Geoff Peddie for Learn&Co Video Testimonials

Speaker: Geoff Peddie

Geoff Peddie: Hello, everybody. My name is Geoff Peddie and I've been asked to say a few words about my experience with Learn&Co um my partner is French. So my first inspiration here was to try and pick up a few words from basically nothing. Um So that I could start to converse with the family and I could work in a French context with a little bit more confidence and uh a little more skill, um, so far so good. Um I'm eight years in, but I sort of see this as a lifelong journey um in terms of where I'm at now, I suppose for an English person, if I said a level sort of standard that might be uh clearer, but essentially I can go to Paris, I can hold my own. I can, um, you know, work with confidence and I can understand what's going on. What I'm trying to do as I go forward is develop more of that confidence, especially in more um confusing places. Say going to a bar, going to a pub where many people talk at the same time, you know, and try and be a bit more um of a presence in that dynamic. So that's where I'm looking forward to go. Um I hope that was helpful and I totally recommend uh learning co um if that's what you want to do. Thanks very much.

Geoff Peddie: Hello. So, my language course has been with Maria, which is, uh 1 to 1 and there is no, uh desire for me to take an exam. So I'm not interested in a level or anything like that. I was just interested in building up my, um, my core sort of, you know, abilities in reading, speaking, speaking in particular and writing to a degree. Um, where I'm heading with this is I'm, you know, I can watch a movie now and with subtitles, I can completely understand what's going on. I go to the theater and again, you can, obviously with the reaction from the crowd, you can work out pretty much 90% of what's going on. Um, the question here asks about a trip, I've not been on a trip, uh, with the team. Um, partly that was because of COVID, there wasn't the opportunity during that time and partly because I go to France quite a lot. Anyway. Um, most of my, uh, fun moments I suppose are, you know, within classroom, but also transfer when I'm in France, I'm obviously in the French context with the French family. And, uh, sometimes we, uh, you know, play a lot of games or, you know, colloquialisms. There's quite a lot of French words that they, uh, English words rather that they steal and then really surprising ones, some of them and, uh, vice versa. So sometimes that can be quite fun. And, uh, you know, there's been one or two karaoke nights which, um, I would recommend one thing I would say is don't try and joke in French because, um, I failed miserably on that.

Geoff Peddie: Hello. This is the part where I'm supposed to speak a little bit of French to you. Um The first question here is uh a favorite phrase, sentence uh or memory. The problem is most of the things I first picked up, of course, were French swear words. I'm not entirely sure it's appropriate to, to be launching into those here. Um I think it says here, moment, we are particularly proud. I think, you know, one of the things I'm most proud of is I don't really mind making mistakes. Now, when I first started learning French, I was totally, uh you know, almost stuck in a moment or, you know, what happens if, but actually, now I just roll with it and I think that makes a big difference. Um The fact you're making a bit of an effort frankly is uh is normally well appreciated. All right, I've got a little bit of a script here. So uh let's go with it. OK. That's my little go

Geoff Peddie: Hello, everybody. Now, this is about uh Learn & Co's approach. So my experience with them has been either 1 to 1 face to face or it's been uh 1 to 1 online and both of absolutely fine. For me, why I like for me is it's tailored to what I want. I don't want to pass an exam. Um at my age, I don't want to take any more exams ever again. I just wanted to be developing my key fluency in particularly in speaking and confidence. Um Some of the things that I think are very useful is having the confidence over time to recognize it whilst you won't have the most direct line to answering a question. If you pick up enough vocabulary, you can get there in the end by choosing different ways there. And that's absolutely fine too. It's also picking up the, um you know, the idiosyncrasies of French, some of their liaisons I had to explain to me, uh you know, where we're taught at school. Um you know how to say it sort of like one word at a time and how they contract the words. So it sort of sounds a little bit different, which I think was the top of my head. Uh jus a might be the example shaper is how that comes through. So those sort of tricks so you can listen out for them, uh where they can track the word together is very, very important. Um One thing I found really, really useful is when I was doing listening, uh practice is I would describe what uh they were uh saying then of course you're playing, you're stopping with Paul several times and doing it over and over again. But actually you pick up very quickly, uh, the speed and rhythm and you get quite familiar. So that's something I think was a really good trick. Ok.

Geoff Peddie: OK. So the question here is what would you say to someone considering joining Learn&Co? Well, the first thing to say is give it a go. Um, and you have just got to accept that you are going to be not very good at the beginning and that's absolutely fine and take risks. It does not matter if you make mistakes. Um In fact, now I sort of find it quite amusing. I, you just roll with it a little bit, got to sort of shoulders down, lean into it and go. It is better to learn a few words and the phrases and grammatical structures and make errors than not do it at all. And nobody's gonna have a go at you or look down on you because they're just happy that you're speaking in the language. Um It says here about how Learn&Co helped me personally. Well, for me, it's all been about, you know, particularly trying to work in a French family context where all the slang, it's at speed, they know each other and just, you know, picking up on the key words, asking questions, um, making effort, I suppose is that as far as I go there. Um What do I wish shown you before starting my language journey? Right. Well, you've got to pick up a bit of vocab, there's no two ways about it. So I go there also try and learn whole phrases. So it can be exhausting, trying to learn the first part of a construction or f for example. And then you're trying to get OK, what's gonna be the subjunctive after that? If you just learn block phrases, it's already done for you. So I would recommend building from the word level and then getting to the phrase level because then it becomes a little bit automatic and uh you'll be saying Voila in about 10 seconds, I promise you.