5 Things I did that held me back while learning French

Before moving to France was even on my radar, I took classes at the Alliance Française one day a week for fun. Then, after I was accepted to TAPIF, moving to France had become a reality. My level of French at the time was B1 on paper and I felt like I had a good intermediate foundation under my belt.

But once I arrived in France, I realized my language comprehension was pitiful. When I was actually face to face with a French person and conversing in real-life French, I had one heck of a time making it through a conversation and catching barely half of what was being said. It certainly was not the same as a comfortable classroom environment.

I learned right away that there were a bunch of things I could have done before my move and in the years following that would have better prepared me and helped me to excel in French more quickly. Let’s get into five things that I did while learning French that held me back. Maybe you can learn from my mistakes.

First, let me kick this off by saying I will always be learning French. It’s an ongoing process and there’s always more to learn. That said, here are things I did in the early days that held me back.

Not focusing on comprehension and actual conversation. Once I knew I was moving to France, I should have prioritized comprehension and speaking because talking to French people is what I’d be doing a lot of once there. Instead, in French classes, listening comprehension and conversation practice were just two parts of our curriculum, not the focus.

When in France, people had no trouble understanding me but for the life of me, understanding people’s replies in quick-fire French was majorly anxiety inducing. I’d be afraid to talk to people because I’d feel so dumb not quite understanding what they were saying back to me. More on that below.

At the time, my written French was stronger than my spoken French and I should have worked to have made the opposite true. It took me a solid two-ish years I’d say to get up to speed in that department. P.S. I wrote an entire blog post dedicated to making comprehension your focus, so check it out for a deeper dive on this particular point.

Getting lost in the minutiae. When you’re actually in France and speaking to someone, no one is going to care if you get the article of a word wrong, flub your grammar, or slightly mispronounce a word. 

The important thing is that you’re able to be understood and can understand others. No one will care if you can conjugate 100 verbs and pronounce everything really well if your actual speaking skills pale in comparison!

I wish I had remembered that back in the day! I’d get so caught up on a particular grammar rule or aspect of pronunciation and go down the rabbit hole with it. I remember going over the pronunciation of chiant versus chien way too many times.

None of that is important if you can’t actually speak to other people (unless your interest in French is more academic and not a practical one). My time could have been spent doing more useful things that would serve me better in the future.

Being afraid of making mistakes.

As a language learner, you will make mistakes. That’s a fact. It’s cute in a classroom setting and when you’re 15 years old. But as a functional adult in other areas of your life, it can be a major ego hit when you’re nearly 30 and embarrassing yourself daily.

At various points throughout my first few years in France, I’d become so concerned with making mistakes that I wouldn’t even want to try sometimes. I’d barely open my mouth which led to people assuming I was shy or that I had nothing to say. When you keep messing up, it’s easy to retreat. Some days I hated French and viewed it as the enemy.

But all this does is hinder your progress. Making mistakes is part of the process, so no matter your age, stand proud. Here’s how to be more confident speaking French.

Losing motivation.

Once I got to a certain point and plateaued, I lost motivation to dig deeper and continue to improve. I was able to do everything I needed to do in everyday life and “good enough.”

Contrary to popular belief, simply living in France will not lead you speak French perfectly. There’s a lot of effort involved and if you want to work on your grammar and all the little nuances, it doesn’t just magically happen.

I’d find myself going through the same routine and having the same conversations about the same things with the same people (weather, our dogs at the park, etc.) and that’s not a recipe for improvement. To actually push past the plateau, some serious effort is involved.

In particularly stressful times, studying French was the last thing I had mental space for. But you can get your motivation back and I wrote all about that here.

Speaking English at home with Tom.

Tom’s level of English will always be better than my level of French and because of that, early on in our relationship we got in the habit of speaking to each other in English most of the time.

As his level of English continued to improve, my level of French stayed the same and I didn’t force myself to work on it as much as I should have. If I had been more strict with myself — and patient — and forced us to stay in “French mode” in the early days, I’m sure I wouldn’t be kicking myself now.

The good thing is it’s never too late to change one’s habits. We’ve made an effort to speak more French. But it takes patience on both ends. If your goal is to improve your language skills, don’t fall into the easy habit of speaking the more dominant language! Your habits early on will set the pace for future communication and they’re not so easy to change.

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Now with that part of the post out of the way, there are a bunch of things I did right. Two stand out. The first is that when I first arrived, I put myself out there and socialized. I joined the gym, set up meetups with other people in my area via meetup groups, and even went to a Mormon church (I’m not religious) in an attempt to meet others and speak French.

The other thing which is so important and that you’ll want to continue doing is to expose yourself to French daily even if you work in English and speak English at home. Do things like listen to podcasts or a TV or radio program as much as possible. You’ll surprise yourself with how much you pick up.

Finally, if you enjoy my take on French language learning, check out this big old roundup post of all my French language content.

Hang in there… you’re doing great!

Thanks for reading!

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