My Failed Attempt at Learning a Language #JustStart
I have always been fascinated by the country France. I find myself intrigued by the beauty of the country along with the French language and the accent. It is my dream to go visit the country some day. So this fascination of mine with France and the French language one day, brought me to this language learning website on the internet; Duolingo.

The website is truly fun (P.s. they also have a mobile app!!) and the best part is that learning a language or even more than one language, is free. You can choose from a pool of languages they offer and just jump right into learning it. So, as soon as I came to know about the website, I read a bit about it and instantly joined the site, this was back in 2017.

At first I was very excited. Once I enrolled & selected the language of my choice, it brought me to my own personal interface. On the interface, there are small lessons and quizzes related to the language like basics, greetings, phrases and so on which unlock once you complete the previous ones and they also help you in getting familiarized with the language. To work on the language and actually getting to learn it bit by bit, you have to devote some of your time daily for the website.
Since I was serious about learning it, I put into it my time and effort both. But soon it started getting a bit too normal. I was still spending time on the site but I felt no excitement for it anymore. Soon I started having gap days and then there was a time when I was not even logging into the website for weeks.
This past week when the #juststart activity came up in the project work, my first thought was instantly my account on Duolingo and the French language. And so, I put some thought into understanding why I lost motivation. What dawned on me is that I had decided to do too much in too little time or to be more truthful, when I came to know that speaking French and that too with great accent is not something that I will learn overnight, its going to take a lot of time and so, I gave it up.
For accomplishing the just start activity, I found encouragement by telling myself that the end result of the activity will be amazing, that I would be able to speak the basic French words. I followed the instructions given and divided my learning process into very little steps that I could accomplish easily. The first was to revisit my account on duolingo, update it and relearn the things about it that I had forgotten with time. So, I did it and it was nostalgic and fun to go back to the site after so long. The second task was to give 10 minutes to the site daily. Its a recurring task and I have been sparing ten minutes from my time everyday. Yaayy.
The last task was to listen to a song in the language. I did listen to an old classic; Alors on Danse. Unfortunately, I did not understand a word of it but I did not get demotivated, and checked in with its English translation.
I thoroughly enjoyed working through the three tasks but for the last task as I did mention, I faced an issue. Maybe I should go for a kids movie in French first since the dialogues and words will be slow paced and I’ll be able to figure them out one at a time.
I learned through this activity that no task is difficult if you have a clear goal and the tasks identified with clarity and you know the path you have to take to accomplish them. I understood that putting things into writing brings more clarity to them. But for accomplishing any and every thing, the foremost step is to just start. For the activity, the next step as one of them I have already identified, I’ll surely look into some good French movie.
