Not being much of a linguist, I was filled with doom when I realised I had a date with my French inlaws-to-be but luckily I had Preply up my sleeve
I’ve never been good at learning foreign languages. Sometimes I find my native English a struggle – a risky thing for a journalist to admit, I know.
As a feckless teenager I would habitually cheat whenever it came to my French written exams. Luckily in year 12 I sat next to a bloke called Pierre who was doing a year abroad at my school from Lille.
He didn’t mind me looking over his shoulder and writing word-by-word what he had put down for his answers. In return, I once let him borrow my pen – a fair deal, I think you’ll agree.
In other words – I was proper merde at French. So when the opportunity arose to do a short language course via Preply, I jumped at the opportunity.
I’ve recently started seeing someone who’s half-French and needed an opportunity to impress my potential inlaws-to-be.
Over February and March I did a short course in French, which were all conducted over a video-call with a tutor. At first I was apprehensive – was I going back to school? What if I needed to do homework?
I approached my first lesson with apprehension, but was quickly put at ease by my friendly tutor. We spent the first half an hour just ‘getting to know each other’ and chatting about what I wanted to get out of the course.
One of the great things about Preply is that there is the option to swap tutors if you don’t immediately get one which you gel with. Luckily, there were no such issues with my tutor – we clicked! I.e. she didn’t tear a strip off me like my schoolteacher did when I couldn’t conjugate a verb.
There are several different levels of expertise you can choose to start from. I went for the “beginner” option, but only because there wasn’t a “practically non-verbal” option.
Over the next few weeks I went from stuttering my way through basic salutations.. “Erm, bonjour!” to feeling like I could actually have a decent conversation with someone from France.
I had to do a bit of brushing up in my own time, but towards the end it didn’t feel like work at all because I was thoroughly enjoying my lessons. The better you get at something – the more you enjoy it.
Also, I could choose to focus on topics which I wanted – my tutor was very flexible, both content-wise and time-wise.
The big day came a couple of weeks ago and I met up with my girlfriend’s parents for the first time. What would usually be a nerve-jangling experience felt easy and I was becalmed by my newly found skills in French.
I even managed to hold a conversation with the dad for about 10 minutes about French novelist Honore de Balzac – way to go, me!