Let's Do This!
Elle
6th Jan 16 9:07 am
French and I have a history, and not a good one. Learning French was mandatory from age 11-14 at my high school in Wales, U.K. I had been looking forward to learning the language for years, but then I met my teacher and that excitement vanished. She was cold, stern and didn’t seem to like children very much (why do these people become teachers?). We worked out of the most mind-numbingly dull textbook and speaking was kept to a minimum. I quickly lost interest and began to despise the teacher and in turn the language.
When it came time to choose a language to take on to the high school exam level, my parents were informed that I would not be welcome in French class due to run-ins I had had with the department (I was a bit of a monster as a teenager). Add that to the age-old hatred the U.K. and France have for one another and my claim at 14 that learning French was a “complete waste of my time and energy” seemed perfectly valid at the time.
Fast Forward 15 years and I am the butt of a cosmic joke: I live in Canada, where French is one of the official languages, I’m married to a French Canadian and I have a French last name. It’s lonely being the only one who can’t join in when my husband’s family get together and speak French (plus it makes me feel like a big idiot), and so I intend on doing something about it in 2016.
I am about to start a 90-Day-Challenge, my first ever. I hope that, as a new member to the LingQ team, it will connect me with members and help me see ways we can help make the challenges more helpful and engaging. Also, I don’t want to write only about boring old me in my updates, I want YOU to be a part of them, too. If you’re interested in being featured in the 90-Day Challenge blog posts, message me on my LingQ profile. Let me know what language you will be working on, your current level and why you chose that language.
I hope many of you will join me – high five if you already have – and make a promise to yourself this new year: I will improve my language skills, workout my brain and prove to my inlaws that I am not a dunce. Maybe that last one only works for a few of us.
Join me and sign up for the January 90-Day-Challenge here. Let’s do this!