Take me to Paris: An Intro to my Learning Project

Posted by

I have recently been very interested in learning to speak a second language. This interest sparked when a couple of my friends started speaking to each other in French when they wanted to share a secret or a message that they didn’t want everyone to hear. I was amazed at how fluently they spoke the language without much practice. I also find it very fascinating when people tell me they can speak multiple languages and I always think about how I can only speak 1. I just recently got home from a trip where I went on 4 airplanes and they did all the safety tutorials in both French and English, which also made me think about the fact that I only know English. I hope to be fluent in French one day so that I can add this to my resume (and so that I can go to Paris one day). I would be very proud if I was able to say that I taught myself through the use of online resources.

Of course I learned a little bit of French in Elementary School as it was mandatory for us to take this course throughout grade 1-8. I also took one French course in grade 9 as well but since then (2014), I haven’t kept up with it. I know some of the colours, some of the letters and numbers, and some short phrases (as pictured below) but thats it. I would say I am at an elementary school student level of speaking french right now.

I hope to be able to speak some longer and more uncommon sentences that stray from the mainstream language that I already know by the end of this course. I also hope to be able to have some fluent conversations in French as well. I would say this would be at least at the level of a grade 12 student or a university french student. I plan to use Duolingo, YouTube videos, podcasts and the help of my French speaking friends to accomplish this.