“You have to put yourself through multiple embarrassing situations to be able to learn a language.”
I heard this years ago, at a time when I was struggling with French myself.
And honestly, I didn’t particularly like hearing it.
At that point, one of my biggest problems with French wasn’t grammar. It wasn’t vocabulary either. It was the FEAR of speaking.
I was constantly worried that I would pronounce a word so badly that I would accidentally say something completely inappropriate. The thought of saying the wrong thing in front of people and having everyone laugh at me was enough to make me think ten times before opening my mouth.
So, naturally, I did what many language learners do when they are afraid of making mistakes.
I avoided speaking.
I would think about what I wanted to say, mentally construct the sentence, question whether the grammar was correct, worry about my pronunciation and, by the time I was ready to say something, the moment had often passed.
Looking back, I realise that I wasn’t really protecting myself from embarrassment.
I was protecting myself from LEARNING.
I remember talking about this fear with my professeur référente in Grenoble, France, when I was working there as a Teaching Assistant in 2020.
I told her that I was scared of saying something so incorrectly that it would have an inappropriate meaning and everyone would laugh.
She listened to me and then, very casually, said: “So what? You’ll make people laugh, right? That’s good, isn’t it?”
That was it. No complicated explanation. No motivational speech. Just that.
And somehow, it completely changed the way I looked at the whole situation.
Because she was right.
What was the worst thing that could happen?
I might pronounce something incorrectly.
Someone might correct me.
Someone might misunderstand me.
Maybe, occasionally, I might even make someone laugh.
But none of those things meant that I should stop speaking French.
What I finally realised was that the bigger problem wasn’t actually my French.
It was the belief that I had to speak French correctly before I was allowed to speak French at all.
And that is an incredibly LIMITING BELIEF for anyone trying to learn a language.
We often think confidence comes first. It doesn’t.
Confidence comes AFTER repeated experience.
You need to create enough EVIDENCE to start believing that you CAN do it.
You speak.
You make a mistake.
Nothing terrible happens.
You speak again.
You make another mistake.
Someone helps you.
You learn the correct expression.
You use it the next time.
Slowly, the thing that once felt terrifying becomes ordinary.
After that conversation in Grenoble, I started giving myself more opportunities to speak French.
I spoke to people I had previously been too nervous to approach.
I stopped waiting for the perfect sentence.
I allowed myself to search for words.
I allowed myself to pause.
I allowed myself to pronounce things badly.
I allowed myself to sound unsure.
Most importantly, I allowed myself to be a LEARNER.
And something quite interesting happened.
Most people didn’t laugh. In fact, many people complimented me on my French.
That was probably one of the biggest lessons I took away from that experience.
We often imagine other people are paying far more attention to our mistakes than they actually are.
When you’re learning French, a pronunciation mistake can feel enormous inside your own head.
You may repeat it mentally for the next ten minutes.
You may wonder whether the person noticed.
You may feel embarrassed about it long after the conversation has ended.
The other person may have forgotten it thirty seconds later.
And even when someone does notice your mistake, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are judging you.
Most people understand what it feels like to learn something they aren’t naturally good at.
And when someone sees you genuinely trying to communicate in their language, they are often much more encouraging than you expect.
This is especially important for people who want to improve their French speaking skills.
You cannot become comfortable speaking French by only practising when you are comfortable.
At some point, you have to cross that uncomfortable little gap between “I know this” and “I am actually going to say this out loud.”
That is where a lot of language learning happens.
You may know the vocabulary.
You may understand the grammar.
You may have completed every exercise correctly.
And then someone asks you a simple question in French and suddenly your brain goes completely blank.
It happens.
It doesn’t mean that you don’t know French.
It means you haven’t yet had enough opportunities to retrieve and use that French spontaneously.
That ability develops through practice.
And practice is inevitably going to involve mistakes.
This is something I continue to tell my students because I see the same fear repeating itself in different forms.
One student is afraid of pronunciation.
Another is scared of grammar mistakes.
Someone else doesn’t want to speak because they feel their vocabulary isn’t good enough.
Someone preparing for TEF Canada or TCF Canada may know exactly what they want to say but become nervous because they are thinking about every possible mistake they could make.
And sometimes the biggest improvement doesn’t come from learning another hundred words.
It comes from becoming less afraid of using the words you already know.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you should stop caring about accuracy.
Accuracy matters.
Grammar matters.
Pronunciation matters.
Vocabulary matters.
If you’re preparing for a French proficiency exam, they matter even more.
But there is a difference between wanting to improve your accuracy and being so afraid of being inaccurate that you stop communicating altogether.
The first helps you improve.
The second holds you back.
You have to find a way to exist somewhere in between.
Speak first.
Notice your mistakes.
Correct them.
Try again.
That cycle is much more useful than spending ten minutes silently constructing one perfect sentence.
And there is another thing I have learnt over the years.
Some of your most embarrassing moments while learning a language may eventually become your favourite stories.
At the time, you may want the ground to open up and swallow you.
Later, you laugh about it yourself.
You remember the word you completely butchered.
You remember the sentence that came out differently from what you intended.
You remember the person who corrected you.
And you realise that you survived it.
More importantly, you learnt something from it.
That is why I don’t think the goal of learning French without making mistakes is a realistic one.
The goal should be learning French despite making mistakes.
There is a big difference.
If you wait until your French is perfect before speaking, you may spend an unnecessarily long time waiting.
If you accept that mistakes are part of the process, you give yourself permission to actually participate in the language.
And that changes everything.
So if you’re currently learning French and you are scared of speaking, I understand that feeling.
I have been there myself.
But try not to make the mistake of protecting your ego at the expense of your progress.
Say the sentence.
Ask the question.
Start the conversation.
Use the French you know.
And if you get something wrong, correct it and carry on.
Maybe you will embarrass yourself.
Maybe someone will laugh.
Maybe you will say something completely different from what you intended.
And maybe, just maybe, you will discover that it wasn’t nearly as disastrous as you imagined.
Because you cannot become comfortable speaking a language without first experiencing the discomfort of speaking it badly.
Give yourself permission to be imperfect.
You are not supposed to sound like a fluent French speaker while you are still learning French.
You are supposed to sound like someone who is learning French.
And that is perfectly okay.
The next time you find yourself thinking, “What if I say it wrong?”, remember what my professor told me in Grenoble.
“So what?”
Go ahead.
Speak.
You might make a mistake.
But you might also discover that you were much more capable than you thought.
Bon apprentissage !
Want to feel more confident speaking French?
At LingoRelic, we help French learners move beyond knowing the language to actually using it with confidence, whether you’re starting from scratch, improving your speaking, or preparing for TEF Canada or TCF Canada.
You know where to reach us.
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