Hello !
J’adore discuter avec mes élèves, ils m’impressionnent toujours.
Souvent, ils sont vraiment passionnés par tout ce qui est français, la culture, et tout… Mais ils me disent qu’ils ont toujours du mal à comprendre le français parlé de la vie de tous les jours.
Et à chaque fois, ça me rappelle ma propre expérience. C’était en 2009, et j’étais dans la même situation qu’eux – mais avec l’anglais à la place du français. Et au passage, pourquoi j’ai créé Comme une Française.
Alors aujourd’hui, je voulais vous raconter cette histoire, avec une vidéo un peu différente, en français naturel. Ça vous va ?
C’est parti.
(Hello!
I love talking with my students; they always impress me.
Often, they are really passionate about everything French—the culture, the language, and so on. But they tell me that they still have difficulty understanding everyday spoken French.
And every time, it reminds me of my own experience. It was in 2009, and I was in the same situation as them—but with English instead of French. And that’s why I created Comme une Française.
So today, I wanted to share this story with you, in a slightly different format, using natural French. Does that sound good?
Let’s get started.)
1) Leeds
You might not know this, but once upon a time, I was a wind-turbine engineer, overseeing deployment of wind farms around the UK. I was based in Leeds.
I had the perfect English skills for the job – but for everyday life, it was another story. I couldn’t connect to normal conversations. Even though I really loved (and still love) English culture, I couldn’t really share that as much as I wanted. In conversations, many jokes flew over my head, I didn’t understand cultural references, and and I didn’t know all the unspoken agreements of English everyday social life.
I would ask for clarifications or explanations from time to time, but of course, you can’t keep asking questions all the time for the smallest thing. So I kept feeling left out. It was a bit of a lonely time.
2) Back to France
After a few years though, I ended up going back to France. And I wanted to start my own company, to really give people what they need. That’s how I started Comme une Française.
Of course, my inspiration came in part from what I felt in the UK. But what really did influence was not my own experience, but my mom’s.
You see, my mother was born in Mexico. She was working in international relations for a big company, and in the 1980s, she came to France to visit a friend of hers for a few week. But on a train, she met a charming French man who helped her with her luggage – and I was born a few years laters.
Growing up, I saw my mother:
Have tons of French friends and activities and live a normal life in France
Dive into French culture and art and history
Keep her accent, that you can still hear when she speaks French
And yet, still struggle from time to time
She sometimes faced invisible cultural walls, surprising unspoken French habits, and even some weird rules of the French language. Even after more than thirty years in France, living like a French woman in a French family!
3) Comme une Française
I’m not lamenting that – it’s unavoidable. No, take it as a message of hope for you:
1) You don’t have to solve all of these problems to have a rich authentic French experience
2) I know what it feels like – you’re in good hands, we’ll see if I can give you in French what I wished my mom had (and what I needed to learn too when abroad)
Because that’s what you live too, with French. You love French culture, its food, history, architecture, literature… But real fast conversations feel impossible. Just like TV shows as well, or movies.
That’s because you learned French, but not the “real” French. The “correct” language, but not the one we actually use in conversations.
And that’s the gap between “school French” and real everyday spoken French.
Click here to get you started: claim your personalized Weekly Action Plan for free. Move up from “school” French to real everyday French, step by step, with a clear plan that will make you finally enjoy the language – and have fun with it when you’re having real French conversations. Download it now!
4) Real French
So I teach the way I wish I’d been taught: start with real communication you can use today. Grammar is helpful—but it’s not the priority at first. The priority is understanding people and being understood.
I want to give you the cultural context that textbooks miss.
And the shortcuts and specifics that matter.
What real French actually sounds like 101:
- Drop the little ne in negatives: Je ne sais pas → Je sais pas.
- Ask simpler questions: Est-ce que vous venez ? → Vous venez ? / Tu viens ?
- Use on instead of nous in speech: Nous allons au cinéma → On va au ciné.
- Add natural fillers: euh, ben, voilà—they buy you thinking time and make you sound natural.
- Keep everyday formulas handy: Ça marche !, Pas de souci, Nickel !
Et vous ?
Racontez-moi votre histoire, maintenant. Qu’est-ce qui vous a amené à apprendre le français ? Comment est-ce que vous vivez le fait d’apprendre une langue étrangère ? Vous avez apprécié le format de cette vidéo ?
And you? Share your own story and experience below in the comments.
Allez, à plus !
Well, I’ve just watched the video and read the text you asked for our experience. I first was interested in French when a girl next door, four years older than me came home and said she was learning French at school. I asked her to teach me some French. She was 11 years of age and I was seven. She taught me to count up to twenty, but I only managed to remember up to thirteen. When I count in French now at thirteen it always jumps me to the memory from that time). I asked at school in the junior school, if we could learn French and that I could count in french ( not fully) The teacher said we don’t teach French. By the time I went to the bigger school and it was a terrible school. The English school system is a disaster. The teachers didn’t even have any education. We had teachers who had 9 months from the army in an army camp and put into schools. We were marched and kicked and hit with sticks and imperatives to do this and that, P.E. sport and all the stuff I didn’t like. Punishment like being in a German Concentration camp. Beatings locked in cupboards for discipline, like the army.
I left school at 15 years of age with no qualifications at all, as the teacher said stay on a year and do ‘O’ levels. I said, but we haven’t done anything for ten years of schooling and now something is going to happen? If I stayed I would have learned and got Maths and English. I left and went to work. There were no colleges of further education, but they were being built and they had no teachers anyway. My sister went through the same system, but was a bit younger and went to college and started a levels. So, I packed up my job and went to college, as a later student.
I did the five O levels and I had in between time taught my self German ( no teacher)and had passed the test and had One O level. I asked at the college if we could learn French, but they had no teacher and said they needed at least seven pupils for a class. I went round the college and got seven pupils and we had a class created. It was terrible given by a Scots teacher, who was an English Literature teacher. ( the English education had no foreign language component, but the Scots one did ‘higher and lower’, and still had the previous exam system we had before 1944 Law. Butler Education Act.)
I did the ‘O’ level course in six months, heuristically and passed, but not too well. The others all failed although many had done French at school. I went on to study A levels, took three, Law , History and Sociology, passed a went to Uni, I want to do A level French, but asked if we could learn to speak and understand the language and not just read prose literature., I said). No, not possible, so I didn’t take French ) Then went to another Uni’ in Sweden and learnt Swedish there at the kurswerksomhaten Language (school) After finishing my degree in European History with German, I started teaching myself Spanish, and went to a polytechnic to study Business Studies, but gave it up halfway through as useless and did a private teaching course in teaching English as a Foreign Language. Then I went to Another English University on a P.G.C.E. teaching certificate to teach English T.E.FL. and E.F.L. English as foreign language. I taught English at the Ramon Institute in Palma Majorca.
After that, I started improving my French and spent a small amount of time living with a friend In Rue de Rochfoucauld Piggalle, an Empire Building on the top floor, which his Uncle had still at a post war fixed rent of 18 English Pounds a month. ( the French Franc was 1000 francs to the pound in 1944 (after the Germans Left) to 1952 when that rent was fixed ) I dropped learning or improving the French to concentrate on Spanish and lived in Spain. Then I returned to the French, where I still am. Now I need to understand argot French.
Peut-tu m’envoyer la lecture en français?
Merci Geraldine,
J’ai vraiment apprecie cette video. C’etait tres interessant d’entendre parler de votre histoire et de votre motivation pour creer ‘comme une francaise’ Felicitations !
Merci Géraldine, j’aime beaucoup cette vidéo. Par miracle, je comprends la plupart. Malheuresement, je ne peux jamais penser les mots ou expressions pendant une conversation!
Salut Graham, je trouve que je ne souviens pas des mots nécessaires pour faire un conversation.