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If there was a country where all people was kind to each other and fair, it would be probably really popular. But this is not happening and in all countries, there's people just being not so nice to you, they just don't care about you and even go as far as doing mockery (which is disrespectful, needless to say). The problem is how to handle the understanding with this person. For example, this person might not cooperate when you ask what an expression means, even if the person is not acting badly outside of that. It happened to me once and I asked the meaning to two persons, I was unable to find. I then trusted my thought and gave up to finding explanation. So, how to handle that? How to handle conflicts in a language you're not comfortable with? And what about passively not cooperating people?

I wouldn't say French is a "formal" language. How can you call it formal given there is base rules, but immediately you have many exceptions to the rules, meaning the rule itself is pointless because many of the French rules have only like a 40% hit. It depends of the rule, some will have 80% but a lot of the rules will be more at the 20%. About expressions, they are a little better in French than in English in my opinion, but I don't know enough about English expressions to be a partial judge. But seriously, when it rains, I don't see cats meowing all around, and cat&dog fights because it rains both (reference to "it rains cats and dogs" expression. By the way, I learnt it but I never saw it used)

Welcome here! Basically, you got the idea right. The main error when learning a language is doing too much with a reason, meanwhile you truly need a purpose. Despite it required learning for me as well, I remember that, because I had hobby in one domain where there was great lots of information written in English compared to my French native language, I was naturally motivated to try to read English resources. And what you are doing is basically that: you are giving a reason for people to learn for a purpose, and not to learn for nothing. They will pay attention of the language because of the video, and because the video will eventually feel fun and interesting. So you got the idea right. About the execution, it is less clear. It feels like you already know English & German, that's it? What other language would you like to know then, why, and how this project might help yourself to learn that language?

The thing is, it is the improvement way: the more you speak it, the better you will be, the less shy you would feel. So it is part of your work, in language learning, to fight against that, because what matters most is that, the end person you really want to talk to in English for practical reasons, like for travel, when you need help, you don't want her/him to not understand clearly what you said because you didn't trained yourself enough. One is worst than another. Take it another way, after all. You're in a class, everyone learns the language so everyone is in the same boat. When doing it with people you don't know, you get the main benefit: you don't know them, so why would you care about what they think? The most important is that you tried to have a talk and to open yourself to new horizons. Sometimes, you just have to push yourself stronger than you are doing now.

Because many rules can be thrown at you while you read a guide about "how to write French with correct and decent grammar", you will probably miss the purpose and the intent behind some of these rules. From how to remember them to how to understand them, there's a great challenge coming here, especially with the complex French grammar rules, French being a complicated language with many exceptions you don't understand the existence. So this thread is here if you need help about one specific rule and you would like to understand it. You could want to understand it, but also to learn how to remember it and what is the origin of this rule if you really want, even if it's a whole science to know that.

Expressions are one of the hardest thing to learn. Basically, you would not know at a first look that it is an expression. For you, it will just a piece of text you wouldn't understand because the meaning itself is meaningless and only the expression is relevant. Okay, some expressions are understandable straight away but that's not common. So, then, you let it through, and you will wonder quickly that, you will hear once again the very same string of word. And this is where you start to think about an expression or a common language formulation. The best way to handle it, at this point, is to search on the Internet. If often, the translations of expressions are hard to find, you may end up in a explanation page written in your "foreign language" instead, but is understandable because of that.

Some feels discouraged here, don't forget to keep up your efforts, years will make the garbled sentences understandable! I'm not surprised about Spanish being somehow similar to French given they are all Latin languages, with the same Latin bases by the way. The problem is I wonder why these countries choose to keep these rules when they started to write out and speak, and design rules. But meanwhile Spanish is not my target language because I focus on a main one, it is a language I would be happy to know. Just in case. French grammar is complicated, that's a fact. What happens is that you do two things: generally, you try to remember the most important rules, you may read them once, and at each time you have a question when you have a text, just look up on the Internet for the right answer, and try to reread the rule you used. Finally, about all exceptions, just try to remember exceptions for the word you use, don't try to learn them all. I barely know someone who knows all French rules, even in France. Oh, and you plan being in Vietnam for how much time?

Native languages can be heard since years from you, you may end up to a pretty good, but also creepy situation: you know better how to write/speak in a foreign language than in your native one. This may be more likely if you moved out of your native language's country to go to another country with the foreign language you learnt. How do you overcome the situation? Up to that point, do you prefer to improve once again your foreign language, or you will go back to better learning the native language? Is that a problematic situation?

Target language is the language you are currently trying to learn, it is your objective, the language you want to speak and understand. But since it is your target, it is not yet perfect. Hence why this topic: what is the weaknesses of your target language, basically the language you are trying to learn? What do you fear the most? I already learned previously that there is many answers to that questions and some will find some things easier just because of their mentality or the way they learnt. So I want to collect data from you here, and understand better what is happening!

I read it is a common technique used in translate websites, so much that they should plan this usage when they design translators, it is about reverse translation. Basically, instead of translating your writing from your native language to your target language, you write something in your target language, and you translate it to your native language to look if it is correct or not. That's it. I must admit I use this technique but I wonder if many people here knows this technique and use it. Also, I want to get your thoughts about the results of it, after all, we all look for either the more amusing or most efficient way of learning/writing.

Many expressions or idioms will let you like, well, it will make you feel like someone gave you up on the emergency lane of a freeway. So lonely and lost. So to help you, please talk about the French idioms that bugs you. Basically, if you meet something in a French spoken text or in a French written text that makes you wonder what does she/he means, because if you translate it, even with the context, you still doesn't get the meaning, then you are probably at the right place. Being idiomatic is harder than learning the language itself, in my opinion, because it asks time.

Pour commencer, on commence souvent par des questions et des réponses simples. À mon avis, la question la plus simple c'est "Comment ça va ?". C'est la première question que l'on pose quand on dit bonjour à une personne, c'est aussi la première question que l'on apprend. Donc pour vous aider, vous pouvez parler ici de comment vous allez. Vous pouvez aussi parler de votre journée si vous le souhaitez. Si vous savez bien parler français, utilisez quand même un langage simple dans ce sujet. Je vais commencer : J'ai passé une bonne journée. Je me sens bien. Je me suis amusé, j'ai regardé des séries télévisées et une émission. Et vous ?

I think that home education is a whole thing. The topic is so big that I'm not sure it shouldn't span over many topics. But let's start somewhere. I think interest is as important as learning. If you have interest in something that has more resources in one language than many others, because they more developed it in some countries, then, naturally, you may slide to it because you will find resources from more proficient people than the one you already found in your own native language. That's basically what happened to me, so I know what I talk about. The thing is, the more you feel it fun and less boring to do, the more you do it, and the only way to get it is to do it a lot of hours. I mean, I think the best is doing it rather a lot than a little, this is not something that should be scare. Basically, you only learn all the words you need only if you pass enough time to meet them all in all these forms, hence why a real world usage is needed. That would be my bet.

Well, when my English would be better, I would think about Spanish, even if I'm not sure I would ever take the leap someday. The advantages of these two languages is that these two languages are languages I will often meet in the future and spoken by many people, meanwhile for example, French is not really spoken outside of France. Yes, you might think about Africa, sure they share many terms but they also have different strong regional words that you need to learn, especially the one used frequently to be idiomatic. And I have the opportunity to communicate with way more people with Spanish. I already discovered that with English so I'm pretty convinced already. The only problem is that Europe is really diverse language speaking, so when someone come from Europe, basically, there's a low likeliness I will meet a French/English or in the future, a French/English/Spanish native speaker.