Week 5 has been a lot about ‘forcing’ myself to do those 15min of French when I know I’m losing momentum in my challenge and can’t find the same motivation I had in the first week. I did two 1:1 lessons in week 5, so that’s good, but I had to find new, interesting ways of learning in order to not get bored. I guess it’s easier when you just learn French in France and then you’re surrounded by the language all the time anyway. But doing it in London, I have to do (at least) 15-30min daily to keep on progressing.

For me, it often helps to simply open a box of chocolates (well, munching on anything sweet or salty helps, or both at the same time), which I do simultaneously with reading the textbook. As I’m also trying to do the Victoria’s Secret challenge, I’m mostly eating those healthy (fake;-) sweets now: NAKE’D bars or coconut crisps do the job. And I actually like dark chocolate (I DO, honestly) so in terms of little treats, these are my go to ‘French-learning-motivation’ snacks.

When I really struggle to do any French, I open Instagram and go through the French feeds with phrases and mini vlogs. They are super short and you learn one or two sentences at a time (well, how many you like, but I stick to three maximum otherwise I mix them all up).

I started buying French fashion magazines (VOGUE Paris exactly) but you can buy any newspaper you like and try reading the articles. Reading (ie understanding) French is not that hard for me as I know Spanish, but it nevertheless requires a lot of concentration and checking words and their pronunciation in the dictionary. VOGUE is a lot about looking at photos (and tonnes of ads in it too…), but I still like to ‘tackle’ the short interviews or fashion news snippets.

I also listen to the French radio online or to my French conversation book, even though I don’t understand most of it yet. Still, I’m getting used to the new sounds that way and it massively helps with my pronunciation

And let’s not forget, it’s important to just take a break. Like with any other challenge, if you go to the gym every single morning and don’t take a day off, you end up begin so tired that you don’t go to the gym at all the next week. Or give up altogether. Same with language learning. You need to take breaks and do something else for a moment, so you don’t get frustrated from constantly talking French.