Week 6: Learn a Language With Me

Combien ça coûte ?

Bonjour everyone!

Sometimes, when planning the goals for the following week, I start with the topics I’d like to explore and then search for resources related to them. For instance, I’ll think: “This week, I want to learn how to tell the time,” and then I’ll look for YouTube videos that deal with this topic.

Other times, like this week, I have no clear goal in mind, so I just let YouTube guide me; it’s important to keep the journey interesting, so I’ve just browsed the website for a while until I met something that caught my interest (it was a video about how to faire le courses in French, that is, go shopping!).

I’d say a good mix of flexibility and discipline is key if you want to learn a language on your own!

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 posting my “Goal of the week” and I tell you if and how I got there, what worked and what didn’t, 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.

Goal of the week

Last week, I learned about body parts, clothes, colors, and feelings (in case you missed it, you can find the post here). My goals for the end of this sixth week are:

• Being able to buy groceries;

• Learning vocabulary related to food and shops;

• Being able to describe my daily routine;

• Learning the basics of the past tense (passé composé).

How did I get there?

This has definitely been a tough week, language-wise, because I set ambitious goals! The mot d'ordre (keyword) of this week has been: don’t try to remember everything!

(Ok, that’s more of a whole sentence.)

Here’s what I mean. There’s no way I can hope to memorize all the names of food categories, different shops, and even understand how to build and use the past tense in only a week. So, as I’m often doing in this language learning journey, I prioritized exposure.

I watched videos (repeatedly) and used online activities (especially Wordwall games and quizzes) to get familiar with the vocabulary, without necessarily making an effort to memorize it all. My goal is to be able to recognize the words and their meaning if I meet them in a video or text, rather than being immediately able to retrieve them from memory when I try to produce language.

As always, I used AI to produce mini-dialogues in the grocery store or monologues about my daily routine, and check my mistakes. I also practiced translating my grocery list from Italian into French! Here are some useful expressions to buy groceries:

Combien ça coûte ?

Vous voulez autre chose ?

Avec ceci ?

Ça fait…

Combien en tout ?

And here are some helpful descriptions of daily actions:

Je me réveille à…

Je me lave

Je m'habille

Je prends mon petit-déjeuner

Je vais au travail

The Review Section

Along with learning new things, I’m continuing to revise past stuff. This week was honestly too chaotic to find the time to produce language to review old topics (that is, writing or practicing short dialogues), so I’ll be honest with you, I only watched a couple of videos (more than once).

When I am tired, I find I still feel like listening to or watching stuff because it’s always funny and inspiring, but sometimes I just can’t bring myself to speak or write.

This week, I revised ordering food in a restaurant; I know, it’s the same topic I revised last week, but I found a couple of videos with additional useful expressions. I’m in no hurry, so I thought, the more I review and practice, the better!

Plus, it was a nice combo with the new topic (ordering food vs buying something to eat). It’s a coincidence, but I could tell you I carefully planned it! I’m a language Mastermind!

Learning through songs:

This is a song I’ve met before starting to learn French. I’ve heard it casually on YouTube a couple of years ago and, although I couldn’t understand the lyrics, I was moved to tears. It’s a pleasure to go back to it now because with the help of subtitles and an online dictionary, I was able to translate it and appreciate it even more:

So, how did it go?

This week I’ve really struggled to find the time to learn French, and at some point I’ve also suspected I’d have to post a very honest article telling you I just didn’t make it (it happens!). I’ve recently started a new job as a teacher of Italian and English, and I have a lot of lessons to prepare.

Plus, living a ten-minute walk from the beach makes it really difficult to focus on learning at this time of the year!

The good part is, I’m enjoying learning French. Not having an exam to look forward to is unusual for me, and it’s a challenge for my motivation because I’m used to having a precise deadline or goal to look forward to.

Sometimes I wonder what I’m trying to reach; since I have no chance to practice in my daily life, when will I feel like I’m fluent enough or satisfied? How will I know? If you read my posts, it probably feels like I’m progressing fast, but it’s actually a small window of my daily life, and I’m not sure I am making much progress.

On the other hand, I’m doing my best to just enjoy the ride. Watch a nice video, practice a little, and don’t overthink it. Maybe this, too, is a useful skill to learn.

I’d love to know how your adventure with your target language is going!

See you next week! Au revoir!

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