Michelle Aniuchi
3 min readJan 4, 2025

Becoming a Confident French speaker in 4 Months? Let’s go! I guess.

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

In the spirit of resolutions, goals and whatnot, I just signed up for a paid French course that claims to turn one into a confident speaker in 4 months on somewhat of a whim.

Let me give you a little bit of a background so that I don’t sound crazy or crazy wasteful.

One of my goals is to understand enough French (A2 level at least) to be able to actually communicate on a trip to Quebec City some time during fall this year. I was in Montreal last year and I told myself that Quebec City was next. I hear it’s beautiful around the fall with the foliage changing colors and whatnot.

That being said, it is the architecture that just speaks to me. It sort of reminds me of Europe and since I cannot afford to go to Europe right now, it’s a pretty great alternative. I also finally got to watch this Kdrama called ‘Goblin’ recently and I just knew I had to go to the filming sites. That is how keen I am.

However, there is a little problem. I barely managed to get by during my Montreal trip with my primary school level French. If you went to school in Nigeria, you’ll understand better. Now while they were relatively kinder and more forgiving of my English-speaking touristy self, I don’t feel that confident about moving around while being barely literate in Quebec City.

Of course there’s Google translate but I think it would be super awesome to be able to blend in just a little and immerse myself in the city I am visiting. I recently took a test to know how much work I had to do and the site recommended an absolute beginner in French course. That is how bad it is.

Self assessment showing that a French for Absolute Beginners course is the appropriate level for me.

I spent some time looking into courses. I looked at the French courses offered by the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. I also checked Alliance Française. Fun fact: I have had a tab with their website open for 2 years now. So, clearly learning French has been on my mind for a while now. Lastly, I checked Boreal.

The costs started to add up exponentially when I started calculating how many of those courses I would need to take at each level to get me to B1.

You can imagine my excitement when this ad pops up on my feed with such a promise at a fraction of the cost. It’s also self-paced which is something none of the rest offered. It’ll definitely require some discipline on my part but given how much I seem to want this at the moment, it shouldn’t be too hard to manage.

It took me less than 10 minutes to make a decision after doing my due diligence. I mean, what did I have to lose? Plus the testimonials looked pretty decent. They spoke in French and you could tell they were foreign speakers so it must have worked.

Anyway, I am keeping my fingers crossed to see how this goes. Maybe my 2025 wrapped will be in French? Who knows?

Till next time. 💕💕

Michelle Aniuchi
Michelle Aniuchi

Written by Michelle Aniuchi

Front End Dev || Writer || Blogger

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