My Very Own French Connection

Why teaching French to older adults is fun

I’m just 18 years old, and I found spending a measly five minutes on Duolingo (a free mobile app used to learn a language) every day to learn Spanish quite a struggle. Given that record, I only expect to lose even more motivation as I age, finding joy in nothing but bingeing on Netflix and snacks simultaneously.

Thankfully, not everyone is like me. Certainly not the seniors to whom I had the privilege of teaching beginner-level French classes online, for an hour every week spread over two batches for four months as part of my internship with Silver Talkies. My ‘students’ were definitely more enthusiastic than me or any of my classmates had ever been in all eight years of our journey learning French. I mean, what else would you expect from anyone who is a part of the enthusiastic community of members at Silver Talkies?

At our French classes, the learning environment always seemed to be buzzing with excitement and curiosity about this language that many of them had experienced, but hadn’t been able to learn before. I believe what added to the excitement was the company of fellow senior learners who shared the same passion as them. It truly enriched every session by building a sense of community.

So how could learning a new language help senior citizens?

Apart from being able to accurately say ‘croissant’ without offending the French, there are a multitude of benefits to learning a new language like better memory, creativity, decision making and even a decreased risk of developing health conditions like dementia. Besides, an elegant language like French would also give you the remarkable ability to communicate with 275 million people from around the world. This is in addition to the two or more languages that most Indians are already proficient at, making us true masters of multilingualism.

One might think it’s harder picking up a new language once you’ve crossed a certain age. However, from my experience of teaching both seniors and younger children, I've observed that senior citizens are much better at forming connections between the language that they’re learning and the languages that they frequently converse in. Moreover, they are well aware of their learning style through several years of experience, thus enabling them to shape their journey learning a new language. Apart from this, there’s a huge difference in the motivation behind learning a new language-- the motivation of seniors comes from a place of genuine love for learning something new, whereas the motivation for other age groups most often comes as a necessity for education or work.

What did I learn after teaching an enthusiastic bunch of seniors?

That there is no ‘right age’ to learn a language, and no limit to your enthusiasm and love of learning, even if you are in your late 60s or 70s. Interaction and curiosity aren’t curbed by age. My very first class stood testimony to this, truly challenging the preconceived notions most of us have created in our heads about older individuals. After my experience with the older learners at SilverTalkies, I wouldn’t mind pushing my dreams of learning Spanish by a couple of decades so that I can immerse myself in the language learning experience truly for the joy and love of it.

All images courtesy: Pixabay, Canva