French Class

My first day of French Class back in September

I have wanted to learn to speak French for a long time. I mean, I live in Canada. We have two official languages, not just one. I sometimes use the excuse that I am in the Western part of Canada and French isn't as prominent here, which is somewhat true, but it's really just an excuse.  We have many many fully French areas in Saskatchewan and a lot of people I know are fully fluent in French, some of which it is their first language.

Originally I had wanted to learn French because I always found myself interested in men (well, mostly boys at the time actually) that had French roots and spoke French. They spoke English too, but French is just so beautiful. My desire to learn French then took on a new meaning when pretty much every job that I wanted to apply to within my industry that was located east of Manitoba required a bilingual designation.  Finally, my desire to travel, even within Canada, calls for at least some basic French language skills.

So, after about 3 years of always looking into different programs and classes in Saskatoon that offered French language training, I finally signed up for a class! (That I had been one click away from signing up for about 30 times in the past year - no joke).  I kind of knew all along that I needed to wait until I was done my degree to take on this new learning, but I still always had that desire and almost caved, even while I was still in school.

The class that I am taking is a conversational class. I am not learning how to perfectly spell or write, I am not learning proper grammar or why we say things a certain way... I'm just learning it. I am learning to recognize French and I am learning to speak French. Very slowly. I know that if I truly want to be able to apply on those bilingual jobs then I will have to take on French in a much more academic way, but right now, for the purposes that are more within my immediate future, being able to understand and speak a little bit of French is more than enough for me. I'm sort of treating it as my trial run - if this and perhaps the next couple of levels go well, then I'll look into something more intensive that will help me work towards a bilingual designation.

The problem is, I've found that I'm really not that great at learning a new language. Now, this could certainly be helped with reviewing and practicing daily, but let's be honest, I don't have that kind of time. I should make the time, but I don't. I still haven't quite found the methods that work best for me to really learn this new language, but I'm getting there. I know my final goal is to be fluent in French, I'm just breaking it down into VERY manageable portions for me to tackle, one at a time.

Have you ever learned a new language? Do you speak French? Any tips or tricks?!