Bonjour everyone!
Week 17! This means I’ve been learning French for four months now. Oh la la!
At the turn of every month, I’ve felt the need to change something in my learning routine or in the way I’m sharing my progress with you, and this month is no exception.
Hope all these turns won’t make your head spin! I’ve learned that the best journeys rarely follow a linear, straightforward path.
In case you missed it: My goal is to learn French alone from home, using only free online resources, and document the whole journey on Substack.
Every Wednesday, I’m sharing my progress with you, telling you what I’ve learned this week, how I did it, and how it felt.
Feel free to follow my steps if you’re interested in learning French, or to adapt my suggestions to any language learning endeavor you’re currently carrying out!
Let me know in the comments below what your target language is and how you’re progressing! Let’s make this a shared space for language enthusiasts and wannabe polyglots.
Temps de changer de direction
So, what did this fourth month teach me, except for some useful expressions? Here are the main insights I’ve gathered during the last weeks:
Reading articles on different themes has been extremely enriching. I’ve learned new words, but besides that, reading a longer text is really helpful to get a sense of the language for me. It’s probably the most immersive activity I can think of.
Writing short text is far more valuable than I thought. During the first three months of this experience, I shied away from language production a little. I don’t have much time, and I know how frustrating the initial stages of production can be, so I had good reasons to take it easy. Now, on the other hand, I feel ready to tackle the world!
So, what do I make of these observations? Well, of course, I decide…
C’est quoi la suite ?
I want to write more and read more. I’ve been reflecting upon this a lot, because my original slogan was that of learning French from home using exclusively free online resources, but the truth is…now feels like a good time to stray from this rule, and buy books.
I could try to find free ebooks online, but I wouldn't have many options to choose from, and I couldn’t select different authors and novels based on how linguistically complex they are. So, I’m officially declaring my challenge closed and opening a new chapter!
As to writing, well, starting next week, you won’t have a single weekly post on my progress, long and full of resources and various sections, but rather two weekly shorter posts written directly in French. Sort of what I’m already doing in German in my little side project.
When this idea came to me, I immediately had doubts about two main aspects:
Should I also translate my posts into English?
What am I going to talk about?
I thought about it for a while, and then I decided that yes, I’ll translate my posts into English so that they are accessible to all readers, and that I’ll just write about…myself. I’ll ask ChatGPT for three weekly questions about my life and experiences, and try to answer in French. It might not be extremely interesting, but the topic should be general and broad enough to give me the opportunity to practice a lot of language, without spending too much time reflecting on content.
I’ll also have AI correct my posts before publishing them so that you don’t have to read a text full of errors, but if some remain, I’d love you to point them out to me so I can improve!
For my paid subscribers, I’ll still post a weekly video of me speaking French! Pronunciation is probably the last language feature I am going to be able to improve, so please bear with me for a while longer.
Un dilemme moral
Whenever I decide to change something in my Substack, I think about how this will affect the readers. Maybe some of you subscribed to read weekly stories about languages, and now you have your feed invaded by three weekly posts in French. Maybe some of you liked the previous format and aren’t enthusiastic about my constant changes of direction.
Well, that troubles me a bit, but in the end, I have to admit I think of Substack as a sort of laboratory of words rather than a blog or a platform to showcase my writing skills. It’s like a journal where I update you on what I’m doing and how I’m progressing, a place where I can experiment, try things out, mess around and find out.
Since my head is an ever-changing kaleidoscope of ideas and projects, my Substack inevitably reflects this. This doesn’t mean I don’t care about the quality of my work, but if there’s a place where I should be authentic, it’s definitely this one. I hope you’ll find it cool, too.
What do you think?
I’d love to know how your adventure with your target language is going!
See you next week! Au revoir!
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Je pense que c'est une très bonne idée, Federica. Pourquoi ne pas l'essayer?