Preparing for the Olympics Project: Language Learning

My mom once told me that once you can dream and think in the language you are learning, you know that you've mastered the language. Well, I am not quite at a mastery level with my French, but I can say that French is on my mind as we prepare for the Olympics Project.

Photo Guillaume Bontemps/Ville de Paris

Truly, I have been preparing for this moment—that is, traveling to France—for about five years. My high school, collegiate and online French courses have educated me about the language and the rich culture and history associated with it.

When I was a freshman in high school, I enrolled in my first French class, taught by one of my favorite teachers, Hayley Rocha. With markers in hand each day, she doodled on her whiteboard, trying to help us associate French vocabulary words with images instead of the English equivalent.

For most of the class period, Rocha spoke in French, even though we were beginners. Yet, the whole class could understand, for the most part. With the help of imagery, body language and knowledge of word roots, it was simple enough to figure out the meaning of fundamental French vocabulary. Now, conjugations and grammatical structure? That's another story.

Each day, my classmates and I sat and stumbled through conversations in French, read books made for French children and amateur learners, and completed Duolingo lessons. We were completely immersed in the language, and in my opinion, that's the only way to truly learn a new language.

The classroom immersion only intensified when I took my first college-level French class with my wonderful LSU professor, Farida Ngandu Tshiebue, or Dr. N, as we called her. Dr. N has been instrumental in my adoration for French, and she was a big cheerleader for me to continue to learn the language and travel to France. Her classes always started with "une chanson du jour," or "song of the day," which egged on my obsession with French music.

For French music recommendations, check out the official Manship Olympics Playlist on Apple Music and Spotify.

Sometimes, I regret stopping my college French courses as they helped me become more comfortable with conversational French and greatly increased my knowledge of grammar, tenses, conjugation, and sentence structure. I still have my textbook and my detailed notes, and trust me, I have been looking over those the past few weeks.

Although I am no longer learning French in a classroom environment, I understand its importance, and I have a great desire to keep my love for French alive and sharpen my skills. I have thrown myself into my online lessons, trying to absorb as many words as I can—even though the fun characters on Duolingo probably speak much slower than French people, and I have no idea how a conversation will shape up outside of a textbook formula.

There is only so much an app on your phone can teach you about learning a new language. Sorry, Duo, please don't delete my streak. It can boost your vocabulary, teach grammar, and practice listening and reading, but it can't teach you how to fall in love with a language. At least not in the same way that immersing yourself in the language and culture can. The most capable I've felt as a French student was when I was speaking it every day in class and at home. You have to think about it, speak it, and live it every day.

For me, this includes listening to French music, watching a French TV show, or turning on French subtitles when watching a movie in English. It also includes occasionally texting my fellow French learners in the language or practicing a French conversation in the shower.

My high school French teacher let us watch "Extra Français" in class. It's a spin-off of Friends that helps people new to French learn the language. A lot of the episodes are on YouTube.

She also let us watch "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" in French. If you didn't know, the French word for "wand" is "baguette."

However, the ultimate language immersion is traveling to France or a French-speaking country and practicing French among French-speaking people. There is no better way to learn than by doing.

In a way, I do think that I have "dreamed in French." Traveling to France and seeing my French textbooks come to life has been my dream for so long, even if I didn't fully realize it sitting in my high school French classroom learning the conjugations for "être" and "avoir" ("to be" and "to have"). Traveling to France for the Olympics is truly the opportunity of a lifetime, but it is also the pinnacle of my French learning experience.