Learning French in 9 Months: What I Achieved

Hey, salut. I guess I should say this in French. Try and say this intro in French. Salut, je m'appelle Jordan. Jordan, do you say your name in French if you're from America? Or, like, is that pretentious? Aujourd'hui, je fais une vidéo sur langue avec un appareil photo. Hey, my name is Jordan, and I'm gonna make a video about language or language learning. I've been learning French for, I think, nine months, and I've been doing it in kind of an unconventional way. I have a baby now. He's sleeping back here. I promise I'll make a video about him soon. Very excited that he is here. But with our baby, I was like, I want to learn a language the way that he would learn English. It's not by memorizing grammar or, you know, reading a grammar book and memorizing the verb tenses. That's not what they do. They're just immersed in the language, and they pick up on the puzzle pieces and put them all together. They first scatter all the puzzle pieces on the table, and then they slowly piece them together as things, you know, come together and make more sense. So I was really, really dedicated to learn a language that way. So rule one was literally memorize nothing. Like, just listen to things and have it permeate my mind, and then it just kind of all comes together. Now, I started with literally zero experience with French. Like, I didn't even know what it sounded like. I didn't know what a French accent was when I would read a French sentence. It was all French to me. Just a horrible joke. I actually wrote that one. I'll link to my last video about my three-month mark in language learning and kind of what I was doing at that point. Now, I'm kind of talking about the nine-month mark. What is it that I have changed to get even better with French and really put those puzzle pieces together? Some stuff has changed. I've kind of mutated a little bit into the memorization or, like, the looking up of words as my curiosity guides me through that. I have found that it doesn't really help me to just memorize stuff that I don't actually care about. Like, what is the conjugation of aller or être? That's not interesting, unless you're reading something in context, and it's like, oh, your general, like, curiosity sparks, and it's like, oh, what's that verb? So the big change that I am doing from three months in to nine months in is that I have pretty much stopped doing Rosetta Stone. And that's not that I don't like Rosetta Stone. I absolutely love Rosetta Stone. But I've found that I've gone through so many of the lessons that I'm kind of outpacing. My curiosity is going in a different direction than what Rosetta Stone is promoting. So I just kind of naturally stopped doing that. Started doing stuff that was a little bit more difficult and with other apps that I found harder and kind of pushed my limits in different aspects, such as listening, because I realized that listening was very hard for me. So I started using an app called Clothesmaster, and I found this very, very helpful. This is a hard app, okay? This is not for the faint of heart. I would really, truly, only seriously get into using Clothesmaster. If you've learned a language for a while, and you're kind of wanting to not just get your toes wet, you really want to go all in with not fun, hard aspects of language learning, which is writing and listening. There's a cool section on Clothesmaster where it literally gives you a sentence that you just listen to. There's no words. And then you have to, like, Wheel of Fortune style. It's got, like, word, word, word, word. And then you have to type in the letters. It's incredibly difficult at the start, but that is one of the best training methods to be able to start to listen to French YouTube channels. One app that I really wish that I had early on in my language learning journey is an app called Unacademy. They're today's sponsor, and for me, Unacademy's unique approach to language learning hits that sweet spot where serious learning and fun meet. They first give you a really valuable learning slide where a concept is explained. And then in the next slide, it applies what you learned in that slide to test your knowledge and also to reinforce what you've learned. And that's extremely valuable for somebody like me. The learning slides are the key innovation that I love about this app. They also keep track of your streak, and they create leagues where you can move up the ranks. It's a very fun gamification, if you will, of language learning. They make it like a game. Gamification is proven to be very helpful in keeping a habit going, especially with language learning, which can be very difficult. It helps you be consistent and dedicated. Unacademy's app mindfully picks the gamification constructs and removes everything non-essential. Unacademy's pricing is really user-friendly as well. When compared to other players out there, their quality of content and the product experience deliver far greater value for your money, especially when the subscription is priced at a much more affordable price. Right now, they offer Spanish and French, and they're planning to add German as well as a few more global languages in the coming months. The great part is that there's a free version of Unacademy that you can just click the link in the description right now and check it out. You're absolutely going to love it. But if you want unlimited daily practice as well as some really awesome features that you're not going to want to miss out on, Unacademy's pricing is super affordable. Click the link in the description or search Unacademy in the app store. You're going to love it. So another thing that has been super helpful is finding French YouTubers. And because I've been practicing my French listening skills, I can actually listen to French YouTubers now, and it's actually beneficial. It's not just gibberish, which is extremely rewarding. This has been an absolute game-changer because my strategy of the immersion, immersive experience, is now in full swing, that I can actually listen and understand these people. One channel, for some reason in particular, that's really good for me is Piece of French. I don't know what it is about her videos that are so good. Maybe it's just that she talks slower or something or she talks about very general things. I'm not—I can't really put my finger on it, but she has the French subtitles in her videos. I don't think that she has the English subtitles. But, yeah, check out her channel, Piece of French. And then there's another one. These people actually have the French subtitles, but then they also have the English subtitles right with it. But one's above and one's at the bottom of the screen. So your eyes can't, like, be reading them at the same time. It's very clever. I really like these guys. Their channel is called French Facile. It's just two friends. One travels a lot. One kind of stays at home and works. They talk on a podcast, I think like every week, and they just talk about general things. And it's—you know, they're probably not talking about anything too interesting. But it's interesting to the English speaker who's trying to learn French. And then there's the channel called Easy French. I love this channel because these girls go on the streets and they interview, like, Parisians and various people like that. And it's cool to just listen to the different accents. And they have the French and English subtitles right next to each other, so it's super helpful. I cannot remember how much of this book that I was able to comprehend my last video. But now it's very, very promising. I shock myself with how much I can read. It's very, very rewarding, okay? Short Stories in French by Olly Richards and Richard Simcott. Definitely—seriously, this book is so good. They use, like, I think the top 1,000 most used French words. And they just kind of reiterate them 100 billion times in different stories. This is for A2 to B1, which I'm super excited I can actually read that. Yesterday, I was reading this chapter, Le Coffre. And I didn't understand a single word that I was reading. I was like, what the heck? I hadn't read it in a minute because, you know, Sarah was having our baby. And so I just pulled out the book, and I was like, dude, what's going on? Why can't I understand any of this? So, you know what? I just suffered through the pages. I read the chapter, and I was like, dude, I'm terrible. And I was like, you know what? Let's just go through. It's cool, you know, whatever. They've got a little summary at the end of the chapter. So I was like, I'll just try and read the summary so I could read the summary. I could understand that. And then I went through their little vocabulary list, and, you know, they've got the words in bold. So I was like, okay, you know what? Let's go to the beginning of the chapter again. The first time, you just kind of want to read the chapter even if you can't understand necessarily. You feel like it's not going well. Just keep suffering through it. That's what I did. And then I went back, and I read the chapter again. And for some reason, it was like I could understand everything at that point. It was a weird experience. I was like, maybe my brain just needed to kick into gear or something. Capitulant. That's a weird word. I think that's old man. Arthur. So basically, his name is Arthur. I don't think he was married ever or something. I hope that's what it's saying because I look like an idiot. If not, he doesn't have any kids or family or something. Something about a number of years. And he's very gentle with all people or something like that. Reading is difficult, okay? There's really no way around it in a world where we cannot focus on anything because we have social media. Sitting down and reading, first off, in your own language, is difficult to do. Then imagine sitting down and reading a page of gibberish for an hour and trying to decipher through it and then reading it again. Okay, that's what I'm trying to say. It is ridiculously effective, but it's painful in the modern era. One thing I mentioned in my last video that I desperately wanted to be able to do was to utilize ChatGPT to talk to me. And I could talk to it in French. And that wasn't going so well. But now, it's kind of click. The really cool thing about ChatGPT is that you can, say you give it the command, Hey, talk to me in French, basic sentences, and then I'm going to talk back to you in French. And if I mess up, correct me, okay? ChatGPT will start the conversation. So then, say it asks me, you know, in French, And then I say, Well, instead of ChatGPT saying, What it does is it reiterates what you said, your sentence, in its own response to you. It'll recognize that you messed up and it'll say, See, it inserted the word running in French. Man, it's so, it's so cool. And it's only getting better. So I would say at the nine month mark, I'm at an A2 level. I'm really, really glad that I got that base French of like looking at pictures and associating words with that. But now that I've got that base knowledge in my mind, now I don't mind if I kind of mod my learning practice, I guess, to kind of bring in some English so that I can build up a vocabulary quicker. Anyways, I hope that this video was helpful for people out there who are trying to learn a language or in particular learning French. It's a really rewarding thing. But again, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It's a difficult process, but it's fun. All right, let's be honest. It's fun, but it's, it's, it's very difficult. So check out the app on Academy where they actually make it fun to learn a language, especially if you're just starting out. It really gets you in the habit, keeps you motivated. I really think you're going to love it.