Helen’s Journey to Fluent French: How She Transformed Her Language Skills in Retirement
How to learn French as an American retiree? Let’s meet Helen.
Over the past 12 years of teaching French online, I’ve encountered countless learners at different stages in their language journey. Some are starting from scratch, while others are rekindling their relationship with French, often after years — even decades — away from it. Despite their diverse backgrounds and reasons for learning, many share similar experiences and challenges.
Today, I want to talk about a typical story of so many learners. But instead of singling out one of you, let’s talk about a hypothetical, fictional student. Let’s call her: Helen.
Through Helen, you might just see a reflection of your own French learning journey.
Meet Helen: A Retiree with a Passion for France
Let’s paint a picture of this fictional student’s current life.
So, Helen recently retired from her job as school teacher. She’s excited that she now has some extra time on her hands, and a little bit of disposable income, especially now that her kids are grown and out of the house.
She’s ready to spend more time with her hobbies, like gardening, reading, and travel. She has a particular interest in French culture, because her grandmother’s side of the family immigrated from France, and it makes her feel more connected to her ancestry.
Now that she and her husband are both retired, she would love to spend a month traveling around France. But she doesn’t want to just do the typical tourist things, like see the Eiffel Tower and sunbathe on the beaches in Nice. She wants the full, authentic French experience — fully immersing herself in the language, buying her daily bread in French, chatting with waiters and following a guided tour with locals, in French.
Helen did study French in high school, but that was more than 40 years ago now. And when her husband took her to Paris a few years ago to celebrate their milestone wedding anniversary, she quickly realized that she’s forgotten a lot of what she learned back then and isn’t very confident using the French she does remember.
She decides that rekindling her love for French culture — and her knowledge of French — is going to be her retirement project.
If you’re already noticing similarities between your situation and Helen’s, and you’re also trying to relearn French after a long break, a great way to regain your French is to try doing some of your everyday tasks in French! For example, you could write out your grocery list in French. Or if you’re in the habit of talking to your pets or even your houseplants, why not try speaking to them in French instead?
This way, you don’t just learn new vocabulary, you train your brain to retrieve it and your mouth to pronounce it.
Relearning French: The Initial Struggles
Helen heads to Amazon and buys a bescherelle, which she remembers using in high school, and a couple of the top selling French textbooks. She also signs up for some classes at her local Alliance Française so she can test her official “level”. Her kids recommend that she download an app called Duolingo, so she installs it on her phone and starts doing a few exercises each day.
After studying for a few months, and feeling like she’s really getting the hang of some basic vocabulary and grammatical tenses again, Helen decides one night to sit down and watch a French TV show on Netflix. But she quickly realizes that she can barely understand a word that the characters are saying! They all speak so fast, there were words she’d never come across before, and it sounds nothing like the French audio clips she’s been hearing on her Duolingo app.
If you ever come across the same issue, one tip I have for you is to start with slower paced content, like a children’s TV show or listening to a French podcast at a reduced speed. This will help you get used to the rhythm and sounds of everyday French. Of course, you can also use French subtitles to help with your comprehension.
She feels disappointed and frustrated, and starts to worry that maybe she’s just too old to learn a language. She wants to learn French so that she can go to France and carry out conversations with the locals, but she realizes that her textbooks and these more traditional approaches to learning French aren’t going to help her gain the knowledge and confidence she needs to have those conversations.
Discovering a New Approach to Learning French
Helen knew she didn’t want to spend the next 6 months learning French, only to go to France and have every French person immediately switch the conversation back to English.
Determined not to give up, she went to Google and typed in “understand spoken French”. The first search listing was for a video called “My #1 Tip to Understand Fast Spoken French” on a YouTube channel called Comme une Française.
She hit play, and less than 18 minutes later, Helen was shocked. This was the first time that anyone had explained to her that French people often cut letters, even entire words, from their speech! No wonder she couldn’t understand half of the Netflix show!
If you’ve experienced this too, you have to start paying attention to these spoken French ‘exceptions’. For example, instead of saying “Je ne sais pas,” a phrase that it’s so popular and common within non-natives, many French people will say “Chais pas.” Noticing these can make a huge difference in understanding real French.
She immediately signed up for Comme une Française’s weekly newsletter, and then watched two more videos on the channel that were specifically about understanding spoken French. It was like someone had opened her eyes and ears to an entirely new language!
By the way — this is why prioritizing spoken French is so important. Because you were taught written French up until this point, you naturally try to speak written French. But written French and spoken French are almost two completely different languages! That’s why spoken French feels so hard, no matter how much time and effort you put into studying the language.
The good news is that you’re already in the right place, now that you’ve found my channel. But you can also expose yourself to spoken French through movies, podcasts, and audio books. The more you train your ear to real spoken French, the more these nuances will start to make sense.
The 30-Day French Challenge: A Game Changer
A few weeks and lessons later, Helen checked her emails one morning and saw an invitation from Comme une Française to join their upcoming 30-Day French Challenge.
By spending about 15 minutes and just €1 per day, the 30-Day French Challenge promised to help her see a noticeable difference in her French fluency after 30 days, or she’d be able to ask for her money back.
But what really made Helen interested was the topic. This particular 30-Day French Challenge was travel themed, with daily activities that would allow her to explore different regions of France that she’d never visited before but had always been on her bucket list.
She wasn’t quite sure what to expect, and even worried that the lessons might be a little bit too basic for her. But she knew that she could easily fit a 15 minute exercise into her day, and trusted what she’d learned from the YouTube lessons so far. So, she signed up for her first 30-Day French Challenge!
This program is designed to be both entertaining and effective, helping you see noticeable progress in your spoken French through small, consistent daily actions. Plus, you get the added benefit of meeting an international community of Francophiles.
Click here to learn more: the 30-Day French Challenge
A few days into the challenge, Helen was already delighted by the quality of the lessons and accompanying resources. So far, they’ve been informative, helpful, and allowed her to dive as deep into the subject matter as she wanted. She’s also loving getting to know the other participants from all around the world, hearing about their own travels to these regions and cheering each other on despite their varying levels.
By the end of the challenge, Helen not only noticed that her French was coming back, but also advancing. In fact, she’s pretty sure that she learned more new, useful French in the last 30 days than she would have in 2 years on her own — and she had fun while doing it!
She learned some new slang and vocabulary that she can’t wait to weave into her everyday French, and realized she’d been pronouncing some words wrong for decades — something she never expected to discover from an online course!
So, she signs up for the next Challenge. And the next one. And the next one. Each time, she finds that she is continually polishing her language skills with minimal effort.
With each new Challenge, she also realizes how much more there is to learn about the French language and culture — something that makes her so happy, as someone who truly loves France and is committed to life-long learning.
Helen’s French Adventure: The Ultimate Reward
Before long, it’s time for Helen to take a break from the Challenge — but only because it’s finally time for her trip to France!
And what a trip it is. Because of the spoken French and insider tips on social nuances that she learned in the 30 Day Challenges, Helen realizes she has a surprising level of comfort when conversing with French people in everyday situations. The small, manageable lessons in the 30 Day Challenges have compounded into something much bigger, and not only has her comfort zone with the language grown, but the habit of French comprehension and speaking has become almost second nature.
One day on their travels, as she’s standing outside the Musée des Confluences in Lyon with her husband, a French-speaking tourist comes up to Helen and asks her for directions to la Place Bellecour. Not only does Helen fully understand what the woman is asking, but she tells the woman exactly how to get to her destination AND suggests a lovely little patisserie she should stop into on her way — entirely in French!
That evening, when she returns to her hotel, Helen sends an email off to the Comme une Française team:
“I am LOVING being in France again”, she writes. “I’d love if you would share with the team that apparently I fit in so well, people stop me and ask me for directions! I’ve done very well with that – en français ! C’est fou!! MERCI beaucoup for all your great support.”
(That’s based on a quote from a real email from a student, by the way 😉)
Could You Be the Next Helen?
Many of our students have stories just like Helen’s. Do you see yourself in her journey?
Perhaps, like Helen, you realized that traditional learning methods weren’t helping you with real-life French, or maybe you, too, dream of traveling to France and feeling like you truly belong. Whatever stage you’re at in your French learning journey, I’m confident that the 30-Day French Challenge could make learning real spoken French both fun and effective.
If you’re interested in reading honest opinions about the program from past participants or if you’re ready to join the next Challenge, just click on the link above or below.
I’d love to see you in the next Challenge. Either way, I’ll see you in the next lesson!
Click here to start your nex French journey: the 30-Day French Challenge
