Hello folks, welcome to this new episode of the podcast.

This is just the sort of preamble before the main episode begins.

And my daughter's right here in front of me in my arms as I record this so if you hear noises

that's what that means. So here's a new episode and this one is all about my

experiences with French as a language.

So in this episode, I'm in the role of a language learner.

I actually in this episode talk about some of my experiences with French including some things

about when I was a kid at school and some experiences I've had since living here and things like that. It's not the whole story.

This is part one of a two-part episode. I haven't done part two yet, so I might be able to respond

to your comments in part two if you leave comments for this episode I might be able to

respond to them when I do part two in this episode you'll hear me set out my aims

for the episode, including talking about a diary that I wrote when I was learning

French in Paris a few years ago for a few weeks and some other aims and objectives. So you'll hear me mention those aims and

objectives at the beginning. Some of those aims and objectives will actually be dealt with

in part two of this episode. I spend quite a lot of time talking about how bad I feel about

my French and you'll hear me giving my excuses for that, although you should never make excuses because that's a way of avoiding taking responsibility

for yourself.

This is quite a long episode, but I hope that you hear the whole thing so that you also get my comments and conclusions about

language learning at the end. Also it's a little bit downbeat because I'm feeling

a bit depressed about my lack of progress in French to be honest. I'm not feeling depressed

because I've been trying and trying and not making progress. It's more I'm just

feeling depressed with, you know, annoyed with myself because I haven't been trying

...