I stumbled upon this video on YouTube and it was an eye opener.

First of all, I thought to myself that I can easily do this now that there is time in my day. Devoting 8 hours a day to language learning is achievable especially if you don’t work, have no family commitments and want to devote a set time period to the challenge.

I like how he’s split his day up to more speaking and then his exercises to improve this aspect. Admittedly this is the hardest one for me as I don’t feel that two hours a week of speaking is enough. In fact, it’s less as it’s conversation and listening. I’d say I’d be conversing only about an hour in total of that time.

This means I need to think of other ways to increase this and it means finding others to speak with (who can provide you feedback). In fact, feedback for me is the most critical aspect of langage learning. Without it, you can speak all you like but if you’re speaking gobbledygook then you’re not speaking – or learning – the language well.

In a few years, the plan is to also learn German as this is a language both my husband and I would like to learn through an immersion course in country. Maybe this is a way to do it? Maybe I should just do it on my own in secret? 🤔

All in all, some good ideas in this video but what is missing is feedback and then the continual daily practice to ensure you keep your language skills up to date. For me now, my big question is whether I give up the U3A course in French every Tuesday because of the lack of speaking in the class. I like the dictation and orthography as well as pronunciation but I want to be speaking a lot more.

Oh well, on verra!