they lost certain traits because there were no other species that hunted them.
so, are you sure about that? what is the...
Not at all.
I conquered it, my friends, I conquered the beast that is the Lingoda Sprint.
So I basically spoke French everyday in 30 CLASSES***, and the good news is that I filmed everything. So in today's little video I'm
going to show you guys my progress over time and also share my experience doing the Lingoda Sprint.
If you have any questions, I'm gonna answer them all.
But right now you might be saying Elysse, what the hell is Lingoda? What the hell is the Lingoda Sprint? I don't know what you're talking about.
And I understand you because a couple months ago I had those same questions, but now I am in a position to answer them.
So Lingoda is basically just an online language school where you can take classes in a curriculum in 5 different languages.
If you count English and business English as different languages, which, believe me, they are,
so it's English, business English, German, Spanish, and of course, the star of the show today, French.
And they offer group and private classes in all of these languages all the way from A1 to B2.
So that's really comprehensive, a lot of content, a lot of stuff to learn, right?
and the spicy part, my friends, so spicy I had to grab the mic for this part,
is that they offer something called the Sprint and the Super Sprint, which is like..
it's basically a 2-month intensive language course where you sit down and say hey, I'm gonna do nothing except practice my target language.
both the Sprint and the Super Sprint are 60 days, but the Sprint is 30 classes, so you take a class every other day.
and the Super Sprint is 60 classes, so you take a class every day.
only for the hardcore. and the idea is-- it's kind of like a wager. kind of like gambling-- it's not. it's a joke, okay?
Is this ethical? I don't know. don't ask me.
if you take the Sprint and successfully finish the 30 classes, you get half of your money back. if you take the Super Sprint and successfully finish
the 60 classes, you get all of your money back. That's like.. that's a crazy concept, is it not?
so when I decided a couple months ago that I was going to do the DALF C1 exam, I was looking for something to kick me back into shape, yanno?
So when the people at Lingoda reached out and they were like, hey, do you wanna do the Sprint? you can do it in French. I was like boom.
Divine timing. Let's f**kin do it.
I would recommend signing up for the Lingoda Sprint and trying it out yourself. Signups do close soon.
I think the last day to sign up for the SuperSprint with the 100% cashback reward is August 3.
So depeche-toi, you know? Do not get caught lacking, you can sign up with the link below in the description and
use my code ELYSSE2023 for a little sumtinsumtin, and get started.
Anyway, I recorded a little bit of my classes each day, that's what you're here for, so roll the clip. *clack*
I think that makes me a little jealous because I don't have that many female friends.
I just moved to a new city and that's why I feel like this.
Not recently, but I went to the Polyglot Conference last year. It was in Mexico.
One of the presentations was about the difference between European French and Canadian French.
And how was his posture, his attitude? --Very open to the different dialects in French, because there's a lot of them, no?
Even though he was French himself, he was very open to the different dialects.
But [I meant] more so the way he gave the presentation...
Elysse, the last one. What did the secretary tell him? That he should come back next week because he couldn't sign up without his card.
It should be "devrait". That would be for "vous", devriez.
It should be "devrait" because the original was in the future tense.
I hate grammar classes. Not because I hate grammar, but simply because there aren't as many opportunities to speak
as in the other classes, like communication classes, but that's life.
I got lost, and I didn't know anyone there so it was too chaotic.
You went there alone? Yes, I was doing a program where I worked for a...
how do you say that? School for the little ones. L'école maternelle? Maybe.
I couldn't find the school or the director's house.
The bouquet, if the... how do you say that? The woman that gets married? La mariée.
When she throws the bouquet-- --Exactly, exactly.
She will find her future husband.
I would say one of the first things I realized when I started taking classes was just the huge vocab loss I had gone through.
Because keep in mind, I stopped studying French after high school, so it's been 3-4 years since I've
consistently used French and used certain words every single day, so it was really just a learning process.
I was leaving these classes with just massive lists of vocab, everything you can imagine, from random every objects, to
really nuanced concepts. I definitely overdosed on vocab because that was the hole I noticed I needed to fill.
Like, my accent in French? pretty good. My grammar, structure, general understanding of the framework of French? Pretty good.
But yeah, you cannot fake vocab. You just can't.
Elysse, what's your favorite literary genre? Right now I'm reading a memoir by Azar Nafisi, she's from Iran and it tells the story of
the developments in Iran before the Islamic Revolution and also after, how all of that developed.
It's difficult in Iran, protesting is forbidden. We're lucky in France. --In France people protest for everything.
We still don't have a cure for cancer... [can't find the word for cure]
Guérison. Some people have a theory that businesses profit from cancer, so that's why thet don't develop one.
She looks really pensive, kind of like she has critical thoughts, so this picture could be Twitter?
[on Twitter] you can analyze, criticise, write more serious things than on other sites.
I think people use Twitter for that the majority of the time, it's become so political.
It's become very political, that's true.
What do you think, Elysse, do we do enough? --It's interesting, the point that Brita made.
That it depends on the country. I think in the US we focus more on the individual contribution,
individual pollution, and we don't take as seriously the responsibility of large companies who pollute the most.
So I took 30* classes, right? 27 group classes, and 3 private lessons. But not because I booked private lessons, but because I was the only person
that showed up. Because keep in mind, these class sizes are really small. It's usually only like 2-4 people
sometimes 5, but hardly ever. So there's just a possibility sometimes that you're going to be the only one that shows up.
Even if other people book the class, and this was actually really cool because if nobody shows up for the group class, the content that they have on Lingoda,
it's meant to be discussed and interacted with in a group. So sometimes the teachers would just be like,
Do you just wanna have a conversation for an hour? Do you wanna read an article, do you wanna do something else?
So that was cool because sometimes I could get that personalized experience.
This meal is nothing special. [teacher jotting down my answer]
I've always said I wouldn't like to learn Latin or ancient Greek or other dead languages because they're not so useful...
there's no one that speaks these languages natively so it'd be a waste of time for me, I think.
Utilité (not utilisation). -Utilité. But however, I think that...
I have a question. So, Libération, I know some papers have certain beliefs behind them. So is Libération more ..
[can't remember the word for conservative] liberal or conservative?
Libération isn't really liberal (diff meaning in French), it's more leftist.
Is it society who's responsible for using social media wisely?
There's a difference in power. Because social media aren't neutral, there's usually a person or a group behind them.
Take Twitter for example, it was recently purchased by Elon Musk. Everyone knows that he has controversial political beliefs, so
it's a shared responsibility where people should be able to distinguish what's real and what's fake, but
the people that have the most power [le plus DE pouvoir]
it's on their shoulders. Can I say that? On their shoulders, yes. That works.
Let me just say, if you're preparing for a language certification exam like the DALF, the DELE for Spanish, the Goethe-Institut Prüfung for German,
I think the Lingoda Sprint can be really helpful for you because of the content in the curriculum, right?
All of the content on Lingoda follows different themes and topics, and language certification exams
usually test you on a lot of different things like environment, society, business, politics, things like that.
And on Lingoda there's classes on anything you can imagine. I was taking classes on urban design,
it wasn't super technical, it was just talking about the way cities are built. But there's also classes on grammar,
there were classes on world cultures and world music, like, there's so much stuff.
And you don't have to go in order. You can just pick the topics and the classes that are most interesting to you and do them when you want.
Se coincer (to squoosh/jam) isn't only used for the fingers, right? You can jam other parts of your body, no?
Yeah, toes for example.
Because he was hurrying, he jammed his foot in the door.
I just moved here recently, I haven't been here for a long time but I have noticed a lot of gentrification.
And I supposed I'm a part of that too since I haven't been here for long.
And the rich people buy up all the buildings to make luxury apartments.
You reap what you sow, that just means that we receive what we do unto others. We get what we give.
Do you guys know what "no drive days" are?
I think I've heard of that in Mexico. I don't know if they still do it, but if for example,
your... how do you say that, the car's ID (license plate)? Plaque d'immatriculation.
If your license plate starts with a certain number, you can't drive this day.
So according to the license plate, you can't use your car.
It doesn't matter if you come-- and I'm using the indicative here-- it doesn't matter if you're late, come anyway.
I hate when people do that, when they give you other reasons that you should come.
Take your shower, get dressed, and then come. We'll wait for you. --No way.
Chicago is a cosmopolitan city, like Javier already mentioned.
So in the past it was a lot more industrial, with a lot of factories, etc.
But these areas that used to be more industrial are dangerous areas today.
They lost certain traits because there were no other animals that hunted them.
Are you sure about that? -Not at all.
I also think it's unrealistic to prohibit hunting entirely.
I think there could be people native to the island that hunt them as part of their culture,
so they should be able to get a license, but hunt up to a certain limit so that they don't get endangered.
Yeah, to regulate hunting, not prohibit it.
I found it interesting because it has to do with the history of European colonization in the DRC.
so they used the country for that in the past, and it continues up until today.
It's a dynamic that still persists.
So my biggest takeaway: I learned to really articulate my thoughts and not rush in doing that. To really think them through,
with the phrases that I learned. It helped me get back into that daily habit
and make French a normal part of my brain that I access all the time again.
So if you struggle with that, buck up and sign up for the Lingoda Sprint. I'm gonna leave a link for you guys down below if
you wanna sign up. I'm definitely gonna be doing the Super Sprint for German. Now that I've seen I can do it for 30 classes**, I'm like,
I can definitely do that 2 times in a row. And I'm preparing for the German C1 exam in the fall,
so I think this is the perfect experience to get me ready for that. Ok? Ok.
Thanks so much for watching this video, I hope you enjoyed watching me embarrass myself over and over and over.
[says bye to you in a billion languages]