#OneHourAugust Day 1

The first thing on my list of things to spend time learning about was speaking French.

I’ve studied French in the past. In fact, I graduated a French high school where every single subject was taught in French. And let me tell you this, chemistry and physics are complicated enough in your mother tongue, so you can imagine what studying them in a foreign language like.

This being said, I haven’t spoken a word of French in almost 8 years so I felt like I was losing skills. I thought that not practising the language was a waste. A waste of a skill but also a waste of the 5 years I spend learning the language. So understandably, this was right at the top of my list of things to look at.

I knew I was rusty but didn’t know for sure how bad my language amnesia was. I opened Duolingo and to my pleasant surprise, I wasn’t all that bad!

As it turns out, while language requires constantly practising it to maintain and improve proficiency, a surprising amount gets retained in the memory even if we do no work at all. I spend the one hour whizzing through the basics until I hit a place where I knew I was struggling. I remember simple phrases such as how to introduce myself, ask for directions etc. but when it came to having a simple conversation… I felt lost. And that’s okay.

Key learnings:

• It felt a bit nostalgic (trying to) speak the language, figuring out pronunciation and how things are spelled.
• I found out that an hour is a plenty of time to assess where I was at. How much I remembered and how much more jogging my memory was needed to get back to the level of proficiency I once was. The answer, a lot!
• Duolingo is an awesome app but it has its limitations. It’s pretty good for exercising you reading and listening skills but it doesn’t really offer much in the speaking and writing departments.

Watch this space for #OneHourAugust Day 2