Study abroad journals

My French Classes

I love my classes, SO much. Back at home, French was just another subject, another hour and a half of my day spent in school. Here, it's my focus. Actually, it's more than my focus. I guess it's kind of my LIFE.

There's only 14 kids in my French class, and eight different nationalities are represented: Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Indian, Australian, Dutch, English, and Canadian. How cool is that? We all speak French together whether we need to or not. Those four hours fly by, and then I come home and speak more French. I think I'm picking it up pretty quickly.
..how could I not when my day is saturated in French?

However, language learning is more of an effort than I thought. It takes more than just being surrounded in it. I get frustrated because I think I can pick it up passively, by just living among the language, but that's not how it goes. Learning this language requires me to go out of my comfort zone, to speak when I don't want to, to be willing to make mistakes and be corrected. I'm getting better at it, but it's definitely still work for me. Frustration sets in when I have to look up a word in the dictionary for the 20th time (no joke), make people explain themselves several times, or respond in the wrong way to someone's question. But I press on...the reward will be great!

Jenny A,
Trinity Western University
British Colombia