The Language Part of French Language & Culture

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French Language & Culture

Authored By:

Helena L.

One of the most common reasons people study abroad is obviously the language.  The immersive setting is proved to be amazing for improvement and CIEE’s language courses work hand in hand with everyday interactions to help everyone improve.   On my program, there were people who knew no French whatsoever and some who were practically fluent, but everyone was able to get better and learn throughout the trip.

I was somewhere in the middle when it came to language ability.  I could hold a simple conversation but there was still a whole lot that I could not understand when I first got to France.  I feel like that is still true, but the difference is I am so much more confident using French, and I am able to speak without hesitations and without overthinking everything.  I think this is mostly due to staying with a host family who didn’t speak any English whatsoever and also to the activities we did in class that included talking to locals.  Every day we had a question that we had to ask someone on the street, which was called OZ le Francais.  It was definitely the scariest part of every day for me because I am not a super outgoing person, but I really do believe that being forced out of my comfort zone like that helped me gain confidence in using French (and just in general).  That confidence then helped me get more comfortable talking to my host family, which helped me improve even more and gain more confidence.  It ended up being a cycle of improvement between the class and my interactions with my host family and by the end of the trip, it felt pretty natural to be speaking French all the time.  In fact, I’m scared that now that I’m heading back home I’m going to accidentally say “bonjour” to the bus driver, or “ça marche” to my mom.

While I think I got a lot more confident speaking French and better at understanding French, I don’t think I improved that much at reading and writing.  In school in the US we spend a lot of energy on writing and reading so I consider myself to be a decent writer, but in France, we spent a lot more energy on speaking and listening.  It makes sense considering we had so many opportunities to speak with native French speakers.  I am thankful for this improvement because I do feel like before this trip I was ok at French but fell short when it came to speaking but now I feel confident in all aspects of the French language.  

Overall I am very satisfied with how I improved.  I expected to learn the same way that I learn French in the US: learning new conjunctions, vocabulary, and grammar, because that’s the only way I knew, but instead I learned through practice and experience and that is something I will always be thankful for, and something I hope I get to do again sometime.