Le courage de faire des erreurs

When speaking French, it is necessary to overcome the embarrassment of making mistakes, which no French two-year old child would make, every time you open your mouth. When we conversing the brain does not always work fast enough to compute the correct grammar. Since we are not accustomed to speaking a lot, sometimes we will faire des betises.

N’arretez pas de parler

As with any language you need to endure the inevitable reduction of the range and precision of your capacity to communicate in comparison with your native language. But over time you will progress. It is often difficult to keep track of how far you have come. You may find that you reach a plateau at various points in your journey and feel unable to reach to the next level of fluency.

In my experience, when this happens, you need to push on and practice all the more; taking every opportunity to blether en français or as Annie Bienvenue whose acquaintance I made on one of my Youtube odyssies, says in the clip below communiquer. The relevance may be a little tenuous, but she has a lovely French Canadian accent.

Nous les cherchons ici, nous les cherchons là

Nevertheless, it is often difficult to find opportunities to practice speaking French. French people are a precious commodity! On these pages in this section various methods of practising improving your speaking skills are outlined: language exchanges, talking to yourself and French meet-ups are worthwhile ways of building your confidence and developing your fluency.