How I Learned French in 1 Year

I promised to tell you the story of how I taught myself a language. Alright, I'll try to make a long story into a short one.

The language was French, and I went from an absolute beginner to conversationally fluent in less than one year.

Grab some popcorn and I'll explain what happened.

The COVID Effect

Remember the COVID epidemic? What was that like for you? How did you spend your time?

For me, COVID was a scary time. Nobody knew what was happening. Nobody knew how bad things were going to get.

The grocery store shelves were emptying as people hoarded food. Other countries were closing their borders and, meanwhile, our brilliant leader was suggesting that sunlight or an injection of disinfectant might be the cure.

But what began as a scary time, turned into one of boredom and isolation.

Armed with these motivators, I daydreamed about leaving the country. Maybe once the epidemic had ended, I'd move somewhere else—a place with better leadership and a higher quality of life.

After a lot of research, I decided France would be the country to test out. Once I'd made that decision, I set out to learn the language.

Choosing French

I had chosen French, but I didn't know where to begin with it. I'd never learned a foreign language before. My high school Spanish classes got me nowhere and they literally put me to sleep.

(After writing this article, I remembered that I had also taken a German class at my university! Since I forgot that I even took the class, you can guess how effective it was!)

Taking online French courses from my local university would have been an option, but I needed to find another method. But university courses in America are super expensive, ineffective, and terribly boring. I needed a better method.

I remember Googling around to try to find a penpal from another country. I remember that was "a thing" when I was kid. Our American school made an agreement with a school from Norway and the students mailed letters to each other.

I thought that sounded pretty fun, but I knew it would take a month to hear back from my penpal, assuming I was able to find a penpal in the first place. The penpal websites that I found looked very outdated and possibly abandoned.

Someone on Reddit recommended a language-learning app called HelloTalk for speaking with people from other countries.

I gave it a try and loved it!

With HelloTalk, I found French speakers who wanted to learn English. We texted mostly, but also sent voice messages and had a couple of phone calls. I made a lot of friends.

It was so much fun for me to hear about their countries (not just France, but Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada too) and their ways of life. My work was slow, so I plenty of time to spend on HelloTalk every day.

It was a little too fun actually because I completely stopped trying to learn French. The conversations were so interesting and I didn't want to be slowed down by translating every word into French. So we spoke entirely in English—I was interested in the conversations and they were happy to get a lot of English practice!

But of course, the dream was to actually learn French so that I could move there someday. I didn't want to just speak in English with French people. I knew I needed to study.

The time zone difference prevented me from spending ALL of my free time on the app. While my European friends were sleeping, I tried everything that I could think of to learn the language.

I tried a dozen language apps like Duolingo. I also bought myself a French textbook to try learning grammar. When I wasn't studying, I was researching HOW to study a language.

These methods weren't working for me. Sure, Duolingo made me feel like I was making progress. I got all of the stars on the lessons that I completed. I felt the progress of completing chapters in my textbook.

But I couldn't speak French. As a matter of fact, I couldn't speak French, listen to French, write French, or even read French!

I had made zero REAL progress, even though I was advancing through my study materials.

Every now and then, my French-speaking friends on HelloTalk said something like, "Don't you want me to speak in French so you can practice too?"

Sometimes I said yes and then they sent me voice messages or texts in French. I didn't understand a single thing. I could pick out words like "oui" or "non", but I didn't understand the meaning of their sentences.

It was embarrassing and it was so frustrating! I had been studying for months! I should have been able to understand SOME things! Eventually, I just began telling them no, I was happy to continue speaking in English.

After months of wasting my time with Duolingo, my textbook, and speaking English on HelloTalk, I felt like I had made no progress at all.

Switching to Effective Methods

Eventually, I found a video on YouTube from a guy named Matt vs. Japan.

He talked in detail about how those methods don't work very well. He said that he taught himself Japanese and grew his vocabulary beyond the level of most native Japanese people!

How? By watching anime.

There you go! That's the secret to learning a language!

Okay, there's more to it than that. A lot more, actually. And that's why this roadmap exists!

Matt vs. Japan helped me get started though. His methods were awesome and very useful for me, but they were also sometimes confusing and sometimes impractical or overly complicated.

Over time, I began to reshape his methods and combine it with other strategies that I had learned. When I begin using this Frankenstein strategy of different pieces joined together, I was able to delete Duolingo and the similar game apps. I closed my textbook and never re-opened it. I laughed at the idea of paying so much money for a language course from a university (it now costs $2,769.99 for a 3-month course!).

The strategy that I had created became the English Tea Break Method, and it's what I'm so excited to teach to you. I learned to love language learning and it's something that I want to continue to do for the rest of my life. If I can show you how much fun language learning is, I'll feel like I've added value to the world.

I learned almost nothing from those other resources, but after beginnings to use the English Tea Break Method, I taught myself French in about one year.

On HelloTalk, the tables had turned. The conversations were mostly in French and I had to ask my partners if they would like some practice using English, because we were using French all the time. My French caught up and surpassed the level of some of my friends who had been learning English since they were children.

And then?

I traveled!

When COVID restrictions were removed, I booked a plane ticket to France. I met the friends that I had made on HelloTalk. During those two weeks, I visited 6 French cities and made memories that will last for the rest of my life.

I had fulfilled my dream of learning French and finally visiting the country.

So then what did I do after my trip ended?

...I DID IT AGAIN! 😂

I bought another plane ticket and went back to France for another 2 months!

During my two trips to France, I spoke in French. I navigated the country by myself. I visited a doctor (nothing serious), booked plane and train tickets, asked workers when I couldn't find my train (multiple times), shopped at grocery stores, and ordered from restaurants.

I spoke with dozens of French people in their own language and many of them complimented my accent. No one believed me when I told them I had only been studying French for a year.

So that's my foreign language story!

This is the kind of experience that I want to help other people achieve. Maybe you're interested in traveling around America or England, or maybe that doesn't interest you! Maybe you want to learn English for other reasons. That's fine! I want to help you achieve those goals.

My goal with English Tea Break is to help people stop wasting time and money on language-learning methods that just don't work very well.

There's a problem in the language-learning community:

Most language teachers have never learned a foreign language. And most people who have learned a foreign language don't know how to teach!

I've done both. I've learned French and I've also been an English tutor for students around the world.

The reason that I know the ETB method works is because I've done it. I went from knowing nothing about French to having these amazing French experiences, and it only took me about 1 year (or 1.5 years if you want to include the wasted time with Duolingo and my textbook).

Even though I learned quickly, before I figured out this method, I wasted time. I know that I will be able to learn my next foreign language much faster than this one!

Before we begin talking about how you can create your own experiences centered around English, let's briefly take a look at where the ETB method came from. That will help you understand what makes it so effective.