Melissa
Stepping out of my comfort zones... Less than 2 weeks ago I decided to learn French. I took Spanish in high school and always had a vague desire to speak many languages. I say a vague desire, because apart from high school Spanish and picking up a phrase or two from other languages here and there, I've never made any effort to truly speak another language. When I found Benny Lewis's website, Fluent in 3 Months, it really gave me the push I needed to take that first step. I am using DuoLingo and Memrise apps for most of my learning, and also searching for sources online. Pinterest has been a great place to store links that I can use now or that are more advanced and I know will come in handy in the future. I was surprised to see how much French has in common with Spanish. It's been a big help, and I can recognize a lot of French words and tell what they mean because of that connection. Unfortunately, I don't "know" the words, so I wouldn't be able to toss them out in conversation yet, but give me time! The hardest part for me won't be learning to read and write French, but to be able to actual speak it. Right now my pronunciation is horrible, and I stumble over trying to sound out French words. With the way so many words have silent letters (conjugated verbs that are spelled differently but all sound the same!), I'm not doing very well teaching myself how to pronounce anything. I hope this gets easier soon. Learning a new language takes me out of my comfort zone a bit already. But what REALLY feels awkward/embarrassing is speaking in front of stranger, even if it is just in a YouTube video. I only have two videos on my YouTube channel, Melissa Learns French, so far, but I hope to keep posting new ones. The first one was the worst to make. I'd never made a video of myself before, much less posted it online! I felt more comfortable with the next one. And then yesterday I joined italki and set up a Skype account! I haven't used Skype yet. I'll have to get used to it with family and friends before I can use it with "strangers" for language exchange. :) But I definitely want to do that soon, because I know it will be the most helpful for learning to speak French! Je vais parler français! :)
Aug 30, 2015 1:36 AM
Corrections · 1
Spanish and french come from Latin
August 30, 2015
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