efficient in the short term (travelling to Paris for a week), proves incredibly detrimental to your long term efforts.
What that means for your French learning
Another approach is: quality over quantity.
Let’s use an example here:
You learned ‘table’ was table.
Making the most of this one word is much more beneficial to your long term efforts than learning every single word of things that you find in a kitchen.
Those items you will probably forget because there will be very little opportunity to use them (unless you invite French speaking friends over and have them listen to you list your kitchen items: c’est une poêle… c’est un essuie-tout… c’est un frigo… c’est une passoire…)
[here’s a frying pan, this is a kitchen towel, that’s a fridge, this is a colander…]
Example of quality over quantity:
- Using combos like
ma table = my table
cette table = this table, that table
des tables = tables
beaucoup de tables = a lot of tables
plein de tables = plenty of tables
qu’une table = just one table
(see: French word combos)
- Je n’ai + qu’une table (just one table)
For this, again, you’ll most likely need some external help.
Because it’s a time consuming process to think about which words could be useful – for example I didn’t use two tables/three tables/etc for different reasons:
– it just doesn’t sound right
– it’s hard to pronounce (“trois tables” and “quatre tables” is almost a tongue twister)
– it’s not worth the effort, your time and energy
Sorting out between the thousands (possibly millions) of word combos would take ages.
Native speakers of any language don’t need to do that, as they are blessed with the gift of knowing it just doesn’t sound right. That means they know word order without even thinking about it – just as well as breathing.
Even Google giants haven’t yet managed to render the complexity of human language.
The ways in which French words are just not to be found using Google translate.
What if instead, you could just follow the plan that someone else designed for you – most preferably a French teacher or a French tutor as opposed to any ‘native French speaker’.
What if someone else had taken care of that insanely long job?
Before starting your quality over quantity French journey, make sure you download the free ebook: The 3 pillars of French learning success!
In the book, you’ll find more tips to not let yourself get distracted and unmotivated by poor use of unhelpful French resources.
Share in the comments below if you’ve tried quality over quantity before – and getting yourself to walk these first baby steps.
You might have been scared first… And that’s perfectly normal. You feel vulnerable – at first!
Tell us what it felt like 🙂
Don’t forget: those baby steps are only the start.
Next on your journey: an incredible, life changing – French experience.
End of your journey: becoming a fluent French speaker.