WRITTEN TRANSCRIPTION OF THE PODCAST:

Hello and welcome to my podcast My Life and Other Funny Stories. My name is Dagmar Tomášková, I am an English tutor and coach and I created this podcast for English students who want to get better in their oral comprehension. As always you can find the transcription of this episode and vocabulary list in the notes of the podcast. 

Today I have for you the second part of my French journey and it will be connected to the reality of learning during the whole year. Because it, for sure, didn’t go as planned.

Anyway, if you want to make progress and build your own plan, go look into the transcription – at the end of it, you will find sources that will help you start your own English learning. 

Let’s go back to the areas I talked about last time – grammar, writing, speaking and pronunciation and reading. I had my plan but with time I found out it was quite limited and not very diverse and I really needed to step up my game.

When it comes to grammar, going only off of my list of grammar areas, finding the sources on the internet and practicing them through online exercises was not the way to go for me since I had no real structure. I didn’t know what to do first and which sources were good. After a few months, I found myself not practicing grammar at all. This has always been my weak spot, I just don’t like learning grammar, like many of you. And I understand you. 

But my constant mistakes in speaking and writing were pissing me off. When something pisses you off, it means that it makes you angry. And I was also angry with myself that I didn’t do anything about it. I also knew, that my foundations of grammar were very shaky and they needed some revision. 

In the end, I decided to buy a grammar workbook where the rules are explained and there are plenty of exercises to practice with additional exercises online. That sounded perfect. I started doing that. But it is still grammar – soo boring for me to drill and drill. So to be completely honest with you, I haven’t been practicing as much as I should and that is also why I haven’t been progressing as much in this area. 

I 100% understand my students when they say they don’t like grammar and it is boring. Because usually, the rules are just not fun. But the truth is, you have to learn them somehow. Because what I also know is that without it, it is very hard to progress in speaking and writing. You can have a great vocabulary but if you don’t know how to form the sentence and put it in correct tenses,  it won’t make much sense.

Speaking of writing, my essay writing didn’t go very far. It just isn’t very motivating when you know that no one will read it. I did it a few times and I come back to it here and there but to be honest, it was not the best way to go about it. “To go about something” means to start doing something or to deal with something. 

Sometimes I wrote my diary in French, which was quite relaxing and I learned a new vocabulary so that was some activity that I recommend.

The problem of not having anyone on the receiving side goes also for speaking. Talking with your native friends is great but if they are not teachers, they won’t explain to you the grammar – would you be able to explain all the grammar rules in Czech? Because I wouldn’t.

So even though I could speak with him, it wasn’t very good because my French limited the things I was able to say and I was repeating the same vocabulary with the same mistakes and no corrections. That wasn’t helping me much. Of course, it gave me some practice but in general, I wasn’t progressing. 

So as I said in my last episode, I found a French tutor Eliška. She is a Czech girl, the same age as me, and her French and pronunciation are, of course, amazing. I bumped into her on Instagram and after a few weeks, I decided to ask her whether she had a place for me. And she did. Therefore, I started working with her. It was great, I think I made a huuge progress in pronunciation as she taught me some tricks, she corrected my mistakes and always gave me all the vocabulary I didn’t know. 

I could also always write sentences with the new vocabulary during the week and she would check them and give me feedback. Overall, I think that thanks to that, I actually made some progress when it comes to speaking, writing, and pronunciation. 

I had my last lesson two weeks ago as she is expecting a baby and needs, of course, some time off work. But in general, I think we really got on with each other well and we even came up with a project we could work on together this year. That makes me super excited because it would be a dream coming true for me. By the way, I have just used some phrasal verbs so let me explain- when you get on with someone, it means that you have a good relationship and you understand each other. And when you come up with something, it means that you think of a new idea.

When it comes to reading, after some time I got bored of the Easy French stories and I moved to Harry Potter as I said in the last episode as well. Did you know that the magic wand (hůlka) in French is baguette magique? I love it so much.

Additionally, I followed some comic creators on Instagram so when I didn’t feel like reading pages and pages of text, I read some comics.

Also, I signed up for different newsletters of online French tutors and teachers so every day, I get some emails that I can read. 

Furthermore, switched my phone to French so even though that is not really a reading practice, it helps me to remember vocabulary and phrases in written form which is extremely helpful.

Last but not least, my comprehension improved the most out of all the areas, I would say. I am now able to listen to native French videos and be able to understand them quite well. I don’t understand only if they speak exceptionally fast (which is not so uncommon for French people) or if they use a lot of informal French. Overall, I discovered many more podcasts that I could listen to and also trained my comprehension on YouTube when I was bored of the spotify episodes. I found some youtubers that are quite interesting and when I see a new video, I genuinely want to see it for the content, not only for the fact that it is a French practice.

The bottom line is that I improved significantly my comprehension, reading, speaking and enhanced my vocabulary. Enhanced means to improve. Grammar and writing, on the other hand, are still areas that need a lot of, and by that, I mean A LOT OF work. 

During the whole year, I had weeks in which I loved French. It was so enjoyable, so fun and overall just amazing. But, I also had weeks in which I despised French. To despise something means to hate it. I didn’t have the energy, I didn’t enjoy learning and I didn’t want to do it. But I used an application called todoist, where I could choose a setting that my “french practice for 20 minutes” would come up every day. That means that every day, my todo list shows me that I have to practice French. And that always reminds me of my promise to do it. 

Generally, there were a lot of weeks that were easy and I practiced every day for 30, 40 minutes, sometimes even more than an hour. But there were also weeks where I barely managed to get to 20 minutes five times a week.

And that is the reality. It is not easy and even if you create a fun plan, it is not always fun. But as I said many times, consistency is key. You have to learn to be uncomfortable, you have to learn to be disciplined and just persevere even when you don’t feel like doing anything. If I can do it, you can do it too.

If you want to build your individual plan, look into the transcription where you an find a lot of sources from which you can get plenty of information.

And if you need someone to help you, to guide you and hold you accountable, I have one last place for my neuro-language coaching where I can do this all for you.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode and don’t forget that you can find the transcription and vocabulary list in the notes. Please give it a five-star rating if you liked it and I will see you next time, bye-bye.