🥐 9 Months Relearning French

No longer a false beginner | 179 hours of French

On the 4th of August, I reached my 9-month mark relearning French. As I will be using and hearing French more going forward, I feel now is a good time to update my progress.

📝 Since The Last Update

In my first update, I shared my history of learning French and why I decided to start relearning French in November 2022.

It’s been 5 months since that update and I can say I’ve moved past the false beginner stage. With the help of textbooks and various apps, I’ve jogged my memory and started remembering what I used to know years ago. Now, I’m making connections and growing my knowledge. I’m listening to native content, podcasts, audiobooks and reading graphic novels. All of this is exposing me to more French and making it a larger part of my life.

Speaking of a larger part of my life, I’ve been given and accepted a job offer in a French work environment. This job offer gave me a tangible reason to continue learning French. French is no longer a language I’m learning as a hobby but a language that will have importance in my daily life.

📊 Current Stats

My last update was in March. Back in March, I tracked a total of 70 hours since November 2022. Now at the 9-month mark, I have 179 hours total. While I track my study time every day and update them in my weekly study logs every week, I don’t actually pay attention to how much I’m studying/tracking. It’s only when I create charts and bar graphs that I’m able to see how my hours fluctuate and can attribute reasons to any significant variations.

Nov 4 2022 to August 4 2023 = 178h 57m

After April, my tracked time per month slowly increased and then doubled in July. In June I had gone through the interview process for a job in a French environment. In anticipation of receiving a job offer and then receiving one in July, I had more motivation and reason to continue learning French.

⏭️ Going Forward

The bar graph above only includes hours from the first 4 days in August. In late August I will be starting my new job using and hearing French at a French school. This means that for the whole workday, I will be immersed in French.

One question that was posed to me in a previous Q&A (question 2) was how I would count time spent living in a country of my target language. My answer then was that enjoying my time in the country is probably more important than tracking but if I did want to track, an estimation of my “immersion” time might be the easiest.

I will soon be in a similar situation where I will be getting lots of input, feedback and also using my language abilities. My workdays will be spent acquiring French and so it feels important to at least keep track of my immersion hours each day.

For now, I’m thinking that keeping my immersion hours separate from my usual learning/study hours is the best way to go forward with my weekly study logs.

Do you have any other solutions for tracking immersion time?

📅 The Next Few Months

I’m really looking forward to the next stage of my French abilities. My level goal for 2023 is to reach a low intermediate level. When I made my goals, I didn’t know where I’d be halfway through the year. I do think that I’m on my way to reaching the intermediate level.

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Thanks for reading!