I understand Czech—but freeze when speaking

Daniëlle is from the Netherlands and splits her time between Holandsko a Česko.

When she came to us, she could understand a little Czech when there was no pressure and put a sentence together when she had enough time to think in advance.

But when she overheard a conversation and all of a sudden unexpected Czech arrived at her face at Porsche speed, she said: “It is as if I freeze or have a short circuit in my brain!”

Her reactions were slow or non-existent because she would very often switch to safer English. She would miss the point of conversations and jokes would simply be beyond her limits.

“I want to have conversations only in Czech with my friends, neighbours and family without having to switch to English,”

was her goal in her own words.

There was this desire to understand what was funny, to be part of those conversations with her people when she visited the Czech Republic.

Then she joined Immersion and started focusing on Czech that really was in her actual life.

She focused on words and phrases she needed to talk about things she was experiencing. She added some informal Czech to help her fit more into village life and worked on the prepositions she often mixed up.

She also listened to more podcasts because listening was her thing! (Yes, we record special Immersion-only content with real-life dialogues and informal Czech. Cool, huh? 😄)

And finally, after years of learning Czech, she discovered ways of learning that worked for her... helped by the focus on her own goals and exchanges with other participants sharing their winning battles with this weird (but beautiful!) language 😄

Very soon, repeated practice of conversations from her actual life helped her take Czech into her real surroundings.

Small but important milestones was: tiny, short conversations with her neighbours while staying in the Czech Republic!

We celebrated BIGLY because she had started using Czech without waiting until every sentence was perfect.

And you know what her proudest result by the end of Immersion was?

“I was able to do the basket weaving workshop in simple Czech!”

She went from freezing when someone unexpectedly asked her a question to teaching a basket-weaving workshop in simple Czech. “Due to the Immersion Programme I made a huge step forward in speaking Czech!”

More than a year after the programme, Daniëlle spends about 10 weeks per year v Čechách, divided across 5 nebo 6 návštěv. She hopes to live here in the future (and we hope, too 🙂 ).

But already now, when she is here, she speaks Czech with her Czech friends, family (her partner is Czech), shop assistants and people attending her basket-weaving workshops through her company, R&C Academy Atelier Koloděj.

Yes, since she spends more time in the Netherlands, her progress is slower. But she is totally fine with that because her confidence has remained.

How do I know? Because she wrote to me today:

“The Immersion Programme gave me a super boost and by using the language often my confidence grew. The confidence never left me since then!”

You don’t have to jump into Immersion already feeling confident (you can bring your short-circuiting brain too 😄). Daniëlle built that confidence through practice and kept using it afterwards. Maybe we should trademark this Immersion feeling 😄

Would you like to practise using Czech from your actual life too?¨

have a look at Immersion

And if you have been considering Immersion, what would you need to know to feel comfortable joining? Reply (or book a call directly with me ). I’m listening and answering honestly 😉

Btw, did you know that Porsche was born in Vratislavice nad Nisou? 😄

To je Daniëlle, uprostřed, showing Czech women how to weave a basket.