Hello!
My name is Tam, I'm a French native speaker and I speak five languages.
I've been teaching French for quite a while now and I've always wondered what made people learn faster than others.
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And I've come to realize one thing...
The important question to ask yourself is: why are you learning French?
Of course, you can find external reasons to learn French, such as "I need to speak in French for work".
But, something that is apparently rational and that makes sense doesn't really motivate you deeply.
What I've found was that the fastest students to learn French were the ones who actually enjoyed the learning process.
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So the important question becomes : how are you learning French?
This is why, in my opinion, school is failing at teaching languages: because they teach it in a way that doesn't really captivate you. For my part, I've known "efficient" teachers who would teach you grammar at school. But after 10 years in France learning English at school, I'd still struggle with speaking fluently for five little minutes.
And the moment I've really seen progress speaking another language was when I really felt engaged with somebody -even if this person was not teaching about specific grammar rules. You know...those moments when you have that conversation that you feel so passionate about - you even forget where you are...!
I remember being with my American cousin and we had a conversation about Twilight (it was years ago haha...) I just remembered everything she said and how she said it. I had a connection with this person - I really wanted to know what she was saying and I really wanted to interact with her!
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I really believe that if you find the teacher or the material (online or offline) that you can connect with, the learning process will be completely different!
So, I simply suggest you to try to find someone on Italki you feel comfortable with, who can of course teach you about grammar, pronunciation, tenses, and everything - but most important, who you can really connect with :) Try out different teachers and feel in your body if you feel the vibe ;)
Keep me posted about your results,
Feel free to comment and answer my question : why do you think some people learn faster a language than others?
Bonne chance & à bientôt !
Tam
Hello everyone!
I have learned 5 languages so far. I'm French and I speak English, German, Spanish and Vietnamese.
I'd like to ask a question to anyone learning French.
As a teacher I'd like to know what you think to be the most difficult about learning French.
Some students have told me that the most difficult thing about learning French would be the pronunciation for them. I have some classic solutions for you! You can watch movies and listen to some songs and of course repeat everything you hear.
But there is a trick that actually makes you improve much faster!
When I tried to improve my English pronunciation, I would first repeat everything that I would listen in English (coming from native speakers, of course!). And...I would also record myself!
The first recordings were so embarrassing... ^^
But little by little, I improved so much faster because I'd be aware of my accent or -more generally- of the way I would speak :)
What were your biggest challenges and what did you do to keep progressing and overcome them?
