Beth’s story

Are you wondering if working with me can really help you to learn French? In this video, my student Beth shares with us how choosing The French Transformation with its access to the French Fluency Accelerator has helped her improve her fluency in 40 days, after struggling to learn on her own for nine years.

Watch the video or if you prefer, you can read Beth’s thoughts on working with me from our conversation below.

Introduction

I’m Beth, I live in Ithaca, a small college town in upstate New York where I work as a pathologist (a physician who diagnoses cancer and does laboratory work). My job is demanding, but I manage to find time most days to practice French.

Why are you learning French?

I love the language, it’s beautiful.

I’m interested in the culture, and I want to travel, I haven’t done much traveling, and I want to get to know other places.

I love French food, French wine & everything that has to do with living well and enjoying life!

Before we met, what had you done to learn French?

I tried to teach myself French for about 9 years with various apps and products, but no formal classes.

I had a pretty decent grasp of vocabulary & grammar, but I couldn’t do any speaking.

My reading comprehension was kind of ok but my listening comprehension was not great.

I would get frustrated whenever I heard native French speakers in a video or audio, I felt like I was never going to get where I needed to by continuing what I was doing.

Why did you decide to join the French Fluency Accelerator & work with me?

I was looking for videos of Americans speaking French, because I wanted to know how Americans who speak French so well, do it.

I googled famous Americans who might speak French, came up with Jodie Foster & found your Jodie Foster videos. I loved how you analyzed the video & her sentence structure!

Then I found the Antony Blinken one. I felt it was logical. You discuss how he never uses subjunctive and I thought, it makes sense that you can structure your sentences in a way to avoid what’s hard.

So I realized, if I was going to learn to speak, I needed to work with someone who can answer the kind of questions I have.

When we first met, your goal was to speak fluently in about 20 (!!) years?

I was learning French for 9 years quite consistently. At that pace I felt I would be fluent maybe by the end of my life.

You told me that was a very long time, so I’d likely achieve it.

This video is taken 1.5 months after we started working together.

What’s different now?

My approach has completely changed!

I’m no longer the passive recipient of what the app is saying I must learn, instead I evaluate the material I choose very specifically based on the criteria that you have taught me.

I’m very selective about the resources I use.

I’ve unburdened myself of the idea that I need to try to understand and translate, now I’m doing the daily French bath, passive listening and **enjoying it.**

I spent too many hours listening to reading comprehension that’s meant for a 12 year old, or trying to read a random memo.

I started writing, I had never written French before working with you. Writing really helps me solidify grammar.

How’s your speaking now?

My fellow students can vouch that I speak quite well.

Before it felt daunting, I couldn’t imagine how to even approach speaking. Never understood how some people speak several languages and it looks so easy.

I’m becoming so much more comfortable with finding words and finding structures. It’s coming along in a way so that I don’t think I could have found a better environment.

You must be the most patient person on the planet, because you just quietly and respectfully wait, I don’t feel the kind of pressure I felt before when I couldn’t find the word, now I can take the time to find it or you give me some idea about how to approach the sentence in a different way.

I listen to my own recordings to solidify my understanding. It also helps to hear myself from a 3rd person perspective. Sometimes it doesn't sound as bad as I thought it did! I’ve learned it’s normal when you are speaking to feel like you struggle a lot but to a person listening it is a lot clearer.

How did you do it?

I’m very committed to my classes within the French Transformation package, which includes the access to the French Fluency Accelerator, group classes, discord server & workshop library, + my 1-1 classes every week.

When I signed up, I thought I would only be using the 1-1 classes, hoping to get feedback with speaking, then started exploring all the material that is available, the workshops are very detailed, very good, super helpful. I’ve been diving into the workshops & really enjoying those.

It surprised me that I’ve been wanting to try the group classes, but all the resources were good and the people on the discord were very nice, so I decided to join the classes even though I’m pretty introverted. I like to hear where other people are in their French study, including people who are more advanced or who have a harder time speaking than I do. It’s great to hear all the feedback you give to everyone because I can internalize it all, no matter the level of the person.

The roadmap itself. The detail of the selection of the resources. Previously I was either picking stuff that was for people who were in business, which wasn’t relevant to me, or stuff that was stultifying, and very basic. You were very careful about choosing things that were engaged towards my own interest. It was a revelation to me to realize that yes, I like gardening so why wouldn’t I read about gardening in French? You found tons and tons of resources of native speakers speaking at native paces intended for native speakers that correspond to my interests. That has really helped, I was surprised at how much I have been able to understand and take in, and it has really helped me to learn, unlike using material intended for non-natives.

Angel’s note: a lot of people are scared of using material that is intended for natives, but I like to recommend it as much as possible because it really helps, but there’s a lot of fear and resistance.

How have you approached this for yourself?

It’s the mindset.

Before I worked with you, whenever I approached this kind of content, I felt overwhelming frustration & was disappointed in myself for not understanding. I remember telling my husband, “I’m never gonna learn French”, and he said, “yes, you’re right, if that’s your attitude you’ve just doomed yourself”, but that’s your attitude too: “you can do this”. So I told myself, yes, you can do this.

Once you just immerse yourself, you relax, you take it in, and you’ll be surprised how much you understand. You’ll pick out things that you can dive into further, and when that happens, I’ll hear somebody using “subjunctive" and I’ll think about what was the context, or I’m just pleasantly surprised when I do start to understand and I’m picking out a word here or there.

Translating is too much, it’s cognitively demanding, but if you just let it happen, you start putting two and two together. You explained that’s also how I learned my native language. I wasn’t beating myself up learning to conjugate some literary tense when I was a child. That’s not how it happens. You absorb the material that’s present, so you might as well have the material that you enjoy.

So it’s jelling quite well. Would you say that any ingredient was not useful?

No, and you have said if something isn’t useful, just toss it. But you haven’t made anything that wasn’t useful. Your expertise is very specific and detailed in teaching English speakers to learn French.

Would you recommend the FFA?

Yes, absolutely, it’s a great way to learn French!

Your next steps

If you like this way of learning French, you will love to learn with me as a student or client. Please check out:

My 1-1 coaching program, The French Transformation, if you need to improve your French fast.
My group program, The French Fluency Accelerator, if you’d like to join a community of students from all over the world. We have weekly practice calls together and the best online video library to learn French.