If you pay attention as you walk down the tree-lined Jefferson Park Ave, you will likely notice one house that does not look like the others. In a tapestry of student dorms and off-Grounds apartments, La Maison Française — the French House — is a feat of 19th-century architecture that offers a residential language and cultural immersion experience. I never thought I could live there when I walked by the house during my first year, but now I’m calling La Maison Française home for the second year in a row.
The four floors of La Maison Française boast a library, a grand piano and a porch swing, and it is all within a 10 minute walk of Central Grounds. But the greatest feature of the house is the language community. La Maison Française, like the nearby language dorms Casa Bolívar and Shea House, provides a unique opportunity for students to speak a foreign language in a home environment. Living there has become the cornerstone of my university experience — it has shown me the joys of intrinsic motivation and taught me to seek learning opportunities beyond the classroom setting.
If I told my high school senior self that she would continue taking French and live in a French immersion dorm, she probably would not believe me. I only decided to revisit French as a college student to fulfill my foreign language requirement, but I unexpectedly ended up loving the classes — FREN 2020 convinced me to continue on to more specialized 3000-level classes. With increased exposure to the language and more opportunities to practice, I saw myself improve my language skills during my first two years on Grounds. So, for fun, I applied and interviewed to live in the French House for my third year.
I walked out of the interview elated because I had surprised myself — I had held a 30-minute conversation in French, something I’d never done before. When I later received an offer to live in the French House, I immediately said yes. Knowing that I had the ability and determination to keep learning French ignited my interest in the language beyond the classroom. Practicing French became a personal goal rather than a general education requirement.
When I accepted the offer to live at the French House, I didn’t know how hard it would be to transition from years of French coursework to total immersion. Coming home after a packed day of classes and extracurriculars to speak a language I was still learning seemed like quite a daunting prospect.
The first day of third year arrived, and after a long afternoon of moving boxes to my room on the top floor, I went to our first group dinner of the semester, hungry and nervous. As we all found a chair around the two long tables in the dining room, ate dinner and got to know each other, I found myself wondering how I could speak French like this all the time, every day for the rest of the year, even though I wasn’t fluent.
However, with 26 other residents at all levels of French, from beginners to native speakers, I quickly realized that I didn’t need to put pressure on myself to be perfectly fluent, holding conversations without any mistakes. Instead, I shifted my mindset to cultivating a willingness to learn. Mistakes were bound to happen — all that mattered was how I learned from those mistakes, taking it sentence by sentence. As I did, I learned to think in French first, rather than thinking in English and translating — a much more efficient way to speak. I also became more present in conversations and less self-conscious as I spoke the language.
Speaking colloquial French every day became easier over time as my housemates and I got to know each other over group dinners, music jam sessions on the porch, movie nights and a weekly conversation class offered by the French Department. Learning a language, or any new skill for that matter, is even more rewarding in the company of people who share the same goal. We all want to get better together, and we support one another through the process. The community at the French House is truly what makes the experience so special. It was this close sense of community, combined with my love for learning French, that made me want to stay in La Maison. Now in my fourth year, I am happily a part of “les maisonettes” one last time.
Could you call me the newest convert to language-learning? I declared the French minor last year, so maybe. Realizing that I’m capable of working towards fluency in a foreign language, and believing in my ability to do so, has translated into a passion for French.
But trust me, I’m far from perfect — I’m always learning new vocab words, and sometimes I take a minute to formulate a long sentence. But that’s okay. Living in the French House, I’ve come to understand that truly learning a language is a long, intricate and challenging process — but it is also a beautiful process when you come to appreciate all of its complexities.
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