Happy learners are good learners! A blog for and by LFM pupils in Moscow.

Robert Frost says in his famous poem:

"Two roads diverged in a woodand

— I took the one less travelled by,               

And that has made all the difference "

I think I did just that when I decided I would one day speak French like the French. Nothing quite so exceptional you may say but I must tell you , I come from the Seychelles and I grew up in what was then called a British Colony. We were thousands of kilometers away from London but we swore by everything British! My parents had pictures of the Royal family in their living room, we loved Marmite, I read Enid Blyton as a child and we listened to the BBC.

Our school books said our ancestors were anglo-saxon and we sang God Save the Queen at ceremonies ...

You can't be more British!!

French was our second language but in a way it was supposed to remain a subject - you studied verbs and got the complicated grammar right and that was it!!But I was intrigued by this language which sounded far more exotic! So intrigued I was actually very good at learning the ‘subjonctif’ and huge chunks of Molière .His stories about young girls wanting to marry a young man other than the one chosen by their parents just seemed much more interesting than Shakespeare's kings killing each other.

Things got ‘worse’ when I got to Lower Six ( 1ère) and had chosen French as one of my A level(Bac) subjects. My teacher was very passionate about his subject and thanks to him I grew to love all things French. In my final year I triumphantly announced to my parents that I was going to study in France and that my teacher was going to help me find a place in a French University. My parents made it very clear to me they thought France was a very strange land and that a young girl from a proper family from the Seychelles should study in the UK.

I had no other choice than to obey ! I even became an English teacher but pursued my interest for the French language. I read more and more French books each year, perusing the dictionary for unknown words. My teacher is now retired and well into his sixties but whenever I am back home I always visit him and love to hear that very special tone of voice he still has - the one that made me love the sound of the French language. His name is Gilles Nageon de Lestang - how much more French can you get??