But I really struggled in years 8-12. I felt a lot of pressure and was struggling with my own issues in school, and my confidence about my French was very low. I compared myself to everyone else in my class. The only thing I felt I had was a good accent, but I seemed to struggle with everything else - grammar, remembering vocabulary, capturing the gist after reading a sentence or a paragraph. It seemed so hard, so I tried to stay quiet most of the time, and only engaged when I was forced to or when I was called upon.

When I left school, I stopped learning French entirely.

In 2019, I went to Europe for a holiday (great timing right before the pandemic)! I went to France and stayed with my best friend and her family. I was very excited to be able to practice my French. But whilst I could order food and drinks from a menu, whenever the French family would speak amongst themselves, I couldn't understand a word! Plus when I'd be speaking with my friend, she spoke in English as I couldn't understand her spoken French. When I'd try to express myself, I always had to keep falling back on English. I couldn't tell a story in French, and could only express simple ideas and sentences. It was very frustrating. I though that after nearly 10 years learning French at school, I should have been better.

3 years later in December 2022, I met my uncle's partner and I found out that she spoke French. Once again, I was very excited to speak French with someone. But again... my French seemed to fail me. She had to repeat very simple sentences just so I could understand them, and I found myself only being able to say simple sentences.

However... this experience had sparked something in me.

It had made me remember how much I truly loved French.

It reignited the passion that I'd always had for the language deep down.

I decided that in 2023, I was going to relearn French!

But the problem, was that I’d only known one way to learn languages. By sitting in a classroom and following course material.

So I enrolled in a class at the Alliance Française. I took a practice test and it said that my level was A2.

I was enjoying the classes, but there were some problems. First, the teachers spoke to us in English most of the time. Second, we were typically following a textbook, and rarely got genuine listening practice. But one day at the end of one of my classes, the teacher played for us an Easy French video, because it related quite nicely to what we had been learning that lesson.

Easy French is a YouTube channel that are most known for publishing street interviews with French speakers. They speak at a normal pace, about interesting topics, and they put dual subtitles in French and English on all their videos.

But the reason watching one of these videos was so life-changing, was because for the first time in my French learning journey, I had consumed content made by native French speakers that was also designed for French learners. I can't recall ever watching a YouTube video where people spoke the real French language naturally.

I went home, and started binge-watching YouTube videos on the Easy French channel. Then the YouTube algorithm started recommending more videos by other French creators for me to binge-watch. Listening had always been my weakest skill, but it was now quickly becoming my strongest.

That year I immersed myself like crazy in French. I also started to practice my speaking with a native speaker, which helped me realise where my gaps were. I addressed these gaps in online classes, and through more immersion practice.

Finally I had gotten to a stage that I would never have imagined possible for my French. I could understand French in naturally spoken situations, and I could have a conversation without pausing to think or searching for the right words.

Through this success, and being reignited with my love for languages, I decided to learn German, a language that is personal to me, as I have German family, but they had always spoken to me in English, and I had never been able to speak with them in their language.

I spent 2 years learning German, applying many of the same methods that I had found success with for French, plus discovering new ones, and trying those out along the way.

In 2025 I set myself a challenge - to go to Europe for 3 months, and be able to travel there by myself and use my French and German naturally. Doing this meant putting myself out of my comfort zone, A LOT. I went to Chess meetups, a TEDx talk, did a perfume making class, explored new cities, went on city tours and museum tours, went to comedy shows, and even became a volunteer at the FISU University Games. I had the most incredible time, made friends, and made so many wonderful experiences and memories, all in French and German.

One of the reasons language learning is so special to me is became I've struggled over the years with getting outside of my comfort zone, and with talking to and meeting other people. But language learning has given me a reason to do these things, and to do these things imperfectly.

Because it doesn't matter if you can't think of the right word to use, or if you mess up a verb conjugation, or if your skills simply feel "off" on a particular day. Learning a language is an ongoing journey, it's fun, extremely rewarding, and with it come so many incredible experiences.