Learning French was chaotic for me from the very beginning.

I started at university simply because we had to take an additional language. At the time, I already knew English well, was taking German classes, and at home, I was trying to discover a bit of Korean. So among Italian, Spanish, and French, I chose French — apparently it was considered a hard language, and I wanted to be challenged.

We had a very strict teacher. She treated pronunciation like a matter of life and death. We repeated words and sentences after her, read texts aloud, and were expected to know every sound perfectly.

I did not really enjoy it at the beginning — but today I am genuinely thankful to her every single day. That foundation took a lot of the burden off my shoulders later on.

I completed two semesters with her. We did not progress much in grammar or vocabulary, but I thought everything was fine.

Then the next school year arrived, and everything fell apart. A new teacher, a new curriculum — and suddenly my class was a mix of people who had studied French for five years as children, people who spoke it perfectly but claimed they had forgotten everything, and then us — students with two semesters of a not particularly intense course behind us.

I got demotivated and stopped going. Instead, I found a language school.

And then it got really chaotic.

As in any group class anywhere, you always find people who know much more than they admit, or much less — and either way, the pace never feels right. For two years, I was in and out of classes, changing groups, skipping when it got too hard, slacking when it got too easy, until one day I decided it was a waste of money and quit French completely.

It was another year or two before I tried again — this time with one-to-one online lessons.

Even though I passed the entrance exam at A2+ to B1 level, I had clearly missed important foundations along the way. My teacher was frustrated having to cover basics with me; I was frustrated being stuck at A2 seemingly forever, and that combination was never going to work. So as you might guess — I stopped again.

When I had time, I would listen to podcasts for intermediate learners or do some exercises online. Nothing consistent. Nothing that really moved the needle.

It was about three or four years ago that I finally said — enough. No more inconsistency that leads nowhere.

I started taking lessons seriously on Italki. But being someone who is interested in everything, I ended up booking three to four lessons per week — one English, one German, one Korean, one French. All at the same time.

It was honestly a lot of fun. I have so many good memories of those teachers. But it was also a slightly insane thing to do, and after more than six months of keeping that pace, I crashed.

I am a piano teacher, so I taught from early afternoon onwards. That meant mornings were free for lessons, homework, and YouTube rabbit holes. I was not some carefree person with no responsibilities — I just genuinely believed I could do it all.

Spreading yourself across four languages simultaneously means you do not truly progress in any of them. I kept English going just to maintain it — I passed my Cambridge FCE at eighteen and did not want to lose the skill. Korean was pure passion. German carried a sentimental weight from childhood. And French? French I had simply chosen as a university challenge. No emotional attachment, no deep reason — just stubbornness.

Pronunciation never scared me. Reading French felt natural. But stringing three sentences together without losing my vocabulary, without freezing, without overcomplicating everything — that was another story.

As my boyfriend likes to say, you are a masochist.

He is probably right. I am just trying not to admit it.

So — I tried everything to learn French. Here is what I would actually do again. Coming in Part 2.

written by Mlsha in Paris