Quickest Way to Dramatically Improve Your French!!

Just do these 2 simple things!!!

1. Be in France

2. Get sick enough to need a hospital stay—the longer, the better!

   

   major language learning happening!

That’s it.

Seriously though…before the arthritis debacle, I had been feeling a little bad that working on French kept getting shoved aside in favor of the million other things taking up my attention. I kept meaning to get around to it—I definitely need to spend some time with a grammar book (UGH), listen to French podcasts more regularly, and, um, stop avoiding talking to actual French people.

I should explain that somewhere in the recesses of my brain, some knowledge of French resides. Waaaay back in high school, I had excellent French teachers and was put through the oh-so-boring hoops of grammar until at one point I could actually use the subjunctive in conversation. (Well, I managed it at least once. And the French family I was eating dinner with stood and applauded. lol)

But now? Much of that knowledge feels lost to me. Or—unusable, practically speaking. I cannot access most of it in the moment when I am mid-conversation. However! In the hospital, thrust into a situation in which hardly anyone spoke English, and when I really needed to be understood—a sort of strange magic ensued. Some long-closed, dusty corners of my brain opened again, effortlessly. Fresh air swept through, and I was able to speak a level of French that had been inaccessible to me before I got sick.

Weird, isn’t it? Our brains, such mysteries! I suppose I could explain it as “necessity is the mother of invention”. I got nearly a month of almost total immersion in which I was forced not only to listen but speak, many times a day (and night). If nothing else, I am heartened that the knowledge is in there. I don’t think I was tossing around the subjunctive from my hospital bed. But—and this is huge—neither was I hesitating when trying to say something. I opened my mouth and the words were there. Perhaps not grammatically correct words, but I made myself understood, and also understood what others were saying to me, even including those with local accents.

I admit that I’ve been secretly hoping that simply living here and meeting neighbors and talking to shopkeepers and plumbers and contractors etc etc would mean that slowly my French would improve without my really trying. This has worked, but not well enough, not by a long shot. I know from experience that reading in French has helped me learn more than anything else, so it’s really time, especially with this convalescence where I have to spend way more time than usual flopped on the sofa, resting that knee, to buckle down and start turning the pages.