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I Practised Learning A Language for 190 Days Straight.

Emma Colsey-Nicholls
4 min readAug 27, 2022

Am I Fluent Yet?

Photo by Faisal Waheed on Unsplash

Learning a new language is hard.

I have always branded myself as being bad at languages, and that negative self-talk has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Back in high school, I got an F in French and specifically remember shouting in frustration at my French teacher that, this is stupid and when am I ever going to need to speak French?

Of course, as I decided to move to France in my late 30’s and would come to regret those words and wish I had tried harder.

Iv been living in France for 6 years now and my French is still shocking, and I’m embarrassed by it.

I have all the excuses. I live in a tourist town that has a very large English community, even if you try speaking french in town they just respond in English because they think you could be a tourist. I work online with English-speaking people.

Truth is I haven’t really immersed or pushed myself with French-speaking people and am stuck in my comfort zone of having mostly English friends and even those that are french just speak English to me.

Had I been plonked in the middle of rural France with only French-speaking people, I have no doubt my French would be far better by now.

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Emma Colsey-Nicholls
Emma Colsey-Nicholls

Written by Emma Colsey-Nicholls

Women’s Health and lifestyle coach. Top writer in Health. I write about health, habit creation and how to be a happier you. https://emmacolseynicholls.co.uk

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