%20(8).png)
I still remember the pride of acing my French exam at university. After months of study, drills, and late-night grammar grinds, I earned top marks. I was officially “good” at French, or so I thought.
Then I moved to France.
Armed with vocabulary lists and great test scores, I expected to glide into cafés, chat with locals, and confidently order pastries. Instead, I froze.
Real conversations moved too fast. Locals would switch to English the moment they saw my hesitation. I panicked. I defaulted to English. All those memorized grammar rules? Gone.
It felt humiliating.
For a long time, I blamed myself. Maybe I wasn’t “naturally gifted” at languages. Maybe I missed my chance by not learning as a child. Maybe it was just too late.
But something about that story didn’t sit right. It felt unnecessarily final, like fluency was only for the lucky or the young. And that’s when I started asking deeper questions:
That’s when I realized: I’d been taught to translate, not speak.
My method was built around English-thinking. Flashcards, grammar tables, conjugation drills. It all trained me to translate French in my head, not to use it instinctively.
And that gap between knowing French and actually speaking it?
That’s where everything started to unravel.
Most adults learning a second language are stuck between two very different systems:
From infancy, language is absorbed through repetition and context.
Think of a mother cooing: “Say mama… mama… mama…”
The baby doesn’t analyze grammar. They hear the phrase, mimic the sound, and slowly form associations.
Fluency emerges naturally from repetition, emotion, and interaction.
Now compare that to the adult learner’s method:
That’s like asking a toddler to conjugate before they can crawl.
It’s unnatural, and deeply inefficient for real-life communication.
The answer lies in the origins of modern language instruction:
The Grammar-Translation Method (GTM), a system designed not for speaking, but for translating dead languages like Latin.
Its goals were:
When French and German entered schools in the 1800s, educators simply reused this Latin-based model. And while teaching methods have technically evolved, many classroom and app-based tools still echo this system.
If you’ve ever:
…you’ve trained in the GTM tradition, whether you realized it or not.
I wasn’t speaking French, I was decoding it.
Every sentence went through a mental loop:
English thought → French translation → grammar check → delayed response
That loop might work in an exam room. But in fast-paced conversations?
It collapses.
At its core, translation is the bottleneck that blocks fluency.
And once I understood that, everything started to shift.
So many of us, after leaving school or giving up on textbooks, reach for the next logical thing: a language app.
At first, it feels fresh.
🎵 Catchy sounds
🎯 Streaks to maintain
🎨 Flashy colors and gamified goals
But look closer.
These tools still teach with the same outdated logic, just wrapped in dopamine hits and touchscreen polish.
You become a master of multiple-choice fluency, able to ace in-app quizzes, yet go speechless when someone asks you a simple question in real life.
Why? Because these apps often reinforce a flawed assumption: that language is academic knowledge.
But language isn’t something you know. It’s something you do.
It’s muscle memory.
It’s timing, tone, rhythm.
It’s confidence under pressure.
And especially with spoken French, where the way it’s said often differs wildly from how it’s written, this gap between studying and speaking only widens.
You might know all the words.
But if someone asks, “Vous prenez autre chose ?” (Would you like anything else?), and you freeze?
That’s not a vocabulary problem.
It’s a fluency mismatch.
At the root of most adult language learning is one habit: translation.
It feels logical. Safe. Efficient.
You spot an English phrase in your mind…
You look for the French equivalent…
You build a sentence piece by piece…
But in reality?
That’s not a bridge, it’s a detour.
Like choosing the longest route on Google Maps when a faster, more direct path is just one turn away.
This “translation reflex” keeps you stuck in your native language.
You’re not thinking in French, you’re thinking about French, using English as a crutch.
That leads to:
Real French doesn’t wait for your verb charts.
You’re stuck thinking:
“Okay, plural you… past tense… ‘avez été’? or was it ‘êtes allés’?”
But by the time you finish the thought?
The conversation’s already moved on.
That moment of silence? That mental freeze? It’s not failure.
It’s the inevitable cost of relying on translation.
Imagine trying to learn to dance by reading a book.
You sit in a classroom.
You memorize the steps.
You pass a test on what a plié or grapevine is.
But you never stand up.
Never feel the music.
Never let your body trip, recover, and find its rhythm.
Sound absurd?
That’s exactly how most of us were taught languages.
We studied them.
We didn’t rehearse them.
So when it’s time to speak, our mouth blanks.
Like a dancer shoved on stage who’s only seen choreography on paper.
And the apps?
They promise “practice,” but most are just more desk time.
Tapping buttons. Matching phrases. Racking up gold stars.
But fluency doesn’t come from acing quizzes.
It comes from embodiment. From speaking. Repeating. Feeling.
Fluency isn’t about cramming more info into your head.
It’s about automaticity. Your ability to respond without pausing to think.
That only comes from repetition.
Not robotic drills, but real-world, contextual practice.
Research backs this up.
In Anders Ericsson’s famous study on expert violinists, the standout performers didn’t just log more hours, they practiced deliberately.
They repeated tough sections over and over, in quiet spaces, until ease and confidence replaced hesitation.
A more recent language study found that learners who read phrases aloud retained vocabulary far better than those who read silently.
Why? Because speaking engages your voice, ears, and memory.
It makes the experience active, not passive.
Even if you’re not in conversation, oral repetition mimics the pressures of speaking.
It builds reflexes, not just recognition.
Because like with cooking, surfing, or music,
You don’t learn by watching. You learn by doing.
You chop the onions. You wipe out on the wave. You stumble through the sentence.
That’s practice. And that’s how fluency grows.
Let’s stop trying to study our way into fluency, and start rehearsing it.
Not through endless vocab lists.
Not by overanalyzing grammar.
But by stepping into a quiet, private space where you can speak softly and steadily, until the words feel like yours.
Not a classroom or a quiz.
A language rehearsal studio.
That’s what we’re building.
A tool not designed for testing, but for training.
Not to measure what you know, but to help you own what you say.
It’s built to:
There are no grades.
No pressure.
Just rhythm, rehearsal, and real-world confidence, built quietly, behind the scenes.
Because confidence doesn’t come from “knowing more.”
It comes from saying it often enough that you stop doubting yourself.
And when that happens?
You’re no longer just “learning” a language.
You’re inhabiting it.
Ever felt like you kind of know the language, but still can’t speak it?
You’re not alone.
And it’s not your fault.
You’ve just been taught a method that wasn’t built for how fluency really works.
If this resonated and you’re curious about what we’re building, drop your email below.
We’ll send you honest updates, early previews, and the occasional tip to help you rehearse your way to fluency.
No spam. No pressure. And you can opt out any time.
Chang, A. C-S. (2023). The Effects of Repeated Oral Reading Practice on the Retention of High-Frequency Multiword Items for EFL Learners: Multiple Dimensions. The Electronic Journal for English as a Second Language, 26(4). https://doi.org/10.55593/ej.26104a9
Richards, Jack C; Rodgers, Theodore S. (2001). Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (2nd ed.). Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. PDF
.png)
