Of the four main skills, speaking and listening and writing and reading, most of our students tend to focus on passive learning: watching YouTube videos, listening to podcasts, watching movies with French subtitles, listening to your grandma speak French but not participating, remaining aloof, remaining away, remaining safe and neutral and not fully engaged.
There's nothing wrong with any of that, done in moderation. The common issue is that passive learning is always a low-stakes environment, one where you're never trying and stumbling and failing, never feeling inadequate and insufficient and incapable, never concluding that you're a failure.
People avoid active learning because it carries risk, and they don't want to face the possibility that the experience won't be enjoyable or positive or rewarding.
By the time we reach adulthood, we've learned our lesson well, and everyone and everything has succeeded in convincing us that failing is bad: physically draining, emotionally damaging, and carrying the social consequence of being labeled by those close to us and stigmatized by society.
So, two years later, we still can't speak French or take part in a conversation.
Imagine I had a son, a twelve-year-old, and one day he asked me if he could ride a bicycle. Because I love him so much and can't bear to see him fall and hurt himself, I'd tell him: "No. The day you're able to ride a bicycle safely, then I'll let you ride a bicycle."
But that's nonsense. He can only become good at riding a bicycle by riding a bicycle from day one.
And day after day. After day. After day.
Whatever else he does, it won't be riding a bicycle. Only riding a bicycle is riding a bicycle.
He'll have to ride a bicycle without counting the hours. Without thinking about the deadline. Without thinking about the end goal, some day in a distant future.
No, he'll have to ride it today. In nice weather and in the rain. With friends and alone. Falling often at first, sometimes feeling like he's failing.
And the one small thing he'll do day after day is the most important thing of all: day after day, he'll keep going. He won't give up.
As children, we still have our warrior spirit. But by the time we become adults, life and our peers have conditioned us well: the alchemy of modern life has worked its magic, and slowly and unconsciously and unwillingly, we've traded our warrior spirit for a pervasive and damaging fear of failing.
And a few years later, we decide to learn French, and we apply that same fear to learning a language, and we can't understand why we're not progressing.
Because we bought all the books and took all the courses and tried every teacher, and they all failed us.
No. This is all your own doing.
Put the responsibility on yourself. Accept that you'll fail often, day after day. Be okay with that. Trying and not succeeding doesn't make you a failure.
No.
Trying and not succeeding, and trying and not succeeding, and day after day not giving up: that makes you a warrior.
Rebuild your warrior spirit.
Ditch the paralyzing fear.
Be bold.
Embrace uncertainty.
Your worth does not depend on whether you know French.
Decide instead that because you're taking on something difficult and refusing to give up, that makes you a conqueror. Of life. Of French. Of your fears. Of yourself.
You want to learn to ride a bicycle.
It's simple.
Just ride a bicycle, day after day.
And do the one little thing that makes all the difference in the world.
Don't give up.
