Nathalie:
Bonsoir à tous, et merci beaucoup de nous rejoindre aujourd’hui pour une séance sur des façons différentes, 13 en tout, d’apprendre le français.
So thank you very much for joining us tonight, my colleague, Laura and I for a webinar on many different ways that you can learn French. So let’s just begin. The first thing that I wanna say is a little bit about me and my story. I stepped foot into a classroom exactly 20 years ago teaching French, and in that time I have learned and experienced an awful lot. And I take great pleasure in sharing my experience with students here at the academy because I think that it’s extremely important to understand that learning French, because that’s what we’re talking about tonight, but learning foreign languages in general is a journey. And it means that you are going to have many different opportunities to learn and practise and experience that language. And we wanna talk about all these experiences tonight. So Laura and I really have two aims today.
The first one is that we are fully aware that today the market is saturated with options to learn French. French is the first foreign language that people choose if you look at statistics throughout the world. So naturally, there are thousands of different resources out there of methodologies of strategies. And what we both wanna do today is to help you to demystify, help you to navigate around all this so it starts to make sense for you.
And the second thing is that we really want you to understand how you best learn and what is most important for you to adopt in order for you to learn French well. But for you only, so, when I say it’s a journey, it is a very personal journey. So, grab a nude book and a pen because you’ll be doing some work as well. It’s not just about us.
Now, the first thing that I wanna say is I told you a little bit about my story having stepped into a classroom 20 years ago.
Today, as a matter of fact, today is my UK anniversary. I arrived in the UK with my two suitcases 22 years ago. So there’s something to celebrate. There’s two things about my story that are relevant to this webinar and something that hopefully you can relate to.
The first thing is about my own background. I grew up in Jura, which is on the east side of France by the Swiss border. It’s a very unspoilt area. It’s absolutely beautiful with a great, great lifestyle. But I think it’s fair to say that it’s very far away from an international metropolis where you get opportunities to speak and learn foreign languages, to meet people who speak different languages or have different cultures.My parents didn’t speak any foreign languages. And even when I went into school and started learning English at the age of 11, it was an important school subject, but it was not a huge emphasis on, you know, learning it or ever becoming bilingual.
So what I’m trying to say here is that becoming bilingual clearly wasn’t something that I was predisposed to be. And the second thing about my own story is that I am not an academic. And because for many people speaking a foreign language, learning foreign language starts by being a school subject. Many think that you have to be very smart and intellectual to learn a foreign language. And I’m, I’m here to tell you that you don’t. I’m absolutely not an academic, and yet I am bilingual today.
So if I was able to do it, then I truly believe that anyone can. Interestingly enough, this part of my story about not being an academic, also means that when I started in the world of language training, it was a happy accident. That’s a story for another day, but I felt very passionate about it very quickly. Hence the reason why I’m still here 20 years later.But it’s fair to say that when I started teaching, I totally had the imposter syndrome. Unlike my peers, I didn’t have the right training, the right qualifications or degrees, but that served me. And that’s the benefit of hindsight.
Today, after 20 years, I realised that when I started, I worked very, very hard. I never turned down a lesson. I drove miles. That was well before online learning. I drove miles to go to French lessons. I taught children, teenagers, adults from all sorts of different backgrounds, and that people who were very able, people who were quite challenged. And that gave me such an incredible insight on how people can learn foreign languages. Now I want to introduce you to my colleague Laura, who shares this webinar with me because I think with the richness of our collaboration here at the Academy is that Laura has a completely different story to mine. And I think that’s the reason why that, you know, us working together on creating language programmes for our students works so well. So Laura, can I ask you to introduce yourself?
Laura:
Absolutely. Hi everyone and welcome to our webinar. So completely what Natalie said is really interesting to work together cause we have such, such different stories and such different backgrounds. So unlike Natalie, I was born into a multilingual family. So my mother is English, my father is Belgian. So for those of you who know Belgium, you are not already that. It is a multilingual country. And then we’re having parents from different nationalities as well. I was born in Belgium, we grew up in England. I was constantly going between the two. So I really grew up in a very multilingual environment, as I said, with multilingual parents, and multilingual families on both sides. So for me, languages were also always a huge, huge part of my childhood. And we were always constantly switching between languages and learning about other languages and cultures.
And then I loved languages as I grew up and I went into higher education, I did multiple degrees in language and linguistics. So it’s always something for me. It’s been something that I’ve absolutely loved. And then I’ve always really wanted to be as much impressed as possible on the academic side of it. So after studying languages and linguistics in various universities around Europe, I went and I taught English and French and foreign language in different universities. And then I was also involved in some research projects as well that was all to do with teaching and learning languages. And then eventually I ended up here at VICI with Natalie, which again was a nice happy coincidence as well. So one of the things that I’ve just loved since I’ve been at VICI, I’ve been here for two years now, and one of the things that I loved when I first arrived was really how much we focus on the individual learners as well. Throughout all of my studies and throughout my personal language learning journeys, the thing I’ve really known and the thing I’ve really seen is how important it’s to think about how you like to learn and the individual learner. And I think that’s just something that I fell in love with when I arrived at VICI. I felt we did so, so well. So I’ve been really happy to help Nathalie and VICI expand on this journey as well. And now I’m excited to share everything that we’ve learned so far with you guys.
Nathalie:
Well, thank you so much Laura. And something else that I wanna say before we get into the heart of this session is that language is evolving all the time. It’s interchangeable, it’s recyclable. That’s why we love it. We love it because it isn’t a mathematical equation. You can use the language and shape it in many different ways to suit you. And please understand that there is never a right or a wrong answer when it comes to learning French. Even linguists, people who work, analyse, research foreign languages all day long, the mechanics behind them, the science behind how you learn them, even they don’t agree, even they change their mind. Even they write papers on different subjects all the time. That’s for you to understand. You know, all the options that there are when you’re trying to learn a foreign language is a subject that is so vast that it’s actually really quite interesting because it means that you can kind of pick and choose what suits you best.
You know, some linguists who are very, very keen on grammar, you know, the grammarians will argue with the grammarphobes, that you absolutely have to master grammar in order to be proficient in a foreign language. And people who don’t agree with that will argue that actually people who are excellent at grammar may not be the best people when it comes to communicating with other native speakers in real life. Then they’ll argue that it very much depends on how the grammar was taught. Who delivered the lessons and what was in the lessons and what was the context of it, et cetera, et cetera. Most linguists will tell you that the immersion factor is crucial. But by this, a lot of people will understand, you know, immersion in a foreign country where you’ll find that people have written entire books on how you can immerse yourself in the language in your own home.
So the reason why I want to emphasise a little bit on this is that it is a subject that is so fast that we are going to try to condense it. We are going to try to demystify all that’s on the market at the moment. But the way that we’re going to do this is by thinking about you and looking at how you learn and what you should put into your own little recipe to make it work for you. Because let’s face it, something that we know is that when it comes to our committed skills, which we use a lot, when we speak of foreign language, we are absolutely not wired in the same way. So what may work for Laura, when she learns Spanish is not going to work for me when I do, and the other thing to consider guys, is that it’s a little bit like everything in life. It’s very much all about balance. A lot of different things can work, but it’s going to be about how you balance all of these methodologies and strategies and resources.
So the first thing that I would love for you to think about is right now, in your language journey, where are you and where would you like to go? And I’d love for you to take a moment to write this down. How would you describe your current level of French or how you feel about your level of French, how would you describe yourself as a learner to other people? And then what is your ideal scenario when you visualise yourself learning to speak French, practising French, where is it? Who with and what is your level of fluency?
So now what we’re gonna start doing before we go over the 13 different ways that you can line up foreign language, our 13 commandments, we’re gonna talk about you because this is very much all about you. We are going to look at the type of learner that you are, your personality in a very colourful way that can help you find out how you’ll best learn a foreign language. Then we’re going to show you how you can look at the different communicative skills that you would like to focus on and how you can decide on the level that you’d like to reach and therefore set yourself a language goal.
Needless to say, that time and budget is also extremely relevant to what is going to work for you. So when you’ve decided on where you feel you are at, at the moment and where you’d like to go, then perhaps you can do some sort of little diagram and go, okay, this is the time that I can honestly dedicate to learning French every week, being realistic with your current lifestyle. Then what is the budget that I allow myself to spend on a language programme for the next 12 months? What to me would be a really good investment in my personal development if I could get to that goal? And then in terms of looking at what skills you wanna focus on and your personality in colour and the type of learner that you are, then Laura and I are just gonna share a few things with you now. So together with this webinar, you will have also received a few documents. So these are the ones that I’m going to share with you now. So please bear with me.
Okay, so I think we are going to start with this one because that’s the fun colourful one. Now, we are not life coaches, so we don’t pretend that we are experts in analysing people’s personality with colour. And besides, we don’t need to know everything about you in order to put a French language programme together that is going to work for you. However, have you ever heard of the concept of personality in colours? I think that it is quite fascinating. We have chosen to just look at four, but there’s plenty of information about this online if it’s something that really interests you, and you’ll find that you can have the orange colour and the pink and purple colour. But for the purpose of this exercise, I think that those four colours are really quite enough.
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If you find that you are more of a red person, this means that details are not really going to be your thing. You want results, you don’t want details and you would rather bypass certain things and get to a resort that’s not perfect, but you are there rather than go through all the different steps. You are also someone who is, you know, barely impatient and impulsive. So you need some strong actions. This is really important when learning a foreign language because you may not be someone who likes to learn in lessons that is really too detailed. You are probably going to easily get bored, but you are fairly competitive. So we can, we can give you some quite high targets and you’ll work to achieve them. For example, if you are more of a yellow learner, you need fun, you need a lot of entertainment in your lesson, otherwise your concentration isn’t quite there. You like to be in a group, you like to share what you are learning because you’re a very sociable learner. If you are more of a blue person then the contrary of the red, you love the details. So you are someone who is going to need very clear instructions and doesn’t mind reading them. You are someone who is likely to feel that you are not progressing if you don’t understand all the ins and outs of what you are learning in that language. People who are more green are people who will progress at their own rate of ability and speed. They’re not competing against anyone. They don’t need that much entertainment. They don’t need all the details. They just need a very supportive and caring environment. And they will get there just as well as anyone else in their own time.
When you look at those adjectives on the screen, can you maybe guess in what category you would best fit in? Often we are kind of two colours. There is a dominant one and there’s one that’s not too far away. That’s really interesting. And if you are one of the VICI students, then you might wanna share that with your French coach because that will help us to help you.
So now moving on, something that is crucially, crucially important when learning a foreign language, and if you don’t remember much of what we are covering today, then please bear this in mind. What type of learner are you?
I very often go back to when I started teaching languages after two or three years and realising that I was absolutely going to make this my career. I decided to retrain. And one day in the training, this is what they were talking about.And that blew my mind. I had never heard of the concept of being a visual learner, an auditory learner, or a kinaesthetic learner. And in an instant, at the age of 26 or 27, I understood why I was very good in certain subjects at school and very poor others understood why I was preparing my lessons in the way that I was preparing them for my learners. And a lot of this was down to the kind of learner that I was.
So we’ve got a little quiz that we’ve sent you as well by email with this video and try to do it, you know, it’s very brief, you can find a lot more detailed questionnaires online, but try and have a go at it. We very often think that we are visual learners. Why? Because this is how we are taught at school. Sit down at your desk, watch the teachers speak, have a look at the board. We now have phones or we work on our screens. We are constantly, constantly targeted by images and words. So we think that we’re visual learners, but this is now to our environment. Actually, we are not all visual learners. Some of us are auditory, so some of us will learn much better and perform much better through sounds and noises. Some of us are kinaesthetic. Being kinaesthetic means that you are a practical hands-on kind of learner, you need to do something in order to learn. I’m a kinaesthetic learner. I often share the story that I trained at martial arts at an adult age in my thirties. And when the instructor was talking about the movements that we had to do, I was lost. It was too technical for me, was too detailed the minute I could do the movements at the same time as him whilst he was saying exactly the same thing. I got it.
So do the quiz and take a moment to try and find out if you are more of a visual learner, an auditory learner, or a kinaesthetic learner, your learning style is going to be crucial in the way that you learn French and therefore will really impact your progression.

So now that you’ve kind of analysed the kind of learner that you were, let’s have a look at the skills that you wanna focus on, the level that you wanna get to, and therefore what sort of language goals would you like to have? So again, traditionally we just think that learning a foreign language is all about, you know, listening, reading, writing and speaking. When people come to us, majority of people want to learn to speak. You know, learning French is a method of communication, right? So people put a great emphasis on speaking. You need to understand that there’s two elements to the speaking skills, speaking, production and speaking interaction. This is too often overlooked. So we encourage all our students to go through these little booklets. You will go through every single skill.
So let’s start with the first one listening. You have, you know, the Bible for language levels in Europe originally, now throughout the world is the common, European framework for languages. We go by that framework for all the language programmes that we create at the academy and increasingly our students are doing placement tests, they’re doing certifications at the end of the language programmes with us. And all of that is being assessed according to the European framework for languages. And the reason why it’s really quite brilliant is because you have six different levels. A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2.
So A1, A2 is the elementary level. You go from being a complete beginner to getting by, getting by in regular, familiar, everyday situations. Your grammar, minimally accurate. You may not be able to speak in a way that is complex or understand detailed conversations, but you can get by.
Then you can move to the B level, B1, B2.That’s what we call independent learners. A B1 level means that, for example, you can conjugate in your verbs and therefore speak or write in most of the tenses. You start to use more complex and detailed sentences. Then you move to B2 level, which is really quite brilliant. With a B2 level, you can comfortably go and live in France or any other French speaking countries, okay? B2 level is taking it up a notch when it comes to the complexity of the language.
And then we go to C1, C2, which is mastery. So when you have reached a C2 level, you are completely, completely fluent. So what would be really interesting for you is to spend time looking at this document. Where do you want to be at? You know, because everything that we are discussing tonight works for all the learners at any different stages.
Now we have learners here at the academy who are comfortably at a C1 level and they still feel that they could go to the next step. They are still using all the techniques that we are sharing with you tonight. So, where would you like to get to? I mean, pressing exercise would be to print out this little booklet, grab a highlighter, and go through every single skill and decide what your aim is. Now we can move the goalposts next year, but where is it at the moment? And then think about why you are learning the language, the situation that you imagine yourself or anticipate being in when you have to interact in French. For now, what skills do you need the most? Is it listening? Is it writing? Is it reading? Is it interacting hourly with people? Is it producing the language between presentations, for example? Why don’t you maybe choose just two or three for now, to make your language goals digestible, bite sized chunks. And then if it was listening, for example, and you wanted to reach a B1 level, then you could look at this. Let’s look at the first one. I can understand straightforward, factual information about everyday study or work related topics. Identifying both general meaning and specific details provided that speech is clear and in a familiar accent. So if that is something that you wanna be working towards, put a tick next to it. When we do a review with you, we can go through that booklet and we can give you very specific advice on how to get there or to the next step if you’ve already reached it. So I would very much encourage you to spend about 15 to 20 minutes on this booklet, decide what skills matter to you the most and what level you would very much like to reach.
Laura amongst all the little techniques and tips that I’ve shared so far, and before we start on our 13 commandments, is there anything that you would like to share or anything that I may have forgotten?
Laura:
No, I think it was very complete. The only thing I would like to stress on is that when you start thinking really about what your learning styles are or what your personality and colour is and how you can apply that to language learning is that you might find that especially with the learning stuff, you might find that it slightly changes as you, grow in confidence and as you grow in experience as well. So for example, a lot of people struggle with listening a lot to begin with, and then it becomes easier afterwards. So I think also is once you have this not to stay extremely rigid in what you have as well and to always consider how you can, you know, once we give you, it’s not like a label that you have to keep forever., it’s something that is there to guide you in your learning, and it’s okay if you feel like it changes slightly as you progress.
Nathalie:
Completely agree. And as a matter of fact, you use the adjective rigid and rigidity and perfection.

So, we’re going to start with our 13 different ways to learn. What I’ll do is I list all the different ways, and resources, methodologies that you can use to learn French. And then we’ll talk about the pros and cons of each of them.
So the first one is learning in a group versus learning in a private lesson. Okay? So what’s best? There is one that is better than the other. So the first thing that you need to know is there’s a little bit of science behind this one. When you learn on your own with a language coach, it is estimated that the knowledge that you absorb is about three times more than when you are in a group. Okay? Again, this could change from one person to another, but as a general rule. So one hour of private lessons equates to three, you have to do three groups, sorry, I’m not explaining that very well. When you do just one hour of lesson, you would need to do three hours of group lessons to acquire the same amount of knowledge.
However, there are other factors that are equally as important. Think about you, your personality and your mindset when you are learning. Some students feel very uncomfortable on their own in a classroom with a language coach. I’ve heard that before. So I feel that if it’s you, then it’s completely counterproductive to be on your own. If for you, what’s just as important as learning French is also to feel part of a community because that support and the idea of socialising with people who have, who share an interest with you is really important. Then you are very likely to get a lot more from the groups than the one-on-one.
So I think it’s very important that people understand that, yes, of course when you are on your own with a language coach, you will cover a lot more than you are with a group, even at the academy where we have very small groups, but it isn’t all about what research have said because they kind of plugged in one person in a group and another went in one and one and when this one has absorbed three times the knowledge that this one had.
Therefore, no, that’s an important factor, but once again, and I’m gonna say that an awful lot during this webinar, this is also about you. How do you feel when you do private lessons? How do you feel in a group? Some people love private lessons and yet are not looking to reach their goals very fast. But for them it’s little time for themselves, they are investing in their personal development. Yes, they wanna speak French, yes, they go on holiday to France, they have family there, they’re bought property there, but really this is about self-care and personal development every week. So they want the one-on-one. For other people, they have such busy diaries at work that they know they’ll never attend the group. So they’re already worried before they start that they’re not gonna make a commitment, well, let’s have private lessons. But I know a lot of people who would much rather go to groups because of the idea of committing to a group, getting on with the people than feel accountable that you have to turn up because hey, everyone will be there, and,you know, and we stand together. You know, we’re in it together. Like we’re suffering the whole language learning thing together. So think about this for a moment. How do you feel about one or the other? And again, you know, when I said earlier, it’s all about balance. It is proven that actually the best way to learn is to do both. But we also understand that that’s not always an option.

The number three and four that we wanna cover are online and offline. So I’ve said that I stepped foot in a French classroom for the first time, sorry, 20 years ago. Well, clearly online definitely wasn’t on the table at the time. At VICI, we adopted i.VICI our online language learning platform back in 2014. So we didn’t wait for unfortunate, recent events to be forced to go online. We have been doing it for eight years, so we know it works. But interestingly enough, when the crisis hit a lot of language schools decided to close down their physical premises and go online. We didn’t, it’s a decision that we didn’t take lightly, but we wanted to keep the premises. Why? Once again, because we wanna make sure that we can offer our students, you know, a lot of different options, now is there one that is better than the other? For years and years and years, people used to say, oh, language is human interaction. You couldn’t possibly learn online. No, I have to be in the same room as the teacher, otherwise there’s no way that I would learn on a computer, are you joking me? I mean, if I had had a penny every time I hurt that I’d be very rich by now.
The thing is this, there’s been two things of course, the fact that, you know, we’ve just had a pandemic and people were forced to be online, changed people’s attitude, you know, at some point they went, do you know what? I’m not gonna not do anything, okay, well let’s do it online, actually, it’s not so bad, actually it’s quite practical, actually I don’t have to travel or be stuck in traffic, actually I can have the kids downstairs and learn upstairs. But I think it’s also the fact that the idea of e-learning has vastly evolved in the last few years. When it first started, e-learning wasn’t, you know, high quality and professional language coaching with live coaches with you there, and just like we have with i.VICI, the interactive classroom with tons of features, which means that when you are learning online, you should have access to as many resources as you do when you come to the academy.
So there was none of that. It was just really fairly boring e-learning programmes where you were just speaking to a computer with very little interaction. And I think that that lazy teaching attitude of people who just wanted to make a, you know, quick book to go online, put on a French call that they could sell to millions of people around the world actually gave e-learning a bad name. But again, this has evolved over time and we can now say that the online training we can offer our French students is really just as good as what we can do here because I am at the academy.
Now, again, it is about you. If you feel that for you, in order to feel ready to learn French, and again, in the right mindset you have to physically go somewhere, then you should look for in-house language programmes. If on the other hand it really doesn’t matter to you and that actually you would rather do it online because you feel that the practicality is going to be that little ingredient that gets you going, and enables you to give you some continuity and regularity in your learning, then you need to go for online. If you really feel that meeting people physically and feeling part of this community to you has to be on site, then you know, come to the Academy.
Again, actually having both is pretty perfect, but we also understand that that’s not always a possibility, especially for our students who live at the moment. We have students in the United States we have students in France and Germany. Clearly they’re not gonna come to our beautiful little market town of Newbury, Berkshire on a regular basis. But it also means that you could compliment what you do with us by finding a little social group. We have a customer who is based in Germany and I think once a month she actually goes to a little social club where they meet and speak French. And she said that that is perfect for her because she really wants the structured and, you know, resort oriented programme that we provide her, but she loves that interaction that she can get at home. So online, offline, both can be excellent quality. Again, it’s very much about you. When you see yourself learning, do you feel that you physically need to go somewhere? Do you feel that you need to meet for that community of yours? Or do you want, you know, the practical element? Are you very comfortable with online tools that for you it feels extremely natural to be learning online?

Then we wanna talk to you about e-learning, but e-learning through different forms, which is self-study digital platforms. So again, at VICI we primarily work with three but one’s for children. So, we’ll part that one for today we work with two called Lingua Attack and Hypnoledge. E-learning platforms like these ones can be wonderful at hand resources to your language programmes. They can truly enhance your learning and they can really, really hand on hand, make your progress faster. There is no doubt about it. What I would ask you to be a little bit worried of are platforms that tell you that you can use them on their own and that you don’t need the support and guidance of a language coach. Can you do that? Absolutely. Will you get results? I am not convinced, and I am clearly a little bit biassed, but you know, in my 20 year career, digital platforms have been, they’ve been around for about 10 years, but taken seriously and really being created on modern languages and not just some, boring click on the picture and find the word associated to the picture, probably only six, seven years. So they have still been around for a very long time. I have yet to find one that has created a bilingual person, if I’m mistaken here, then perhaps, you know, people can send me an email and say, you’re absolutely wrong because I’ve used this and I’m now fluent. But I read a study again, pinch of salt on some of the research, but I read a study years ago that says that people who learn foreign languages on their own for an hour a day, I mean that is some serious commitment, will take 17 years before they can actually start to have half decent conversation. So I’m all for making learning French a journey, but 17 years is quite a long time you decide. So digital self-study platforms, we love them. We think that if they accompany your language programme, they can truly make a difference to your learning.
Why we talked about immersion earlier on, the immersion factor that they provide you with is brilliant. As much as we would love to be with you all the time, you know, to guide you and be with you, so you can speak French all the time, it’s simply not possible.
So what the digital platforms do is that on a regular basis, even for five minutes, they connect your brain to the language. And we’ve had excellent results with the platforms that we’ve used. Again, it’s about you. So the new platform that we are now using called Hypnoledge uses hypnosis, you may have guessed to help people break down barriers and be more comfortable speaking and therefore absorber of the knowledge. We’ve tested it, before it came about, the staff tested it, some of our students tested it and it’s very much 50-50. Some of us loved it and I’m one of them. Some of them are, you know, a little bit reserved about it and not so sure that it’s really beneficial or something they’d like to learn. To the contrary, Lingua Attack, which is the other platform that we use and it’s full of very authentic French videos and its contextual languages, is absolutely brilliant. You can do exercise, you can just watch the videos, through the back office we can track where you are at. Some of our learners are on it all the time and some of them after three or four months tell us that, you know, they don’t particularly enjoy that kind of learning. So again, digital study platforms are, I think, an amazing way to push your French skills further. But before you decide to adopt one, take a step back and think about all that we’ve said at the start of this webinar about you and how you like to learn.
If you are not someone who is very good with daily disciplines, not that you have to do it daily by the way, you could do it just once a week, twice a week, as long as it’s regular. That’s the key to get your brain really engaged. Your brain expects it on a regular basis. But if you are not usually self-disciplined, if you are not someone who is finding much reward in learning something on your own, I would advise against them because they are likely to make you feel pretty bad about yourself. If you are struggling to get into a routine with them, you’ll just end up going to your next coaching session, having to tell the coach that you’ve not done the homework or not watch the video or you may be sat in front of it feeling a little lost because it’s not quite you because you need real guidance. So if that’s how you are, then part them for the time being and only start to use a digital platform if you’ve been advised by a professional who knows you as a learner very well to tell you which platform they think you should adopt.

So the next things are apps. Well, I think everyone could gather that I was going to mention apps because that is what everyone is talking about, language apps. So I often tell a little bit of a story about that or more of an anecdote. So many people when I am at say, dinner parties and they start to talk about languages and someone says, “oh, I’m using Duolingo” and “I’m using Babel”, and so often people would go, “don’t tell Natalie, she’ll be upset,like, she’s like a proper linguist so she’s not going to like it” This is not true. I am in favour of everything that will help my learners. I often say that as a language coach, the biggest reward that we can receive from our learners is that one day they say, we don’t need you anymore. I don’t need you anymore. Like, I’m so confident and comfortable speaking French, this is goodbye from me. That’s a really good day for us. So if you can find an app that is really helping you, then I’m saying please go for it.
This second reason why I really like apps is once again, because of the immersion factor. I can’t be on the train with you when you commute to work in the morning. So if you can spend 15 minutes on your app, then please do so. I’m not gonna be sipping wine, you know, on the sofa with you at night, although, you know, I can have an invite, I never refuse wine, but I’m not going to beat that. So if you wanna chill for 15 minutes of an evening, put your feet up and grab a glass of wine and think “You know what? I want to do a bit Duolingo and revise my French vocab”. Perfect. Remember that learning a foreign language is all about tricking your brain into learning French in different concepts, many different ways, shapes and forms and on a very regular basis.
So are apps good? Yes they are. Will apps make you fluent? No they won’t. Apps are very limited in where they can take you and it’s actually the owner inventor of the Babel app who said it himself. He was accused one day or criticised on a forum for having built an app that is not working. So when he said to the people who weren’t particularly satisfied, “Why are you saying that it’s not working?” People were saying, “Well I can’t even speak. I’ve been on it for six months, I know all these things, but you know, I can’t speak and when people speak to me, I don’t understand”. And he said, “You will never speak a foreign language without learning with a human. And I never promised that in my app, my app has a completely different purpose.” And he’s spot on, apps, so great as an add-on resource.
Another thing as well, you know, a bit of a word of advice is that, I was on Facebook browsing on Facebook or procrastinating on Facebook, whatever you wanna call it the other day, and a friend of mine said that he was learning Ukrainian. He has a lot of Ukrainian families around where he lives, in the Bristol area in the uk, and he wanted to learn, he’s retired and he wanted to learn because he is volunteering and he started to say that he was using Duolingo and the, you know, Ukrainian, which I think we can all agree is not one of the easiest language to adopt when English is your mother tongue or any other for that matter.But, he was saying how it was fairly easy and Duolingo was amazing and he’d already learned Greek with it and revised its French and, he’s a friend of mine, he is such a talented linguist, it is just wonderful. But please don’t compare yourself to people like this. Please don’t think the fact that you can learn some Ukrainian fairly easily with an app means that you can too. The truth of the matter is that my friend is a very, very high academic. He has learned Greek and Latin. He’s completely fluent in French, he’s Spanish, pretty fluent in Italian, speaks German with a high level of proficiency. He is a language genius. And so yes, this is part of his makeup. We talked about being cognitively wired in different ways. Well clearly his brain screams foreign languages and he’s in his late sixties and he’s retired and he does that hours every day.
So if you’ve decided to take up a foreign language in your forties and that wasn’t really your forte at school and you are still working and you have a family to take after, think twice about adopting an app because so and so on Facebook said that they would learn it very well. Besides, it depends on your goals. I spoke to someone one day who was raving about an app to learn Spanish and I said, I’m very interested in your feedback because this is the work that I do. And that person said, oh yeah, I know so much. Well long story short, but when I started to speak to this person, she knew extremely little. So don’t compare yourself to other people and their own experience, past experience of having learned foreign languages, but also check what people mean when they’ve said that they’ve learned a foreign language very well with an app. Because their idea of “very well” may not be yours, especially if you’re watching this video because, this webinar, because I feel that if you are, you are pretty serious about learning a foreign language and French in particular.

So now let’s move on to textbooks. Well, if you came to the academy here today or looked in my office, you would think Natalie’s very fond of textbooks. I’m fond of books for sure, they’re very important in my life. I love reading. But what do you think of textbooks? Again, when I first started 20 years ago, and not having any experience at all, I bought every single textbooks that I could find: some that focused on verbs, some focused on grammar, on vocab, on different situations, they’re still here in the cupboard at the academy and there are over a hundred. Textbooks have a place in your journey of learning French.
But I’d like to explain what they’re good at and what they may not be amazing at. Learning with a textbook means that you are gonna cover some content in unit one, then a bit more in unit two, then in unit three than in unit four. When you get to unit 10, it’s unlikely that you’ll remember what was in unit one. And that is the downside of textbooks. You see, you shouldn’t learn a foreign language as an object. Something that you can learn and talk about something that you learn and talk about. You should learn a foreign language as an entity that lives, not an object.
Let me give you an example: When you were learning history at school, you know, you were told what happened in that century and you learned some dates and then you moved to a different era and then you learned some dates. You can’t change that, you can’t move that, you can learn history as an object. You just learned the dates, what happened, you’ll discuss it, but you can’t change it.
When you learn a foreign language as an object, what happens is you learn a series of knowledgeable chunks but you don’t know how to use it. And that is the downside of textbooks. You learn all these chunks just like you’ve learned dates, you know, through a chronological order when it was a history class. But you can’t use it after. You don’t need to use history dates. You just need to know them and place them. If you have a history test with languages, you need to use it, learning it as little different objects serves no purpose. And that is where textbooks really fall a bit short. They can however, be very good for things like illustrations, especially the new textbooks. So they still make loads. My colleagues and I were looking at a very recent one in French that we want to buy, very often they would explain a concept.
So, for example, the difference in French between the two past tenses that are the most in use: imparfait and passé composé, imperfect and perfect. I found in a textbook the other day the most beautiful illustration with great colours for visual learners. Amazing. It was fabulous for things like that, for you as a visual aid, it can be very good. It’s also very good if you are the kind of learner who really likes to sit down and do a bit of quiet homework, they can be very good. But you see they have to be used in relation to what you are currently learning. So for example, if you are currently covering, in your class with your coach, imperfect versus perfect, then it should be okay to start with unit 13. If you need 13. And the textbook talks about this and in that instance they are an excellent tool.
So we still buy them by the way, but I just want to warn students against using them in the order that they are presented to you and also not look outside of the textbook. That is really limiting and narrowing your learning of, again, what is a very vast subject. And with textbooks you don’t really get the difference in the language culture or the difference in the language nuances. It’s a little bit too narrow as far as I’m concerned. But again, for all the reasons that I’ve just mentioned, they can still be a very good learning tool.

Now, bilingual magazines, I am a big fan of magazines, but ask yourself the question, do you like reading magazines? You know, do you like reading magazines in your own mother tongue about a topic that you like? Do you like gossip magazines?Do you like magazines that talk about motorcycles? Because it’s a passion of yours.
You need to have a particular affection, I wanna say with magazines, it needs to be something that you enjoy doing. You grab a magazine, you’re gonna spend an hour at the coffee shop, you do your shopping on the Friday night and you always grab a magazine in the supermarket, because you know, that’s your little treat from when you come home. If that is the case, then bilingual magazines are going to be a little gem for you. And why, also because you can use them in many different ways. You can choose to just read an article that is just a very short paragraph, with a glass of wine. That’s a recurring thing, the glass of wine. And by the way, I should have said that from the very first minutes of this webinar, it is absolutely scientifically proven that alcohol helps fluency, drops all inhibitions.
Now you could just see it as a nice little relaxing time with your magazine, but magazines can also be used with a notepad and a highlighter and you read it and you go through an article that you actually can make sense of. but there’s a lot of vocabulary in there that you’re not aware of. Go through it, highlight the vocabulary you don’t understand. Go and find out what it means. Create your own little, write it down or create your own little dictionary. I often advise students to use little index books, French to English, English to French. So you create your own little dictionary, go and write it down.
Another thing that I often advise students to do, and whilst you may sound a little bit odd, it is actually something I did personally when I was learning English. I grabbed the magazine and I read out loud. Now, I used to grab my magazine in English and I used to grab the magazine and read full articles out loud. That did two things for me.
Number one, it increased my confidence in speaking when I was speaking in a real situation. It really helped. I think that’s probably because I found myself practising and speaking English so often that I could hear my voice and it felt okay. I probably had an accent. And when I was reading, I felt very comfortable because I didn’t have to second guess what I had to say. I was reading the text. I knew that was pure beautiful English by any mistakes. So that gave me a lot of confidence. But again, it doesn’t just happen once, you know, it’s not an overnight success. This is something I was doing on a weekly basis, which really helped me to speak in real life situations.
Well, the second thing that I often talk about as well is it helped me with my accent. Because interestingly enough, when I was reading something out loud and I would stumble across a word again, I would write it down. And then when I go to class, I’d ask my teacher and say, how do you say that word? And she would tell me and I would pronounce it and then it would go in. So personally, I love magazines because I think that they are an entertaining way of helping you learn French. And they can be used in many different ways.

Video games are number nine. Now, I am not going to pretend to be a geek because I am absolutely not a geek. I know next to zero about video games, but part of our work as linguists is clearly to research the matter. And I was talking to another of our colleagues, Laure, and she told me that her husband learned English. He’s French through video games an awful lot. So I wanted to know more because it’s, I, you know, generally not something that I, I had thought of. Well, you see her husband actually studied for quite a few years, so I expect that he would’ve learned English to a substantial level, either at high school or university. And yet he said that video games taught him so much. What he said was that, and again, we talked about community in classrooms where this is a virtual community. So he said that he was playing video games that involved being with another online community and that they had, it was a bit of an adventure, but they had tasks to do. They had missions. And so he said that whilst he was really involved in this gripping video game, he had to pursue his mission. He had to find clues, he had to speak to other people, and he was surrounded by this community. And all of this was in English.
If you like video games, can you find one in French? I can help you with that. I can call my geeky friends. But isn’t it fascinating that someone who already has, you know, a very decent level of English through an academic journey only says try video games are amazing. When you start to think about it, you can really see how being absorbed in that community and starting to think about interacting with everyone and getting your brain engaged all in that target language with, which for you is French, can work. So video games could be on your list.

Now we go to number 10 and we talk about residential programmes. Immersion, immersion, immersion, immersion. There is, you know, nothing that anyone would ever say about the amazing immersion factor, sorry when you learn a foreign language and we organise every year a six day immersion programme to France, which we have done for six years. And it’s always been a great success.
It is undeniable that being immersed in the country where the language is being spoken is going to boost your language skills. But again, if that is something that you wanna do, really start to do some research about what is right for you. Is it a language and cultural programme like the one we offer? Is it more of an academic set where you wanna go to a university in a French speaking country? Do you wanna go and live with some French people, with a French family for a few weeks? I’m not gonna go into all the details for all these options, but I am more than happy to discuss this over the phone any time. I’ve seen all these different residential options work very well for some students, and I’ve seen quite a few being a little bit of a disaster. And I think that that could have been avoided if people truly understood what was in it for them. And please remember that immersion can be done at home. You can all have a smartphone and you can turn that into French. So every time you look at it, it’s in French. If you know your way around your iPhone or any other smartphone, very well go in the setting, change the language. You may not be very popular with all the members or the members of your family, but if you really wanna focus on vocabulary for a week grab Post-Its, start to put Post-Its everywhere in the house. So every time you go around the house, you see all these French words.
There are plenty of different ways that you can immerse yourself at home. You could make it a routine to brush your teeth every day, and in that time, listen to a five minute podcast. After a few days, your brain will start to think in, but also demand some French interaction every morning when you brush your teeth. So immersion can be at home, but clearly we would encourage you to try an immersion programme.

And now we are down to number 11, 12, and 13, which are all quite similar because they go under the umbrella of the media. Okay? So we look at radio, tv, films, and podcasts. All of these are amazing. Why? Because you can pick and choose, but two, because the language goes in your subconscious. And when you learn a foreign language, so when you learn French, your brain goes through five different steps.
The first time you hear a new word, it goes into your subconscious. And as far as you are concerned, you haven’t even noticed it. You know nothing about it. The second time around you think, “Ooh, I think that rings a bell, but I, I don’t know who that means”. The third time you’ll think, “Ooh, I think I know that. And given the context, I think it might mean this”. And then the fourth time you think, “Yeah, definitely means that I now know” in your word and the fifth time you can say it five, five different steps.
So when you listen to the radio, you may not understand all of it, but please let me tell you that an awful lot goes in your subconscious, and it only needs to be triggered by the magazine, by a lesson that you will attend for that word or expression, to start to go up on the ladder in your brain, to the point where you’ll be able to use it.
So the reason why it’s so, so brilliant is that it doesn’t require much of an effort. You know, you are cooking: turn the radio on, you’re travelling: turn the radio on. The TVs and films, you know, is there a film that you love? Is there a film that you’ve watched plenty of times? Watch it in French. Why? Because you don’t have to think about this story. You know the story so well, and the chances are, you know a lot of the dialogues. So watch it in the target language. You can watch films that you enjoy with French subtitles, you can watch films with English subtitles as people speaking in French. You decide what works best for you. But in all that time, your brain is immersed in the language. And podcasts, you know, podcasts are fabulous.
Find a podcast on a subject that interests you. Find podcasts of French lessons. We have our own podcast. Our podcast is all about the difference between France and England, because this is where both our offices are. You know, what’s the difference in the education system? What’s the difference in the health system? And we, I invite people and we talk about this. Why don’t you listen to this? And the great thing about all of that is that you can listen to them over and over again. You know the news, if you don’t have time to watch the BBC news, go on your laptop when you arrive at work. If you’re in England, put on the BBC News and then find the equivalent in France. Let me tell you, the chances are as the time as I’m recording, this webinar and the Queen has died, both are gonna talk about it. You read it in English, then you read it in French. So use and abuse media, you know, they’re everywhere. They’re in our faces all the time. Try to pick out all the little bits that are going to help you. But the real nugget behind all of these is that you do not need to find resources where you can automatically understand what’s going on. You can absolutely use resources where to start with, you don’t have a clue. I told you that I loved reading. I spent hours when I lived in the north of England and I was still a student, I spent hours drinking coffee because that’s all I could afford and reading all the newspapers that were offered in the coffee shop. And I read, and I read and I read. And I used to not understand a word of some of these, apart from maybe vaguely the title.
So get into the habit of confronting the French language in a way that you don’t understand it and be comfortable with that, because part of becoming proficient in a foreign language is being very uncomfortable in an environment where you don’t understand the language. You know, there is no learning French, there is no French proficiency, and there is certainly no French English bilingualism if at some point you are not completely outside your comfort zone. And all that I’ve discovered now is a way to help you understand how all of those different commandments work. It’s a way to show you all that is out there. And I’m sure that there are plenty more if I was to dig a little bit deeper. But there is a way of saying you need to get outta your comfort zone, but, but, decide the type of learner that you are. Check out your personality and colour, work through your goals in a very systematic way. And then you’ll have a level of confidence there, because you might be listening to radio or a podcast that you don’t understand, but you have a goal and you understand how you work and you actually understand what you want out of this overall language programme.

So I hope that all of this is making sense. The next step for us is, I’d like to play a short video of a wonderful young lady called Catalina, who I think has been at the Academy for about 12 months now. And she talks about the blended learning element of learning a foreign language, which is the very last section that we will cover tonight. And my colleague, Laura will talk you through this. We looked at the type of learner that you are and what’s in this for you and how you can make it very personalised to you. Then all the different ways that you can learn now it’s time to decide what you are going to choose in order to make it work for you. And it’s very much the essence to everything that we do at the academy. And it’s called blended learning.
So before Laura talks to you a little bit more about this, I would very much like if I may, to share a video, if I can find it from Catalina, because I think that Catalina in her own words explains very well why this is working for her. And it was even more of a compliment because she says great things about VICI. But, but it, but it was a very interesting insight because Catalina has learned foreign languages in her own country from a very young age. So this is something that she’s used to.
Catalina
Hello, my name is Catalina. I’ve been with VICI for almost a year now, and I’m actually a native Spanish speaker learning French now in English, which has been like a challenge for me, but actually very enjoyable at VICI and much more easier now what I thought it was going to be thanks to lots of resources I’ve been given and all the support with the teachers. I’ve been learning French since I was very little in school, and then every now and then with college as well, and French has always been kind of a part of my life: French boyfriend, French Inlaws, now it has become a bit more urgent the need to, to learn it.
So that being said, I’ve tried many ways to approach it, many different methods, and I always felt very anxious when I was learning a language. Because I felt like it was a linear progress or linear process where I needed to assess that I was always climbing up a ladder kind of way. With VICI it was different. With VICI, I felt like I was free to grab whatever was in the menu, if that makes sense. Just not limit myself by the level I was at or that I thought I was at. And actually then ended up doing much better by just immersing in the language, just going out there, talking to people, attending classes in person. They allowed me to kind of play with all the different resources that they have, so I could choose what’s best for me, for my lifestyle, for my work schedule, my abilities, and how I like to learn things. So to give an example, I started with in-person classes, which were amazing. Now because of distance, I can’t go to the academy sadly, but they were amazing. I had the option to use Lingua Attack as well, which was like a very quick way of refreshing while I was studying, while just working or in between my kind of working schedule as well. I had the option of having online classes, which was amazing, and even during the pandemic it was really enjoyable and it’s still, still classes, online classes are, and I felt there was like no right or wrong way to learn, which I would say is kind of a different feeling when you’re a VICI than other academies because you are not assessed by kind of that lader kind of feeling, but you just enjoy the language and you just enjoy the people you meet and having interesting discussions and everything you learn gets put into context which is very different from other French courses. That’s where I was just basically repeating colours in French, animals, verbs, conjugating verbs that I would never use probably. VICI condensates and kind of focuses on things that you would use and gives you very interesting topics that you can also discuss and apply while you’re also enjoying the language. And, that’s key for me, at least for me, it really works, and I’m sure that for you it will as well.
Laura:
There was a lovely example of what you just said about Queen Elizabeth being translated into many, into many different languages. Literally just as you said it there it was.
Nathalie:
Do you know that I actually had a phone call from the local paper in Jura where I come from because they wanted me to, you know, tell them about the passing of the queen and how I felt about the royal family and all the rest of it. So it’s everywhere in France at the moment. So I think that, here’s an example whilst you talk about this, let’s just mention Laura and I did a consultation last week for actually a French client. So from the French office, the other way around to you, he wants to learn English. And he was saying that one of his challenges is to understand people with different accents and he needs that for work. So he said he does trade shows and when he speaks to people who have your typical, if you like, American or English accents, it’s fine because he’s been studying English for a long time.
But he said they have a lot of people who come from Asia or Africa or South America, and that throws him. The day after we had the consultation, I was watching the news, I was working from home, and I watched the, you know, everything about what’s happening at the moment with the royal family and King Charles and all the rest of it. And they were interviewing people from the Commonwealth and even there all the different accents. So I actually sent an email to the customer and I said, look, is there a way that you can get a BBC in France? Is there a way that you can watch some recordings on your laptop? Because quite frankly, right now, just online, you have people talking about the death of the Queen. It’s simple knowledge, it is simple language. You’ll know exactly what it’s all about and listen to all these individuals from different countries from the commonwealth or different accents. So absolutely there’s, when you learn a foreign language, that’s the beauty about it. Like there’s, you can grab things from everywhere. So talking about blended learning, this is the last thing that we’ll mention today. And this is something that is very, very close to our heart. I often say that again because when I started I had no experience or no training to teach. I tried so many different resources that I think I was doing my own little blend at the time. Blended learning actually came about about 20 years ago, but he’s only really emerged in the training world and not just languages in the last few years. So Laura is pretty much an expert at that. So Laura I’m gonna share my screen. I think you’ve got something that you wanna show us, so go ahead and let us know how our students can work on their own little blend.
Laura:
Excellent. So, here I think we can see, there you go, my little blender. So this is a picture that we love to get out but it really is a picture that really kind of shows what blended learning is. So as you can see, I have a blender in the middle. And the idea of blended learning is that you pick and you take all of the parts of language learning that you enjoy, that you know works for you. So going back to the strategies that we learn, whether you are visual or auditory summary or kinaesthetic, whether you like to have things on a very raw base, if you’re a blue compared to if you maybe like things that are very fun if you’re a yellow, it’s about really thinking about everything that we’ve said so far, all of the different strategies we’ve spoken about, all of the different resources that we’ve spoken about, and taking what sounds right for you and taking what you think will work for you and putting it into your own smoothie.
It’s about making your own personal combination. So picking the ingredients that work for you, the different resources, the different things that work for you, but also putting them in the quantity that works for you as well.
And also remembering, as I said earlier, that this changes as you go on. And the thing about blended learning is that nobody’s gonna have the same smoothie. What works for you is not gonna work for someone else,and that means you can’t just take what someone has said online. I’ve done this and this is how I learnt my language in two weeks. People think about it, it’s not about copying what other people have done, it’s about being inspired from everything that you see and taking it and putting it into your own perfect smoothie.
So as Nathalie said, take what you know you enjoy already in your everyday life, whether that is reading magazines, whether that is scrolling through your phone and spending too much time on social media, therefore thinking, oh, I should maybe start following some French Instagram accounts. I can start getting some French content into my phone. Whether that is, you know, that you spend every day, actually maybe you, you know that you go and you read the news every day, reading the news in your target language, all of these tiny little things that you do every day and taking them into your target language and eventually creating your own perfect and completely personalised combination of things that work for you. And again, I just wanna refocus on the idea of being flexible with this and adding things and trying things that maybe you didn’t know that you would enjoy or to things that you didn’t necessarily know would work for you. And taking them and trying them and continually refining the smoothie, continually changing the ingredients, changing the combination of ingredients and the, the strength of the things you’ve got, the amount of different things that you have and just changing it until you eventually find the thing that works for you in the moment, and then working with that and just continually as I trying new things, trying new combinations and finding your perfect smoothies for you.
Nathalie:
Wonderful. Laura, thank you so much. So what would be really good right now is for you to pause this webinar and take a moment to decide what you want to put in your french smoothie. How do you see yourself learning? What do you want to add in your smoothie? That seems very exciting to you.
Okay, so we’re now coming to the end of this webinar. And really my question to you is, how do you see yourself learning now? Do you feel suited to a language programme that incorporates some of these elements? We would really love to have your feedback. You know, what’s exciting in our line of work is to do all the research and to do lots of trials, but then obviously getting feedback from our students is, you know, the most exciting thing of all. So please do tell us. And if you feel that being part of a language programme within a community of very like-minded people who are really looking for a result with their French lessons is something that you are after, then please come to me because we are currently taking applications for our ambition programme. It’s a programme that my team and I have been working on for a few months now. It’s extremely result driven, but still with a lifestyle element, we’re not looking for people who wanna learn French, you know, part-time or full-time. It is very much a lifestyle language programme, but it targets an awful lot of what we’ve said tonight and it is very much designed to take you to some specific results in the next 12 months. So Laura, anything else to add?
Laura:
No, I think we have covered everything, but just that you know, that we really are, we do enjoy helping people and guiding people as well to find the perfect solution for them. And Nathalie and I are always very, very happy to, to discuss individual cases with you as well, to really help you work out what works for you and help you understand why specific things might work for you and why other things don’t as well. It really is kind of what we, what we are experts in and what we, we really enjoy to do as well.
Nathalie
Absolutely. And the last thing that I wanted to say, which really fits in well with what you’ve just said is that some of you who follow us or who have been clients for a long time will know that we very recently over the summer acquired another language training company in London called My Language Lab. And My Language Lab is an excellent company. It has become a sub-brand of the VICI Language Academy and it offers a slightly different concept in terms of it being tutoring, just plain tutoring, no fluff, but excellent quality language, tutoring. VICI is a boutique language academy that offers language coaching, that is all the fluff that we’ve just spoken about tonight that has, you know, all these elements of putting the students at the heart of every single lesson and designing language programmes that are gonna feed the student’s brain in the way that the students learn.
Tutoring is a lot more about passing on our French language knowledge to our students. So having those, you know, two branches now within the Academy is really quite wonderful to us because it truly means that we can offer more options to the students who come to us for help and guidance and, you know, we can find different solutions. We fully understand that for some students, the straightforward, you know, tutoring is going to be perfect and then we will be able to say to our students, well, there you go, have a look at My Language Lab, lets define together how you’re gonna learn who you’re gonna learn with. If on the other hand what you’ve heard tonight really hits the nail on the head, you know, for you really spark something where you think, this is really how I wanna learn, then you really should be in the hands of the VICI Language Academy coaches.
So do reach out. I will leave my calendar so you can all make an appointment either with myself or with Laura. I tend to focus on all the questions with regards to the application for the ambition programme with any personalised programmes, any of the memberships that we offer at the academy. Laura very much focuses on all the digital platforms, so thank you ever so much, merci beaucoup, I really, really hope that this was helpful, and as Laura said earlier, our favourite part of our job is to sit with students and share with them our passion for the French language. And so if you need anything at all, please reach out.
Merci beaucoup, au revoir et à bientôt.