Day 1 — The easy beginning

Why is the page entitled the easy beginning? Because I think it is always very easy to start. You have a high motivation, learning new words is fun, occasionally you meet the words you already know and can understand basic phrases. All this is a good boost of the energy in your first day of learning a foreign language. However, the dissatisfaction with the learning process comes as quickly as this momentum of happiness. I think this is a fair rule of life. Usually if we get something very easily and very quickly (like a little dose of happiness), we almost always loose the feeling of happiness equally shortly after. However, if we input a lot of effort in something, the period of happiness lasts longer and is not singular, but rather many happy moments.

Well, that’s ideally. In a real world it’s a big pain in the a$$ to invest a lot of time and effort into learning a new language. Self motivation plays the most important role. That’s why we usually hear stories of people who have been trying to learn a foreign language for a long long period of time, but never really learned anything. This also works for children, their motivation is not some great prospects and open doors that we adults are looking for. No! Kids are looking for fun time spending, for appreciation from the teacher and the parents, for activities with the friends. For adults learning can also be that enjoyable activity in a group of people with similar interests. However, once you’re on the road “I need to learn this language asap and I do not want to wait until that idiot understands what the teacher has already explained 2 or 3 times” you consider self-studying.

There is plenty of literature about pros and cons of this method. It requires enormous personal effort to study even on those days when you absolutely do not feel like. Equally it bring hardly any fun activities with peers or conversations until you reach a certain level that you can participate in the online discussions, chats, etc. (This, of course, is not true if you live in the country of the language and can practice your bits and pieces starting from day one).

I have to confess, for me personally, self studying becomes a bit boring and even if I drag it for longer, it looses its attractiveness, its feeling of novelty and slowly attenuates. Almost with everything that I was mastering independently (well, to a certain extent English is an exception), I have experienced the growing disinterest. And I am well aware of the possibility of me quitting learning French for this same reason. However, as always in the beginning I think this time will be for sure different. I’m also going public and publishing it in a blog to boost my responsibility to have daily classes.

I should say I’m occasionally traveling and probably will have to skip those days, but otherwise I’m determined to take my daily French classes very seriously, but also try to enjoy and have fun!

We’ll see what will happen.

As for today, my first day of classes, I completed the following:

From the textbook sections Gender and Definite Article, Gender Identification by Word Ending, Nouns Indicating Occupations, Nationalities, Relationships and Domestic Animals and Words with Different Meaning in Masculine and Feminine Forms. Also I watched the first episode of French in Action, though it was a purely introductory piece and I haven’t really learned much.

This is it for today and new adventures are waiting for me tomorrow!

À bientôt!!!