Tackling French... Again

Personally, I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. I find that I must re-affirm the promises I made to myself constantly, especially when it comes to moving beyond my comfort zone and changing my life. Tackling French again is one of my non-New Year’s resolutions, and I am both excited and intimidated at the beginning of the process.

I can understand some French, but I am far from proficient and my accent is pretty atrocious, so I am eager to practice and educate myself, in addition to taking classes twice a week. Now that my classes are in full-swing, I began opening my old French books from college to supplement the texts I already have. I hope to get to a point where I can make some small talk with French-speaking peoples. Oral comprehension is something that I wish to master, but I have to practice that particular skill more often than I already am.

Why take French again? Well, it is a language I took in high school and college, and even though knowing which words are masculine and which are feminine is often frustrating, I am anxious to improve myself and broaden my horizons further. In this economy, I have personally learned to make short-term and long-term plans so I can be prepared when some or all of them don’t work out. My yearning to be multi-lingual also extends to learning something of Malayalam (my parents’ native language), Hindi, and Spanish. I am not sure where this journey will take me, but I know I must stick with it and keep practicing as much as I possibly can. I have friends who are fluent in French, and I hope to practice with them so my verbal and oral communication skills in the language will improve considerably.

As I brush off the dust from off of my old French books and prepare to be tested in class twice a week, I wonder if I will be able to achieve my goals. I will work hard to do so.