Maybe you’ve been feeling pretty good about your French lately, you’ve made progress, your confidence has gone up, when, all of a sudden, you find yourself in a language situation with a francophone and you make a complete mess of it.
You don’t understand what they’re talking about, you don’t know how to answer, and you start to get a little (or very) flustered.
It’s going to happen, and it’s normal. When it does happen, you may find yourself thinking, “I’ve been at this for how long and I still can’t make my way through a conversation without getting lost? My French stinks!”
You may even find yourself wanting to pull away from French, thinking that you’re too hopeless to continue.
On the contrary — instead of beating yourself up over these moments, give yourself a pat on the back. Your boundaries in French have just been stretched, and that’s a very good thing.
If you find yourself in a language situation that’s left you perplexed, you can be certain that you’re charting new territory in French.
Why beat yourself up when you could be viewing that as the ideal moment to learn something new? To make an unfamiliar language situation more familiar to you and keep advancing in French?
