What I gleaned from 5 months immersion in a French Hotel.

Photo: Alexandre Nishimura (Unsplash)

When trying to improve a skill, adopt healthy habits or just generally make some form of progress in our lives, some of us introduce changes incrementally whilst others have a more drastic all-in approach. In this article, I’m going to wax lyrical about my experience with the latter. If your learning style is more incremental, I would invite you to come along for the ride anyway. It is always good to read things you don’t agree with, even when you’re wrong (kidding!).

In 2007 I was employed as a “Mandate Team member” in a large Mortgage Servicing firm in the UK. At the time, I didn’t have any real skills other than (and this fact still surprises me to this day) drink my body-weight in lager, go to bed late and still be functional enough the next morning to not get fired.

I didn’t dislike my job per se, but I didn’t feel like I was growing personally or doing anything noteworthy. Day-to-day tasks weren’t challenging and I was easily bogged down by the monotonousness of it all. Does this sound familiar? If so, read on my friend.

I’d been having weekly French lessons with a colleague for a few months and I decided to transform my temporary language-learning pursuit — my only form of intellectual stimulus at that time — into something more permanent. I joined the Erasmus Programme (a European scheme enabling graduates to undertake immersive language placements) and a month later I found myself in Montpellier in the sunny South of France waiting (not literally) in a 4-star hotel. La Classe! Or so I thought.

Not me holding a plate. Photo by Lefteris Kallergis (Unsplash)

I’d now like to tell you the 5 things I gleaned from my time in Montpellier learning French in full immersion and how you can apply them to whatever you’re doing to better yourself right now.

1) You Have To Be Willing To Look A Bit Foolish

For a good couple of months, I didn’t understand anything. My high school French and my more recent weekly tutoring sessions had failed me quite spectacularly. Anything past a few basic phrases and I was essentially lost. I felt like a child in an adult’s body but I quickly understood that to make progress, I needed to be willing to sound like an idiot and that meant trying to communicate with what little French I had. I was in unchartered waters and I just had to deal with repeated misunderstandings, confused looks and sometimes giggling from my French colleagues (they were, however, good sports).

“If you are not willing to be a fool, you can’t become a master.” Jordan B. Peterson

With enough practice, blunders and bad pronunciation, I began to make progress. I started formulating proper sentences and express myself with greater precision. I couldn’t believe I was doing it.

As a bonus takeaway from this point, I’d advise you to just start with what you have. If that means beginning with an empty tool belt, then so be it. You can add tools as you go. So whatever you’re doing right now, don the dunce cap and make a point of looking foolish.

Fail. Photo by Quino Al (Unsplash)

2) You Imitate Before You Create

My shift started each morning at 6 a.m during which I would serve breakfast to the hotel guests. The relentless churn of hungry early risers was overwhelming. I was instructed to greet each person as they entered the restaurant, ask them for their room number and take their hot drinks order. I was also required to dress and undress tables, restock the buffet and run room service errands to those who wished to eat in private. All in French.

Alongside a substantial amount of pointing and gesturing, I’d often repeat what guests said back to me to be certain I’d understood what they’d said (but also for practice). The time I spent imitating allowed me to lay a foundation on which my ideas and concepts could be articulated and I was able to begin constructing proper sentences.

I’ve found this strategy to be similar to building other skills. If you want to start writing poetry, it would be a good idea to read the works of others. Once you put pen to paper and start composing your own prose, you may find that until you find your style, your work is influenced and inspired by what you’ve already read.

Whatsmore, you can learn from those who’ve mastered your newly desired skill as these people will already have their own processes and techniques.

Mill Swith (er, Will Smith). Source — boredpanda.com (credit: @thebaddrawer)

3) You Will Be Met With Resistance And Get Criticised

Like any skill, language-learning requires consistent effort yet, it took at least a month before I’d started to notice any improvement and even this was quite minimal. Every time I learned new words and phrases, I naturally wanted to practice them. This, in turn, created a new set of problems because as I enriched my vocabulary and improved fluency, I began to have more meaningful exchanges (relative to my starting point) which led to me hearing new patterns and more complex language that I couldn’t understand. It was an ever-repeating cycle.

The immersive nature of my stay in France meant that this was happening to me all the time. I had to get used to the fact that it was going to be an upward struggle but I promised myself I’d maintain the course.

I met a considerable number of French people who wanted to practice their English and on occasion, I obliged. More often than not, however, I would insist on speaking in French- I’d travelled 1000 kilometers and I wasn’t gonna let some cheese-eating anglophile steal my time. There were also a couple of times when I was criticised for even learning French. “Everyone speaks English, what’s the point” (this, of course is not true). People occasionally mocked me for not being articulate and I also encountered some rudeness.

Given the nature of self-improvement, you will receive some form of resistance. This could come from within (there are days you will not feel like practicing) or from external factors as I experienced. The trick is to keep going.

Upward struggle. Photo by Fabrizio Conti (Unsplash)

4) Focus On Your Achievements, Not Those Of Others

Once a week, all the expats working in hotels and offices got together for an event. Many of them had already been in France for a while and I was amazed at just how well they spoke French (some of them had not even studied modern languages at University). Sometimes it was discouraging to see them interact with locals without hesitation and I was frustrated that I wasn’t conversing at the same level. It was only towards the end of my stay that I realised I had made as much progress as they had, if not more.

Rather than spending time thinking about the progress of other people, channel that energy into making yourself better. Comparison with others is only useful to a point — it can be motivating and give you something to aim at but your true competition is the person you were yesterday.

I was even able to consider this point from another perspective. The hotel had a total of 4 foreign interns with new ones arriving as others left. The remarks from the new staff were always the same:

“I wish I could speak as well as you” or “I still don’t understand what people are saying.”

I always told them to work at it and give it time. The intense nature of our daily activities forced us to make progress. They needed to trust the process.

Photo by Romain Vignes (Unsplash)

5) You’ll Come Out Better On The Otherside

As cliché as it sounds, being able to speak semi-conversationally after 5 months was probably the first time in my life I felt like I’d achieved anything noteworthy. My stay was punctuated with mini eureka moments as I became more familiar with new words, verbs and sentence structures, but the “look how far I’ve come” realisation came whilst saying farewell to the hotel reception staff.

“Tu as vraiment fait beaucoup de progrès” (You’ve really made a lot of progress).

Thanks Sylvie!

The transformation from monolingualism to the beginnings of bilingualism (and I say bilingualism because I went on to stay in France for over 10 years) was down to consistency, trial and error and hard work and I’m so pleased I stuck it out.

The journey felt a little haphazard but the cumulative work made all the distance and I was delighted to have an extra string to my bow.

Whatever aspect of self-improvement you’re working on right now, I hope these tips can help on your journey! If you’ve enjoyed reading this, I’d invite you to come to my Twitter page for some daily positivity, reflections and skill-building tips that’ll help you take action and lead a more wholesome life!

Thanks,

A Friend.