Learning something new doesn’t have to be heartbreaking (Matt Hambly, The Guardian)

A tale about miscommunication between a Brit and French paramedics reminded Matt Hambly not to get broken hearted about his language learning.

A tale about miscommunication between a Brit and French paramedics reminded Matt Hambly not to get broken hearted about his language learning. Photograph: Alamy.

At college I was lucky enough to learn art theory from a brilliant tutor. Martin (not his real name) had no less than two degrees, in art history and African cultural studies, had published several text books and was a well-respected Turner scholar. He also possessed that rare thing among such intelligent people: empathy. Aware that not everyone was as quick on the uptake as he was, he took great pleasure in making even the most challenging of subjects seem accessible.

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.

Forget French, Russian is the language of love (Anna Parkin, The Guardian)

After meeting her French fiance during her degree year abroad, Anna Parkin decided to learn Russian for their honeymoon in St Petersburg.

From Russia, with love. Anna Parkin is learning Russian via Skype for her honeymoon in Russia. Photograph: Wolfgang Kaehler/Corbis.

It was in the third year of my French degree, while I was living in Bordeaux, that French lived up to its romantic designation. I’d been in the city for just five days when I found myself at a house party, hosted by my now-fiance Christophe. I was the one speaking French with a heavy English accent. He was doing the opposite. We decided to meet up the following week for a “conversation exchange”, and it was then we discovered a shared desire to travel the Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow to Vladivostok.