Having been a long term SSI fan I’ve been really looking to giving the new language courses a try.
Last week my diary had quietened down enough to put some time into trying the French course, a language I dropped in school to do Welsh GCSE.
Having learnt Welsh, Spanish and a little bit of Dutch with SSI I had pretty good expectations of what to expect.
I was not disappointed.
The first hour was probably the most challenging as I got used to the accent but soon I was happily chugging away through new words and sentences.
In just a few days I’ve already been able to have a short (and admittedly one sided) chat in French with a French colleague who was pretty impressed with my progress after only a week.
But I think the most telling thing was a German colleague (who can speak perfect English and conversational French) said they’d never have had the confidence to just start having a go without worrying about all the mistakes they’d make.
And I think I’d have felt the same many years ago if it hadn’t been for Aran telling me over and over and over that mistakes are absolutely critical in the learning experience.
I’m looking forward to trying some very intense sessions with the app over my Xmas holidays and wowing my colleagues again in January…
So thank you again Aran and everyone at SSI for not just giving me the ability to speak my own county’s language but the opportunity to speak any language…
