If making embarrassing mistakes help you learn a language, I’m doing great (Matt Hambly, The Guardian)

After a fortnight’s sulk, our writer is spurred into action when he watches an American actor being interviewed – in French.

Learning a new language might leave you feeling a little red in the face at times, but persevere. Photograph: Alamy.

It probably doesn’t pay to dwell on the past but last week’s blogpost effort would have received, at best, a D+, not least because of the mistakes in tense and grammar that found their way into my copy between reading them on screen and typing them on to the page. There was even a spelling mistake in English. Ouch. It’s quite an experience, submitting your French homework to the nation, but a valuable one, nonetheless. And while my mistakes could have been solved by paying closer attention to the screen in front of me, it does highlight one of the problems inherent in learning a new language: making a tit of yourself in public.