Finding support & solidarity in language challenges: A chat with Debs Bensaul

Have you ever taken part in an online language challenge to keep yourself on track and stay motivated in your learning?

Debs Bensaul (@franklyfrancophone | @essentiallyitalian | @towardsfluency ) is a long-time Language Chats listener and member of our Language Lovers AU Community. Based in Sydney, Debs is a committed learner of French and Italian who regularly takes part in the Fluent in 3 Months Challenge as a learner and volunteer community coach. We talk about her experiences of learning languages so far, why she’s found the Fluent in 3 Months Challenge and its community so helpful, some of her favourite resources for French and Italian, AND *drumroll*… Her language cubby house! (Is it a language lover’s paradise? Are we both jealous? Oh yes, we certainly are.)

Have you had a similar or a different experience to Debs of taking part in an online (or offline!) language learning challenge? Did it help you too? Let us know - we’d love to hear from you!

PS: Wondering why Bec is so quiet in this episode? Well… We had a little technical issue during our recording and it turns out that we lost almost all of Bec’s audio from this recording. Doh! Luckily this didn’t impact the rest of the audio for Debs and Penny, so we’ve edited the episode just a little bit so that you can still enjoy all the great info that Debs shared with us.

• Fluent in 3 Months (book) by Benny Lewis / Fluent in Three Months website
• The Courage to Speak (course) with Shannon Kennedy
• italki
• Fluent in 3 Months Challenge: the Add1Challenge (previously run by Brian Kwong) became the Fluent in 3 Months Challenge in August 2017.
• Michel Thomas Method: French
• Coffee Break Languages - and to find out more, tune into our chat with Mark from Coffee Break Languages (Episode 20)