Bittersweet moment: I've been too busy for language coaching for a while but today was the day I had my last session with my last student. So let's take the opportunity to share Angelica Thought on adult language acquisition (thread)

I assume you're a busy adult person with a life. Forget about grammar etc. You should have a decent textbook but it's a reference, you dip into, not a grindstone you hold your nose to. Instead, imagine a three-legged stool. Keep each of the three legs strong and you'll learn...

The first leg and arguably most important is massive input. This is how a baby learns. Trust your brain to sort out the connections. The hard part: finding COMPREHENSIBLE input for your level.

Protip: find something you already know pretty well and that will help you absorb the content by context. For instance, I was a pastry chef so watching the French version of the Great British Bake off was great!

Oops wrong image:

The second leg is using a spaced repetition flashcard system. The best is Anki although ppl do thing like using the fibonacci sequence or whatever. Anki remind you to recall a word just as you are about to forget it. This massively speeds vocab acquisition https://leananki.com/how-to-use-anki-tutorial/

Protip: don't learn atomized words, learn a little chunk. Don't learn how to conjugate a whole verb, learn how to say the most common phrases as they are used idiomatically. You'll need "I want" a lot more often than "they want" (ok those the same in English but just example)

Last leg of the stool is ear training and pronunciation. It is better to say a few sentences perfectly than know a bunch or words and stumble over all of them. This vid from Karen Chung should convince you:

The greatest source of shadowing material is FSI...recorded decades ago and so boring but those lexical drills really sparkle up your pronunciation:

https://www.fsi-language-courses.org/fsi-language-courses/

Keep hitting the three legs and you'll improve...maybe slowly. Keep building your affinity with the language so it's fun and you look forward to it. It should charge you up not wear you down. Every step should be enjoyable...there is no destination.

Ont of inspiration? Go on the youtube polyglot community! My favorite is Lindsey but Lucas Lampariello is also great!

Finally of you wanna learn French Inner french is the single best source of material and courses ever. I can say if not for Hugo I won't be taking my B2 exam this May (hopefully to pass). Good luck out there and fall in love with your language!

https://innerfrench.com/