My first TalkAbroad experience was with Sophie Ledemé, who was a middle-aged woman. She didn’t really tell me much about herself, so it was kind of hard to connect at the beginning. During the conversation, I had trouble understanding some of the things she was saying, especially because of how fast she was talking and her pronunciation. That made me feel a little stuck at times and not as confident in my responses.

Another issue was that she asked questions that weren’t on the paper we were given to prepare. Because of that, I got confused at certain points and didn’t always know how to respond. I feel like that made the conversation not flow as well. After a while, the conversation started to feel kind of dull, and I’m not going to lie, I did get a little irritated during the experience. Overall, I would say this was my worst TalkAbroad so far this year. I don’t think the communication between us was that strong, and I can admit that part of that was on me too.

Even though it wasn’t the best experience, I can still see where I did okay. I stayed in the conversation and tried to respond even when I wasn’t fully sure what to say. I realized that one of my weaknesses is understanding spoken French in real time, especially when it’s not exactly what I prepared for. At the same time, I learned that I need to be more flexible and not depend so much on a script.